Wisley Children's Garden

The Royal Horticultural Society garden at Wisley is very kid-friendly, with a spacious glasshouse, an interactive 'Root Zone' worthy of a commerical science centre, and a teaching garden that offers "hand's on experience to gardeners of all abilities and ages."

The garden was designed by Cleve West and features an "environmentally sustainable garden shed" with a sedum roof. (I think it's the sedum roof that makes it environmentally sustainable.) I visited the garden on a chilly and raw December day, but the garden was looking quite pretty and the sedums, of course, were holding their own.

Wavy Roof

The living roof at the California Academy of Sciences is nearly 200,000 square feet that dramatically dips and mounds atop the completely renovated 85-year old building. The building was designed by Italian Architect Renzo Piano. (Nice slideshow here).

Rana Creek Nursery planted the roof with a proprietary system they designed specifically for the building. Called the BioTray, the biodegradable trays are made from tree sap and coconut husks.

A few dozen plants were trialled to see if they could survive on the roof. The Academy of Sciences is in Golden Gate Park, which is subject not only to sun, but also to wind, fog, and salt spray from the nearby ocean. (I spent many cold summer days in that park.) The final planting consists of a blend of annuals and perennials, all natives, including

Strawberry (Fragaria chiloensis)
Self Heal (Prunella vulgaris)
Sea Pink (Armeria maritima ssp. californica)
Stonecrop (Sedum spathulifolium)
Tidy Tips (Layia platyglossa)
Goldfield (Lasthenia californica)
Miniature Lupine (Lupinus nanus)
California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica)
California Plantain (Plantago erecta)

Blanc/Herzog and deMeuron 1

The CaixaForum Madrid, a venue for visual and performing arts, sports on of Patrick Blanc's tapestry-like living walls. Overlooking a public plaza, the wall covers nearly 500 square metres and holds 15,000 plants. The building was a former power station, built originally in 1899 and redesigned by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron.

M. Blanc's Vertical Gardens are protected by copyright, as explained here.

Greening Your House

Some ideas from the New York Times including, of course, green roofs.

Photo from the New York Times by Michelle Litvin.

Put up a Parking Lot

From the firm of Wolfgang Oehme and James Van Sweden, known for their use of grasses and perennials, often natives, a garden on the roof of the Federal Reserve Parking lot in Washington, DC. The 30-year-old garden was recently renovated. No information on whether stimulus money was used.

Photo by Roger Foley from the Oehme, Van Sweden website. More photos here.

Derry and Tom's

The former Derry and Tom's department store on Kensington High Street in London has one of the oldest and most original planted roofs in London. Built in the 1930s, the roof garden contains three theme gardens covering 1.5 acres: the Spanish, Tudor, and English Woodland. Plantings are hugely varied, including fully grown deciduous and evergreen trees and shrubs--including oaks, sycamores, maples and and palm trees, many perennials and shrubs, spring bulbs, arched passageways modelled on The Alahmbra, and resident ducks and flamingos. The original roof was planted on a metre of soil over a drainage layer.

The gardens are now part of a private club and restaurant owned by Virgin. More photos here.

Photo from Open Garden Squares.

Garden Show Green Wall

The Seattle Flower & Garden Show had its fair share of green roofs this year, some more successful than others in terms of impact. In terms of whether any of them could survive as green roofs out in the elements, I'm not so sure. But garden shows aren't reality shows, are they?

First up, the Gold Medal winner 'The Sky's the Limit' created by New York designer Rebecca Cole for Smith & Hawken. Greenery on the walls, on the roof (where the pampas grass would probably pretty quickly interfere with the solar panels), and even on the tabletop (a table built with a gambion-style base filled with cut logs, by the way). The installation was done by Seattle-based Brent Bissell. The wall display shown here was grown by T&L Nurseries in Weston grids.




Cole's mission statement:

As our cities become more populated, space becomes more limited, and our desire to be more “green” flourishes, the ROOF emerges as the greener pasture for a gardening revolution. Maximizing the limited space for living, gardening, and venting, this high rise roof top garden, 20 stories up, merges indoor/outdoor living, el fresco dining and energy saving building technologies with a passion for sustainable gardening.Capturing the beauty of the mountains of New Hampshire where I grew up, Thailand where I love to visit and New York City where I live, this garden combines wind-resistant trees, hardy bamboo, drought tolerant grasses and succulents to reinvent the urban jungle. When every precious inch counts even the picnic table needs to be reinvented!!!