We’re chilling a bit here at Greenroofs.com with the whole family home for the holidays, and hope you are enjoying time with family and friends, too!

By the way, we’re keeping up our two fantastic weekly highlights through the end of the year:  The Tremco Headquarters as our Greenroof Project of the Week (GPW) profile and the Greenroofs & Walls of the World™ Virtual Summit 2011 Episode 3: Commissioner Rosemarie Andolino, Chicago Department of Aviation video (22:37).  Make sure to learn more about each if you haven’t already done so.

Amidst the cooking, eating, and playing with new Christmas toys, we’ve also got some catching up to do this week, and now’s a great time to do it.  In terms of blogging, I’ve been behind ever since Thanksgiving…we’ll also be adding a bit more projects and photos to the Greenroof & Greenwall Projects Database, working on our December eNewsletter, and more…

A couple of reminders through the end of 2011:

Make sure to order your 2012 Greenroofs & Walls of the World™ 12 Month Wall Calendar…

…And, if you are considering advertising with us on Greenroofs.com, now’s the time!  We are offering a 20% discount now through December 31 for all new customers in The Greenroof Directory and banner advertising - existing customers will receive 10% off for upgrades.  If you’re in the business, you need to be listed in The Greenroof Directory!  Governments, non-profits, professional organizations, and universities are always listed for free.

No snow here in Atlanta this year, but I always long for it at Christmas having grown up in the Chicago area with one side of the grandparents in North Dakota.

Wherever you are – in the balmy tropics, a wintry wonderland, or somewhere in between, we hope everyone is able to relax a bit with some down time with your families, and we hope to hear from you in the New Year!

~ Season’s Greetings from our family to yours,

Linda V.

As I promised at our presentation at CitiesAlive in Philadelphia a couple of weeks ago, today we are airing Haven Kiers‘ and my “2011 Top 10 List of Hot Trends in Greenroof & Greenwall Design“ from our Greenroofs & Walls of the World™ Virtual Summit on greenroofs.tv and our GreenroofsTV channel on YouTube.

“This is our fifth anniversary of the “Top 10 List” and an amazing amount of development has occurred over the past five years in the vegetative roofing industry.  Projects that were once scoffed at and considered impossible to get built are popping up all over the globe, and greenroofs are no longer considered fringe architecture, destined to be the first sacrifice to value engineering.

“To honor the new ubiquity of architectural greening, this year our Top 10 will focus on greenroofs at all different scales, from micro to macro.

“As “vegitecture” increasingly becomes a mainstay of both sustainable and cutting edge design, the list of greenroof and greenwall trends continues to expand.

This year we’re showcasing greening at both the micro and the macro scale, from small scale DIY greenroof projects to towering skyscrapers stacked with fruit and vegetable crops, parks, and energy facilities atop sky gardens, walls and bridges.” ~ Haven Kiers and Linda Velazquez

I have to say that Haven and I had a blast putting this together, and especially filming it together!  She flew to Atlanta last September just for the occasion, and I think you’ll really get a feel for our enthusiasm.

And, since we didn’t have any time restrictions like we normally do at all the conferences – where we have to speed through our project selections – here we took our time a bit more and, as a result, feature quite a few more projects that you would normally see.

Enjoy!  Visit greenroofs.tv to see the “2011 Top 10 List of Hot Trends in Greenroof & Greenwall Design” or click below.

We’ll be working over the next few weeks to add most of the projects here to the Greenroof & Greenwall Projects Database so you can learn more about each.  We appreciate your feedback, and welcome your thoughts on the new and newsworthy projects for our 2012 Top 10 Hot List!  Feel free to contact Haven me directly at DesignEditor@greenroofs.com and me at Linda@greenroofs.com.

Didn’t get to see the Opening Keynote Address video by Charlie Miller yet which we featured last week?  No problem – watch it after the Top 10 on the exclusive Virtual Summit greenroofs.tv play list.  Check back next week on GreenroofsTV for our third installment from the Greenroofs & Walls of the World™ Virtual Summit 2011!

~ Linda V.

Photo submissions and voting stopped yesterday for Greenroofs.com’s second annual  “Love the Earth, Plant a Roof!” Earth Day Photo Contest and with a total of 71 votes, the winner is:

The Aqua in Chicago, Illinois, USA!

“The Aqua, Chicago, Illinois, USA Taken by Tim Barrett, Barrett Company, Millington, NJ” ~ Linda

Well, it’s not the most descriptive entry by a long shot, but it sure makes up for it visually.  Congratulations to Linda Smith from Barrett Company who submitted this lovely project!  One of the tallest buildings in Chicago, the Aqua is a $4 billion development with an 80,000 sf intensive greenroof.  The 82-story mixed-use residential skyscraper is located in the Lakeshore East development in downtown Chicago designed in the Modern architectural style.  The beautiful terrace gardens comes complete with gazebos, pools, hot tubs, a walking/running track and even a fire pit.

