Living Roof Magazine Articles

I've was asked to write a couple of articles on living roofs for two magazines recently, Earth Building and Organic NZ.

It is always great to be able to promote how easy to build and beautiful living roofs can be in the environment.  For the Organic NZ article I show-cased a retrofit of my own chook shed  with a living roof (see blog link above to Violet Hill Farm post on the process of constructing the living roof).

I was recently in Queenstown and visited the Remarkables Primary School building which has a very large sedum and thyme covered living roof.  You get a great view of it as you fly into Queenstown as it is directly under the flight path for the airport.

As these photos show the roof is looking great and has been designed to ensure students can use the roof space - a great example of maximising opportunities.

Buckleton Beach Garden Update

Six months on, the coastal garden at Buckleton Beach (which includes a living roof) has grown really well.  

The planting plan was simple and aimed to create a strong frontage of hardy, easily maintained species for this holiday home with room to park the boat and for visual interest when viewed from the deck above.

The mix of native and the occasional Australian ground cover (to link with existing large gum tree in front yard) have grown well and should in time reflect relatively well the original concept.  The photo below is a conceptual montage of what we imagined the front terrace might look like.

This photo below shows the scenario six months after planting - not bad.

The living roof is doing really well with most plants surviving the summer and spreading across the roof to create a striped carpet of hardy coastal natives.

and what a stunning location made even more special with the use of coastal species which fit with the context of the garden.

A Week of Live-Roofing!

This week has been full of living roof experiences, which is one of my favorite types of work.  Earlier in the week I gave a presentation on the WCC living roof (and a tour of the roof) to a group of visiting sustainability students from the University of Maryland touring NZ with their professor Dr John Lea-Cox.  The roof is looking fantastic, with some great growth of the native plants.

Then, spent friday helping Zoe from Living Roofs and Blake from GreenScene to put in place a native living roof on the newly constructed Whangarei Council toilets at Bream Bay Walkway at Urqhurts Bay in Whangarei - what a stunning location...

... first order of the day was to hiab the substrate onto the roof.

then the process of spreading, laying out the plants and planting.

It was a long day, but the end result was great, and the coming months we'll monitor to ensure the plants survive over the summer (not the most ideal timing for planting but needs must).  I'll update with photos of the completed toilet in a few weeks.

In the News!

Found out via an email from a colleague that I have been featured in the Science category of the North & South New Zealanders of the Year Awards (North & South’s celebration of Kiwi’s who made a difference in 2011) as being a “bright spark – the inventors and innovators across science, medicine and technology who add to the sum of human knowledge and push the boundaries of human endeavor”.

The award commendation was as follows:

Renee Davies: Unitec’s Landscape Architecture department head is an award-winning eco-landscape designer, who established New Zealand’s first extensive commercial “living roof” using only native plant species.  Not satisfied with the greening of the country’s roofs, Davies is now developing a high-rise environment for endangered native lizard species; living roofs are potentially ideal sites to establish populations of skinks, she says, being free of mammal predators and introduced lizards, plus offering a sufficient insect food supply for the vulnerable natives.   Ref:  North and South Magazine, Issue 310, January 2012

I have no idea how or who, but nice that the research is seen to be making a contribution!

Exciting discovery on living roof!

For the first time since I installed and planted the living roof on my shepherds hut sleepout two summers ago, I was up on the roof checking out the plant growth and tactfully removing the odd intrusive weed (although most were pretty unoffensive, so were left to contribute to the habitat of the roof.  Some rather tall single grass-like spikes were visible from the ground, and on further investigation proved to be no less than 20 native New Zealand orchids which had self-seeded on the roof!  Just imagine that there must be masses of dust-sized (or smaller) orchid seeds swirling around in the wind, just waiting for an appropriate habitat to germinate and grow.  How thrilling then, to discover that my living roof is just such a habitat.  I will wait with expectation to see if the population thrives and grows.  Photo below shows view of living roof with the tall grassy stems of two orchids to the left of image.  Close up view of orchid flower in the following image.