ROOF TOP GARDENS AND MENTAL HEALTH

Roof Top Gardens and Mental Health

Roof Top Gardens and Mental Health

Introduction

The world's massive urbanization and the need to create "sustainable cities" that provide enough food, shelter, basic services and jobs for all urban residents now and in the future will be a great challenge for the next millennium (de Vries S, 2002). This dispute will need creativity by municipal authorities and citizens. How can cities help citizens address their needs of food, shelter and employment? How can environmental troubles be solved? To solve these problems creatively, cities and citizens will need to rethink the use of available space and begin to question: How can “empty space” become “space with power”? (de Vries S, 2002).

It is estimated that 30-50% of construction, operation and demolition of building's goes to the landfill site. We need to consider our buildings as “mini planets” that generate energy, clean the air and provide a healthy indoor environment. Green roofs are an infrastructure that is primitive, what's old is new again. Plants on top of a human made structure that is above or below grade and can be used on a slope up to 40%.

Extensive green roof systems have less than 6 inches of growing medium, and are low maintenance. Intensive green roof systems are accessible, usually require irrigation, have greater plant diversity and higher maintenance requirements. The components of a green roof system were shown. The various types of products were highlighted. Then examples of both Intensive & Extensive systems were shown. The main design features in an intensive system are: higher maintenance, heavier weight and structural load capacity, deeper soil based growing medium (20-60 cm), more plant varieties (trees & shrubs), often accessible to public or occupants of building, higher investment. Extensive system design features are: lower maintenance, light weight (12lbs/sf), shallow growing medium (5-15 cm), less plant variety (i.e. grasses, sedum's, wildflowers), harsher situation, less investment ($5 - 10 sq. ft), up to 40 degrees in slope.

In Germany 980,000,000 sq. ft of roofs are green, so why aren't we doing more in North America? Drivers for implementing green roofs are site specific; it depends on needs and concerns (i.e. air quality, hydrology issues). Also there are development pressures, such as Waterloo's Uptown redevelopment, therefore the benefits are different for each community. There is an opportunity of partnerships and co-benefits.

There is a multitude of public benefits from green roofs including the opportunity to build buildings with nature in mind for mental and physical well being. There are some challenges we must face to get green roofs implemented in North America, lots of research is being done on the benefits, most of them are for the general public, but one of the biggest questions from the private sector is “what's in it for me?” Along with research on benefits, monitoring is also a key component for understanding green roof technology.

Some of the cost advantages of green top roof system for Toronto were released in October of ...