Linda will receive a check for $100 and we’ll be highlighting it soon as our GPW, or Greenroof Project of the Week.  I want to get more shots of this stunning recreational greenroof and project info to share with you first.

The Aqua was neck and neck with Cultivated Abundance, another beautiful and sensitive project in New York City, below.  But yesterday, Friday, the voting really got furious and it’s obvious the Aqua fans made the difference into the evening hours.

Cultivated Abundance was submitted by Jennifer Nitzky from Mark K Morrison Landscape Architecture PC and came in second place, receiving a total of 59 votes.  I have to say that Jennifer’s write up is certainly the best – remember I wanted everyone to tell us why they felt their project was worthy of being an example of loving the Earth?  Read her entry below:

“Cultivated Abundance, a 2,000 SF intensive/extensive green roof with commanding views of New York Harbor is located on the penthouse of The Visionaire, a LEED Platinum residential high rise in Battery Park City. This dynamic intensive/extensive green roof in New York City sets a new precedent for cultivated abundance while incorporating such sustainable initiatives as recycling gray water for irrigation and retaining 95% of storm water on site. The vision and collaborative efforts of the landscape architect and client resulted in a residential landscape which celebrates bio-diversity, environmental responsibility and provides an urban farming component worthy of educational dialogue for urbanites looking to produce their own food with over 160 different species of plants. (photo credit: Mark K Morrison, RLA, FASLA, GRP)”

This year, we organized our Photo Contest a bit differently from last and utilized Facebook - each person could vote multiple times for their favorite, but just one time per day.  In 2010 we had a total of 1,500 votes for readers’ favorites, compared to this year’s 212 votes.  This really lowered the overall number of votes per project, but we felt it would provide a fairer approach than simply voting a ton of times a day for your favorite.  In any case, it’s still a popularity contest!

It’s been fun for me to read all 161 of the comments from everyone on Facebook – most are short and sweet, which is a great way to get the point across quickly.  You can still do that, too, if you’re interested, and see who voted for whom by clicking on each photo.

There were a lot of cool projects from which to choose, from small to large, single family residential to huge institutional.  I’d like to include each of these in our Greenroof & Greenwall Projects Database so that we can all learn more about them and see more photos, too.  See everyone’s submissions and their total vote counts here.

As Earth Month comes to a close for 2011, I hope we all continue honoring our planet with thoughtful decisions, living roofs and walls, and more forward-thinking sustainable design.

Happy greening!

~ Linda V.

Our daughter, Anjuli Velazquez, has been writing, filming and editing our “This Week in Review” video since August, 2010 and each week you can expect to learn What’s New here on Greenroofs.com.   She’s become quite popular, and we thought it would be a great idea to start posting her transcript, too, to make things easier to research.  Click on the photo below to see the video, or here.  Enjoy!

-  Hello, I’m Anjuli Velazquez and welcome to This Week in Review for March 18th, 2011 on GreenroofsTV.

- Project of the Week

-  Our Project of the Week is The Department Store, Stephen Marr Hair Salon Greenwall built in 2009 in Takapuna, New Zealand.  In 2010 The Department Store was named top retail concept store in the world by Monocle magazine.  One of the centerpieces of the store is the lush interior greenwall on the top floor.  The double-sided greenwall, designed and installed by Natural Habitats Landscapes, is New Zealand’s first interior greenwall.  The wall is 10 meters long by 2 meters high and boasts well over 1,000 individual plants.  It divides the upper level, promoting unique spaces that can be used for presentations like fashion shows.  The building has had skylights installed to ensure the wall is given as much natural light as possible, and so the use of supplementary man-made lighting is kept at a minimum.  This greenwall is an original and breathtaking piece of artwork, but also offers some incredible environmental benefits, like: increased thermal insulation to buildings, noise dampening, and creating cleaner and better quality air, which means healthier buildings and people.  From a commercial perspective, the greenwall increases the building’s value and has also been found to raise employee productivity.

-  To learn more about The Department Store, Stephen Marr Hair Salon Greenwall, click on our project of the week photo on our homepage.

-  “What’s New”

-  Check out Linda’s latest Sky Gardens Blog posts about the New Zealand greenwall, and the “CitiesAlive 2011 Call for Paper and Poster Abstracts.”  Green Roofs for Healthy Cities is pleased to be working with the City of Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society as co-hosts for CitiesAlive, the 9th Annual Green Roof & Wall Conference to be held later this year in Philadelphia from November 29th to December 3rd.  GRHC says they’re looking for papers that display novel ideas on taking a green approach to storm water management through the use of green infrastructure, indoor greening and residential green infrastructure.  All applications are due by April 15th, and for more information you can visit this blog post and/or e-mail Luna Ghose at lghose@greenroofs.org.

