Green Roofs with Designer Bill Fidelo

A Replay: Up in the Air –
More on Green Roofs

We're going to
listen back to an interview from February 5, 2010 with Bill Fidelo, who was our
guest twice on Ken Druse — REAL DIRT. The Brooklyn-based garden designer passed away on October 17th, 2012. We
will miss out dear friend and talented artist.

The United States is famous for its wide open spaces,
and that might be one of the reasons planting rooftops has not taken off as it
has in more densely populated countries like Japan and Germany. Ecological and
economic concerns, however, are pushing green roofs to the forefront of
environmental design. But we’re not necessarily talking about transplanting
what grows on the ground in suburbia to the tops of buildings. Our semi-regular
guest, urban garden designer Bill Fidelo (above), explains that there are two
kinds of roof plantings — “intensive” (containers and traditional-looking
gardens on rooftops), or “extensive” (dense ground covers that are more like
short meadows).

Bill
says that in every case, green roof gardening must take into consideration
structural engineering issues such as weight or load bearing, waterproofing,
drainage, irrigation and maintenance – which may include an annual “mowing.”
There are also specific concerns when selecting plants, which have to be super
tolerant of both heat and cold, and be able to thrive in a shallow lightweight
growing medium. The payoffs are great: lower ambient temperatures in cities;
building insulation to save cooling and heating costs; runoff mitigation to
keep storm water from flooding local systems; water and air filtration; and
even noise reduction. Bill uses a system (above) developed by liveroof.com
with interlocking flats of pre-grown sedum varieties for his “extensive” roof
installations.

Click on the small black arrow at the left on the bar below to start
listening, or click on the MP3 link to download the show into Windows
Media Player or iTunes:

MP3 File