Living Roof structure finds a home at Clark’s Elioak Farm
All of us enjoy the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the Mall in Washington D.C. Therefore, it was a real treat to get a call from Nan Sherman, a good friend, who had heard that the exhibit from Wales was going to include a living roof structure to be built on the Mall for the 2-week festival. After the festival was over, a home would need to be found for the structure. Martha Clark jumped at the chance to provide a new home for the living roof and was soon emailing Smithsonian personnel and the people from the Centre for Alternative Technology www.cat.org.uk in Wales.
Working with Blanche Cameron and other staff from the
Welsh Centre for Alternative Technology, the living roof structure was put on
the Mall with materials supplied by local green roof experts, including Emory
Knolls Farm in Harford County. Experts
Dusty Gedge and Ed Snodgrass lead practical, hands-on workshops for a good idea
of what is involved in designing, installing and maintaining a living roof.
Dusty
Gedge is President
of the European Green Roof Federation, co-author with John Little of ‘The DIY
Guide to Green and Living Roofs’ and director of the UK based charity
Livingroofs.org www.livingroofs.org
The living roof structure on the Mall
was built along the principles in the guide. It is online at http://livingroofs.org/DIY_Guide_intro.html
and should be published as a book early 2010.
Dusty Gedge also wrote a blog
about the construction of the roof on The Mall
http://dustygedge.co.uk/roadblog/2009/07/building-green-roof-on-the-mall-washington/
Ed
Snodgrass is
Director of Emory Knoll Farms and Greenroofplants.com, North America’s largest
supplier of green roof plants www.greenroofplants.com
He supplied the plants for this living roof!
Once
the Festival was over on Sunday July 5, it
was time for Martha Clark to jump into action. At 6:30 AM on Monday July 6th she and George
Miller and several other (including Martha’s son Nate Crist) arrived on the
Mall to dismantle the structure. First
the 200-300 plants were removed one by one and put in plug trays.
Then the planting medium was removed bucket by bucket, filling the back
of a pickup truck. Then the other
layers were taken down and packed in the trucks.
The structure then had to be taken apart board by board.
By 12 noon everything was on the trucks and trailers and ready for the
trip north to Ellicott City.
By
Wednesday July 8th the living roof was rebuilt at Clark’s Elioak
Farm by George Miller and the plants were replanted by Martha Clark, Peggy
Hannon and her daughter Paige on Saturday July 11th.
Since
then the roof has grown beautifully with wonderful yellow and orange blossoms in
the morning and purple and pink blooms in the afternoon. Come visit our new roof and learn more about green roofs by
checking out the websites mentioned above.