-  Do you think green walls can’t survive in the cold; they don’t look good in the winter, they are only viable in the south or indoors… well, think again!  Contributing Editor George Irwin writes about Winter Interest with Green Walls in his latest column and shows some pretty interesting photos of various looks.

-  Advertiser Press Release: Irrigation Water Technologies America, Inc. recently signed an exclusive agreement with Australia-based Irrigation Water Technologies to manufacture and distribute the revolutionary water conserving KISSS product in North America.

-  Green Roof Jobs:  Joy Kuebler Landscape Architect is seeking resumes for a Landscape Architect/Designer with 5-6 years experience for their busy Buffalo, NY office, so make sure to check this job and many others in JobLinks if you’re looking to work in our industry!

-  “Upcoming Events”

-  March 18th – 27th: is the WMG Water Harvesting Certification in Phoenix, Arizona.

-  March 22nd: is the 2011 Green Roof Technology Workshop in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

-  March 23rd – 27th: is the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show in San Mateo, California.

-  March 24th – 27th: is a Green Roofs for Healthy Cities – Green Roof Boot Camp in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

-  March 25th – 26th: is the GreenScaped Buildings Spring Open House in San Diego, California.

-  March 25th – 27th: is the Better Living Show – Home, Garden & Lifestyle in Portland, Oregon.

-  And don’t forget that on Saturday, March 26, 2011 at 8:30 PM (local time, wherever you are), lights will switch off around the globe for Earth Hour and people will commit to actions that go beyond the hour.  With Earth Hour almost upon us, the organization’s thoughts, as well as ours, are with the people of Japan during this incredibly challenging and sad time for their country.

-  “In the News”

-  Kathleen E. Carey of the Delaware County Daily Times reports on “Green LEEDs to platinum: SAP America earns distinction for utilizing environmental sources for newest building.”  The Newtown Square campus of SAP America Inc. in Delaware County is holding one of the highest environmentally sustainable distinctions in the world with its new Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Platinum level construction.  Just some of the features that have led to its LEED Platinum certification are: its entry to the building – the passageway features a floor comprised of recycled materials, including seashells and pieces of crushed bottles and glass; glass panels surrounding the building with the goal of directing 90 percent of daylight to reach 75 percent of the employees; underneath the floors are tubes that transfer the natural temperature of the Earth which is generated from the 10 geothermal wells in the rear of the property to the inside of the building; and a rooftop garden that spans more than 1 acre which features lavender, rosemary, sedum and butterfly bushes.

-  Katie Kosier of Care2.com talks about “Removing Barriers to Green Building.”  With the help of Philadelphia based Re:Vision Architecture, Pennsylvania’s largest electric and natural gas utility company, PECO, installed a 45,000-square-foot vegetated green roof on its headquarters in central Philadelphia.  It’s the largest in urban Pennsylvania and the roof absorbs more than 1.5 million gallons of rainwater runoff annually, it reduces air temperature in the summer and  it also provides a beautiful habitat for wildlife.  Principle Scott Kelly of RVA, says “For us, it’s about removing barriers to green building.”  You can find more information about the PECO Greenroof in our International Greenroof & Greenwall Projects Database by typing in Project ID number 851.

-  To learn more about these stories and new ones posted daily, go to our In the News or newslinks section of our website.

-  Have something you think we should know about and post on our website?  You can send us your green articles, videos and images to editor@greenroofs.com.

-  Stay up-to-date with what’s going on at greenroofs.com by subscribing to our greenroofsTV channel on YouTube, following us on Twitter, liking us on Facebook and being a member of our network on LinkedIn.

-  By the way, did you know that now you can watch YouTube videos just like this one on DirecTV?  That’s fun!

-  Still haven’t picked up one of our 2011 Greenroofs & Walls of the World 12 Month Wall Calendar yet?  Go to greenroofs.com/calendar.htm and order some today!  Thanks to George Irwin for this great photo!

-  This has been This Week in Review for March 18th, 2011 on GreenroofsTV.  I’m Anjuli Velazquez and I’ll see you next week!

*This week’s episode is sponsored by The Greenroof Directory, brought to you by Greenroofs.com.*

Did we miss something?  We’d love to hear from you!

~ Linda V.

You know by now that the winner of our inaugural “Love the Earth, Plant a Roof!” Earth Day Photo Contest 2010 is ESRI Canada’s Garden in the Sky, and here we go, following up with our Top 10 List of the entries accumulating the highest number of votes overall.

We received 30 photos of international living roof projects representing seven countries, including the United States (18), Canada (6), UK (2), Japan (1), Singapore (1), Germany (1), and Sweden (1). 

