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If they'll grow in a green roof, they'll grow in the hottest, windiest, driest gardens!
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Come See Our Demonstration Green Roof
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Green roofs are an ancient technology being reinterpreted into modern applications around the world. Many large cities are using green roofs to lessen the negative effects that so much man made surface materials are creating, including excessive heat build up in summer, poor air quality, water run off and storm drain overload, and shrinking habitat and an imbalanced ecosystem.
Green roofs clean and cool the air, filter rain water, slow run
off, create habitat where once there was none and make attractive
green space for the comfort and enjoyment of city inhabitants.
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As if all that weren't enough, the environmental benefits extend to energy conservation, as well. The insulating value of green roofs surpass traditional roofing systems significantly enough to offset the extra initial cost of structural building. And the life of a green roof is much longer than typical roofs, conserving materials, easing use of limited landfill space and saving consumer labor costs.
Now that some major American cities have accepted green roofing as an idea whose time has come again, more residential consumers are beginning to look at green roofs as an excellent alternative for home use for many of the same reasons.
We liked the idea so much, we decided to try a small rooftop garden at the nursery to see how it works. Our roof will give us the opportunity to trial plants and other materials to help local builders and consumers who are interested in the technology find appropriate building materials, planting media and hardy plant material.
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Drains allow rainwater to escape the roof structure. Copper pipe attached to the underside of the drains directs runoff to a rain barrel. The caging on the top is to prevent the rock from clogging the drain openings.
Doug mixes the planting media in a cement mixer, then fills tree buckets to load onto the tractor bucket to lift onto the rooftop (below).
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Be sure to visit
the nursery to see
the green roof
in person!
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Doug moved 9,000 pounds of planting media onto the rooftop, being careful not to lift the erosion webbing (left).
Planting media was scooped into each cell of the erosion webbing (below). Each cell holds one plant.
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Here's a photo detailing the foundation layers of the green roof. Once the structure was in place, Doug skinned the whole framework with particle board and roll roofing. He built a box around the entire roof perimeter using angle iron to attach 2x6 securely. Over this he put rubber roof liner, which was then protected by a layer of high density foam insulation panels. These panels are used primarily to protect the rubber roofing material, but will also provide some insulation to plant roots as an added bonus.
Over all of this goes the expandable ersosion webbing, which was used because the roof is sloped. This is being bolted to the top of the roof, then the panels are bolted together all along the edges of each section to hold them securely in place. This is the structure which holds the planting medium and plants in place.
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