Fall Colour at Mountain Equipment Coop Greenroof

One of my favourite parts of the job is the surprise of seeing something new. The large and colourful mushrooms, new Hawkweed, Alliums flowering in October, amazing fall colour on the sedums and the spread of Asters to the west side made my day.

Green Roof Inspection

Reuse + Growing together = cool community project

Over the years we have donated our plastic pots of all sizes to Lara Lucretia for non-profit balcony planting projects. Lara has recently completed her hand illustrated Guide To Growing Food On Your Balcony. Her first printed run has sold out and she is currently looking for funding for her second run using Kickstarter (small pledges from the public are used to fund independent projects of all kinds). Although we missed seedy sunday, Lara promised she would grab some great seeds for the Ecoman postage stamp sized garden. Here is a link to Cubit's Organic Living: Seedy Sunday Toronto Recap. For those of you also missed out and are looking for the perfect heirloom tomato, special variety of basil or just want to schmooze with like minded gardener types there are two more seedy events March 12th and 27th.

Parts & Labour

Some of you may have heard of the new restaurant/bar/music venue called Parts & Labour. What you may not know is that the owner of the building is a landscape architect (hint see testimonials). We had many discussions this spring regarding plans for a rooftop garden using a container system pictured here. This rooftop garden provided veggies for the restaurant all summer, featuring heirloom veggies capably grown by Katie Mathieu. According to Katie "The radishes were nice and chubby in the spring". Our involvement was to facilitate the installation of access, supplying labour for installation of soil, container placement and winterizing at the end of the season. Apparently the engineers had a change of heart regarding large amounts of soil sitting on the middle of the roof over winter.

Community

This past spring Ecoman supplied the herbs and veggies for the Samba Kids rooftop garden at Drum Artz. We planted basil, rosemary, cherry tomatoes and much more. You can also see the Xeroflor green roof that we help maintain.

Ellis Park

This was a tricky job involving multiple poured concrete retaining walls clad in tiger stripe natural stone. We even had to have a pump truck deliver the concrete as the walls are two flights of stairs above street level. In addition the planting and stepping stones are actually sitting on the garage roof! The middle shot shows how we finished the corners on the retaining wall. I actually shaped those corner pieces myself. Enjoy.

Greenroof Installation

This pictures shows the different components of a typical green roof. The product we are using for this install is xeroflor. This type of system can be installed on virtually any type of roofing membrane. On the bottom left you can see the root membrane being installed. This is followed by drain mat designed to allow moisture that percolates through the sedum mats to run off towards the scupper. On the top right you can see the moisture retention fleece. This acts as a water reservoir that will supply moisture to the plants during periods without rainfall. Finally the sedum mats are installed (see bottom left). Clients often ask me about the possibility of a green roof on their residential property. Here are some tips and guidelines for a typical residential project.
1) initial phone call and consultation
2) engineer report (requires hole in ceiling to examine roof joists)
3) working backward from engineer report decisions can now be made regarding system, accessible vs. inaccessible, depth of soil and type of plants.
4) architect may be required to submit drawing to city for permit
5) quote, contract and scope of work agreement
6) safety plan for installation (notice both Rachel and Rohan are tied off)
7) installation!
8) monitoring and maintenance
It has been my experience that a typical residential green roof project takes about 1 year to go from step 1 through 7! so patience is a virtue.

Mountain Equipment Coop

Ecoman interviewed on the current

CBC interview on the current

Green Roofs

Ecoman has been installing green roofs since 2003, most notably the Science Centre, Honda plant and Markham Community Centre. We have also installed several residential green roofs on homes in downtown toronto. For more information on green roofs follow the link. If you are interested in having a green roof installed contact Jonas for more information. If you are interested in a residential green roof, you will likely want to start with an engineers report detailing the load capacity of existing roof. The key thing to remember is that load allowance determines depth of soil, which informs plant choices and/or green roof product that is appropriate.

After the above considerations have been made, quote, contract and installation follow. Maintenance of green roofs can be minimal, however, monitoring is critical to ensure that undesirable plant species do not colonize the roof. We have been closely monitoring the green roof at Mountain Equipment Coop (MEC) since 2005. Basic knowledge plant identification and characteristics are of great benefit in helping to ascertain the possible impact of plant species that colonize the green roof. I would estimate that of the original species list installed at MEC only a handful remain (however the survivors account for a large portion of the vegetated roof in terms of percent cover). Several other species have successfully colonized the green roof and over time are becoming dominant competitors for resources. This has been observed from the rapid increase in individual plants and total percent coverage. Legumes in particular have done well:
Desmodium canadensis
Vicia cracca
and more recently Medicago lupulina.