What is a Green Roof?
What is a Green Roof?
A green roof or living roof is a roof that is partially or completely covered with vegetation and a growing medium such as soil. Our green roof creates a scaled habitat with native host plants for insects and birds to feed upon and shelter in. It encourages the natural food web, which in turn strengthens our local ecosystem.
Figure 1 (right) shows the multiple layers of a typical green roof.
What are the Benefits of a Green Roof?
Green roofs can benefit our ecosystem
They improve storm water management by reducing runoff and filtering rainwater before it is absorbed into our groundwater system. It also slows down the velocity of water, reducing erosion.
Green roofs offer a variety of options for plants depending on media depth. This roof has 6″ of growing media.
A green roof can hold 40-60% annual rainfall. That water is processed in place without and either transpired or evaporated, just as it would be on the ground in nature.
What plants did we choose?
We chose plants with shallow root systems that could survive in full sun and potential drought.
Key features for a green roof species are that it is a.) Native and b.) Drought Resistant.
What exactly IS a native planet?
A native species is one that was growing here before European settlement. Some experts also include plants that have become naturalized but are not aggressive growers or invasive. Native plants are adapted best to thrive in our environment with the least amount of chemical or physical intervention.
- Photo courtesy of Northwest Michigan Invasive Species Network (ISN)
- Photo courtesy of Northwest Michigan Invasive Species Network (ISN)
- Photo courtesy of Northwest Michigan Invasive Species Network (ISN)
- Photo courtesy of Northwest Michigan Invasive Species Network (ISN)
- Photo courtesy of Northwest Michigan Invasive Species Network (ISN)
- Photo courtesy of Northwest Michigan Invasive Species Network (ISN)
- Photo courtesy of Northwest Michigan Invasive Species Network (ISN)
- Photo courtesy of Northwest Michigan Invasive Species Network (ISN)
- Photo courtesy of Northwest Michigan Invasive Species Network (ISN)
- Photo courtesy of Northwest Michigan Invasive Species Network (ISN)