Have you seen HGTV’s first season of “The Outdoor Room with Jamie Durie” yet?  It’s really good!  Now based in Los Angeles, Jamie’s an extremely talented, and well-travelled, landscape artist from Down Under and he brings his international wanderings as the basis for his popular, eclectic designs.

Lackluster outdoor spaces are transformed from dysfunctional and boring to flowing and fantastic.  Homeowners share their woes and desires, and host Jamie draws upon a variety of elements for his metamorphoses – previous experiences with the rich and famous; visiting local designers, horticulturalists and gardeners; and referencing both native and exotic landscapes as well as architecturally designed sites.  The result is always a unique outdoor room, or series of rooms, infused with Jamie’s world view on design aesthetics.

A few weeks ago I saw Episode #HORJD-107H called “The Edible Garden” about transforming a quirky, uneven family backyard into an eco-retreat full of ornamental vegetable gardening options plus a variety of adult and children spaces for play and rest.  And what caught my eye was the top-to-bottom living gazebo!

Since the young eco-conscious family of four from Echo Park, CA, enjoys growing their own organic food and already had several productive but awkward raised beds of their own, Jamie wanted the same features, just with different sensibilities.  After saving some of the existing plants, he visited John, a local “edible garden” designer who incorporates A-frames into his creations for his take on structural elements and planting beds.  Jamie also interviewed Miguel Nelson of The SmogShoppe - a former Los Angeles gas emissions station/auto repair shop turned hip eco-event space with 2,000 sf of amazing green walls.

What a cool space!  First of all it’s pending LEED Platinum certification, and the exterior and interior walls are completely covered in lush vegetation, grown in modular “Woolly Pockets.”  I was unfamiliar with this particular system which is made from felt and recycled plastic bottles.
 

Not part of the show, but interesting on its own, I found out that in addition to his commercial enterprise, Miguel started “Woolly School Gardens.”  Through the program, inexpensive gardens are planted at local schools to help teach nutrition and gardening to students K-12.  They say they’re ideal for urban schools as the Woolly Pockets planting system allows them to be created anywhere – from a concrete wall to a chain link fence.  There are numerous Woolly School Gardens in the Los Angeles area and the goal is to have 11,000 by 2011.  For more information, visit www.woollyschoolgarden.org.

Back to the HGTV episode, with the SmogShoppe as his inspiration, Jamie and crew built the open-air structure leaving one expansive wall open.  The living lounge area was easily blanketed on the remaining three sides with Woolly Pockets.  Luscious, edible plants were inserted and it was done.  By the way, these vegetated walls are called “Wallys,” seen below.  Although Jamie doesn’t even mention the greenroof (time editing restrictions?), I checked with the company and half of the roof, indeed, is covered with their modular greenroof system called “Meadows.”

The outdoor structure performs beautifully with double duty as a cool relaxation get away and stunning, productive area for vertical “pocket” gardening.  In the end, the family gets to enjoy their newly redesigned, sustainable back yard while setting a great example for ecologically sensitive living for their kids, who also get to learn about natural composting with an earthy gift from Jamie – a squiggly worm farm!

The full episode used to be online at HGTV, but now you can see the partial episode here, and below from YouTube (the HGTV embedded code isn’t working):

This Edible Garden is well worth watching if you have the chance to catch it with reruns.  Each episode of “The Outdoor Room with Jamie Durie” is brimming with equal parts elegant innovation and international flair, and I’m sure this is just the beginning of educating homeowners and entertaining their audience with examples of these living, touchy, sometimes even woolly, vertical gardening techniques.

~ Linda V.

What an awesome concept the Brooklyn Grange Rooftop Farm project is!  I first heard about this late last year but then about a week ago colleagues Bill Foley and Wendy Wark alerted me again, and so now I finally took action this afternoon by donating $50 to the cause.  Not a lot of money, but enough to show Greenroofs.com’s support for an extremely worthwhile undertaking.

As we all know in this green industry of ours, underutilized rooftop space is one of the greatest real estate potentials for greenroof implementation.  In this age of trying to come together as a community, organic farming, and healthy food plus security issues, what better way to help mitigate the developmental woes of a building’s footprint that planting crops at rooftop level?  And (hopefully) make a profit?

That’s exactly what Brooklyn Grange is doing for their own community – they’re in the process of starting a rooftop farm with a team of five partners and a whole bunch of friends, and the organizer, Ben Flanner says it’s ”A big project that requires a lot of hard work to say the least, and one that sets an example for using under-utilized rooftop space across this dense city to do something productive.  There are many benefits to the city and community from such an operation.”  Most certainly, and we can all help by donating even just $1 – by this Friday, May 28, 2010 – but $10 gets a bee named after you!  Actually, for all donations of $10 or more, they will list you as a donor on their website and name one of their honeybees after you.

