Alexander Street Green Roof: The Beginning

When I visited the roof of Eclipse Awards Ltd on Alexander Street this summer, it looked like this:

Alexander Street roof in summer 2008

The roof was quite old, and in order to make the building more energy efficient, Eclipse Awards replaced the bitumen roof with a white roof  (thermoplastic polyolefin [TPO]). Instead of absorbing sunlight and heating the building, like a black roof does, white roofs reflect sunlight back into the atmosphere, and they don’t transfer nearly as much heat into the building. This should help Eclipse Awards save substantially on their cooling costs in the summer. The three skylights will let in natural light, which will also help save energy and money.

In addition, Eclipse Awards wanted to add a small green roof to act as a demonstration for other businesses that might want to adopt this technology. The first step was to build the frame and line it with a drainage layer:

Alexander in progress

YWCA Rooftop Perennial Garden

Back in February 2008 I worked with an Environmental Youth Alliance colleague to design a perennial garden on the YWCA of Greater Vancouver’s rooftop. YWCA Operations Manager Ted Cathcart and a crew of volunteers have been growing vegetables on the 4-story roof in downtown Vancouver since 2006. This summer they wanted to add plants that would be highly productive, but would require less maintenance than annual vegetables. We chose to plant raspberries, (non-invasive) blackberries, strawberries, blueberries and kiwis. All the food goes to the Crabtree Corner Family Resource Centre, so we chose popular fruits that the women and children would be happy to eat. Engineering students from UBC built this trellis for the berries:

Three rows of berries at the YWCA

Berry guard

Mason Bee Condo

The YWCA is part of the Mason Bee Vancouver project. The garden provides a home for Blue Orchard Mason Bees, a native, non-aggressive species which pollinated the rooftop garden and surroundings all summer.

Heatley Roof in Progress – Building Boxes

Heatley Green Roof in Progress – Drainage Layer