Beauty + bounty: green roofs (part two)
In part one, urban gardener Sass Ruthven inspired us to consider collective neighborhood farming. Growing local eats helps to solve many of our current issues by increasing our access to affordable, healthy organic food, bringing neighbors and community together, teaching skills with hands-on learning opportunities, lessening our need for transportation by using our local lands effectively and last but not least, the produce tastes amazing and is as local it gets!
Developing the built environment creates many societal challenges, green roofs are a great solution so that we may live in harmony with nature and reduce the negative impacts of development by joining the urban agriculture movement.
While food production is not the main benefit of this building innovation, green roofs produce other kinds of bounty. Beyond their outstanding beauty, green roofs manage stormwater runoff onsite, which alleviates stress on many of our stormwater systems when they are overwhelmed, improves water quality and lessens contaminants going into our local watershed.
Other benefits include ultraviolet absorption, noise reduction, improved air quality and the creation of new habitats to invite pollinators and increase biodiversity. And if you put a green roof on a structure you are actively living in, it will thermally insulate your living space by aiding to heat or cool your indoor climate in both summer and winter.
Sass designed and built her own green roof on her garage in 2010. Due to her successful endeavors, she then decided to add a green roof to the chicken coop in 2016. While she has no formal education on the subject, it’s helpful that her daughter majored in horticulture with green roof emphasis! What Sass knows is tried and true, from the practice of completing her own projects and helping others to design, install and maintain their green roofs.
She leads by example and explains that most green roofs have a small amount of soil so ornamentals are generally a better choice than edibles. As for maintenance, in the winter time she deadheads, weeds once a year, fertilizes around March and irrigates during the summertime using a hundred foot soaker hose for her garage roof. The excess water slowly releases and collects into a rain barrel, which is then used to water her garden.
She goes on to explain that depending on the slope of your roof, you may want to think about the best way to water: drip system, soaker hose, sprinkler or other forms of overhead watering. First and foremost, Sass states “unless it’s brand new construction, you have to beef up the inside to hold the weight. We did a weight test of saturated soil. The soil saturated in the winter time is four tons on just the garage. So you need to make sure your structure is sound enough to be able to hold that kinda weight on a bigger structure. If it’s something like a chicken coop or a shed, because it’s a small structure it’s not going to be an issue. We reinforced our garage.”
Her hope “is to eventually become a non-profit. I would like to be a teaching farm here and basically educate. I really like teaching and showing people how to do it for themselves. Also, showing more people where we could expand the whole growing food business to have multiple locations that would all be funneling over to some area that there is a food shortage, and that will hopefully be my end goal of this whole effort.”
If you would like more information, you may register for free classes at the EnviroHouse, 253-573-2426, or contact Sass directly at sharethewealthorganics@gmail.com to schedule a chat over the phone or a visit to see her green roofs and urban CSA gardens.