They’ve setup a campaign on an interesting new website called kickstarter, which is designed to help raise funds for enterprising people to start new projects – such as this one.  Kickstarter has a unique platform where you set your goal at the onset of the campaign, and then you need to hit that goal from online pledges to receive funding, otherwise all of your pledges are simply returned to the pledgers.  People can click on your project and pledge any amount during the course of the campaign.

So what is the project really all about?  Their page on kickstarter says:

“Brooklyn Grange will be a 1 acre rooftop farm situated in New York City. Such a commercially-viable rooftop farm has yet to be realized in this country. We will use simple greenroof infrastructure to install over 1 million pounds of soil on the roof of an industrial building on which we will grow vegetables nine months of the year. Being in the country’s largest city, the farm will create a new system of providing local communities with access to fresh, seasonal produce. We plan to expand quickly in the first few years, covering multiple acres of New York City’s unused rooftops with vegetables. The business has many environmental and community benefits, and allows our city dwelling customers to know their farmer, learn where their food comes from, and become involved.”

Ironically, as it turns out, Brooklyn Grange’s first project isn’t in Brooklyn but on a 40,000 square foot, 6-story industrial rooftop in Queens!  And the group is very happy to have the good fortune of this company’s backing, too, and they’ll be selling their produce in both boroughs as well, including tomatoes, eggplants, chilies and various leafy greens.  The farm will be run by Ben Flanner, who started and ran a proof of concept rooftop farm in the summer of 2009.  The beyond-organic produce will be sold directly to the community at an onsite stand, affording shoppers a direct relationship with the farm and farmers.  Additional produce will be sold to a small group of market-driven local restaurants.  He explains the business philosophy:

“We are a for-profit business. We believe in adding fiscal sustainability to the sustainability rubric so that urban rooftop farms can expand across the city, the Northeast and even the world! Any profits we make will go towards paying our farmer a living wage and whatever remains will be reinvested in the business so we can keep growing.” ~ Ben Flanner

In what stage is the project now?  In a newsletter today, May 25, 2010, Ben shares that “At this moment, we’ve installed about two-thirds of the rooftop soil, and we have about 110 sacks (~300,000 lbs) to lift yet with the crane, continuing tomorrow morning early.”

Brooklyn Grange needed to hit their goal of $20,000 by Friday, May 28, to get some important funds for the farm through kickstarter, and I’m pleased to report they have!  As of right now, supporters and fans have pledged $20,740.50, but please consider contributing more to their entreprenuerial greening efforts.  To pledge now, visit here, and they’d love it if you would also help spread the word!  Read “High Above Queens, the Dirt Is Deep, and Good” by Diane Cardwell in the New York Times of May 13, 2010, see their profile on kickstarter, and the video below.

For more info, visit Brooklyn Grange’s own website or contact Ben at: ben.flanner@gmail.com or 608.215.0218.

Happy veggie rooftop greening! ~ Linda V.

Season’s greetings to all,

It’s time to reflect on the industry as we find ways to combat the decline of the economy. The green industry has taken center stage and has also become a profitable market for most. Looking back at 2008, personally I have seen more backyard manufacturing of products being labeled green, new DBA’s sprouting green buds of lackluster products, performance and knowledge, making waves in the industry and establishing flags of caution for the experienced and legitimate green business and products.

My point is a word of caution to consumers and designers. It used to be when there were layoffs and an adjustment in the economy, a new lawn cutting or landscaping business would show up, and everyone was a landscaper. These same small landscape companies did not have the experience and overhead that resulted in low ball bids making the Lawn & Garden industry a tough place to make a living - I know, I did it for 23 years.  The good thing is these start-ups are not around long.

Today it’s not the person with a new truck or trailer and a lawn mower; it’s a new “Green Business, Green Business Consultant or a green product”. It’s understandable that we all want to make a living and at this point retain our existing lifestyles or in some cases simply survive. Anyone with a lump of cash or a credit line can manufacture anything. Things to consider when hiring a consultant or thinking about using a new green product:

1. Ask for credentials, experience and portfolio;

2. Request references;

3. Ask to talk to other employees, they can be brutally honest;

4. Request research and long term data;

5. Look for public media, not just press releases;

In our business we have seen consultants and designers that simply do not have practical experience. As forward thinking and positive our industry (green roofs and green walls) is, do your homework when a green project is in your reach. Just because they attended Green Roofs 101, it doesn’t make them a green roof consultant or installer.