Without further ado, here are the top votes in descending order – click on hyperlinks to learn more about each project – if they don’t have one, that means we don’t have a profile yet in The Greenroof & Greenwall Projects Database, but we will soon:

2010 “Love the Earth, Plant a Roof!” Earth Day Photo Contest
Top 10 List

#1)  ESRI Canada’s Garden in the Sky, Toronto, Ontario, Canada – 735 votes

Overlooking one of Toronto’s busiest highways, this 7,500-sq-ft portable garden reduces urban heat, noise and stormwater runoff. It provides lush meeting space for staff and visitors, as well as habitat for birds and butterflies. It helps create a greener, healthier environment. Photo by Margaret Mulligan.

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#2)  parc24, Vero Beach, Florida, USA – 190 votes

Parc24 is taking a stand, and directing Vero Beach into the future, where business can be smart by design and green by nature. Photo by Leah Campbell.

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#3)  Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada – 158 votes

This green roof is the pinnacle of what a green roof should be. It combines Art, Architecture, Design, and Ingenuity, without sacrificing its Ecological Benefits. Photo by Patrick Biller.

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#4)  Bellevue Towers, Bellevue, Washington, USA – 86 votes

At nearly an acre in size, the rooftop garden’s bold, modern geometry is informed by the curvilinear tower design, which includes 27,100 square feet of intensive roof garden planting area and 6,400 square feet of extensive ecoroof.  The intensive gardens between towers provide a valuable, usable outdoor spaces for the residents and a visual asset to the condominium units above and adjacent office buildings.  This project is certified LEED Gold. Photo by Ben Johnson.

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#5)  Longdrive Residential green roof, Long Eddy, New York, USA – 85 votes

Located on 63 acres in upstate New York the house sits at the edge of the woods overlooking a meadow.  The planted roof on three levels blends into the natural landscape and encourages the wildlife to creep in close to the house. Photo by Steve Chrostowski.

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#6)  St. Louis Children’s Hospital Rooftop Garden,  St. Louis, Missouri, USA – 71 votes

Just outside St. Louis Children’s Hospital’s eighth floor, patients have a unique setting to enjoy time with nature, a private walk or quiet reflection. The 8,000-square-foot Olson Family Garden , an interactive rooftop oasis designed expressly for children and families who want a place for privacy, solace and healing, is another reason why St. Louis Children’s Hospital is a special place for kids. Photo by Tom Tyler.

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#7)  Trent University, Peterborough, ON Canada – 47 votes

Trent’s roof top garden sits on our Environmental Sciences Building providing learning and volunteer opportunities for students.  In this garden we grow vegetables and herbs that are served in our organic campus café –the Seasoned Spoon!  Photo by Leslie Menagh.

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#8)  College of Law, Saskatoon, Canada – 36 votes

This 650 m² green roof is thriving in an extreme climate. Pasture sage, a plant indigenous to the region, grows above the Native Law Centre. In late summer, the sage is harvested in a traditional manner by faculty of the NLC to use for smudging in ceremonies throughout the following year. Photo by Goya Ngan.

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#9)  Greenroof Pavilion at Rock Mill Park, Alpharetta, Georgia, USA – 32 votes

The Greenroof Pavilion design honors the land and Cherokee heritage in this historically and environmentally sensitive Big Creek Watershed with The Greenroof Trial Gardens display; hands-on models and interpretive signage inform young and old alike. Photo by Caroline Menetre.

Note:  FYI – Although I designed this, I did not vote for it, nor any other project for that matter.  This entry was submitted by Caroline Menetre, our Student Intern, who has helped me with planting, plant trial record keeping, and weeding duties - I like how she didn’t even bother to come up with her own narrative, but felt comfortable just copying my own example above!

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#10)  Miami Science Museum, Miami, Florida, USA – 21 votes

The Museum’s four green roof assemblies, each with varied depths and irrigation schedules, include interpretive signs and rain/ temperature sensors. They provide information for visitors and data for the designers of the Museum’s new building. Photo by Chris Trigg.

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See all the photo submittals here.  In my eyes, everyone who entered a photo is a winner, and I know we all enjoyed seeing this wide assortment of greenroofs.  Next year I promise to start earlier so you can have more time to get your “people” to vote for your favorite project – but it was fun, although a bit fast and furious!

Happy greening ~ Linda V.

We’ve begun the Greenroofs.com website redesign starting with the Homepage. Our new design is about improving page navigation and making it easier for our visitors to find the content they want.  More white space has been created and we changed the font type and size for better reading.  We also kept in mind that search engines like to have a sense of what role a page plays in the bigger picture of our site, and we think that this has been accomplished.

HERE’S WHAT’S NEW:

Project of the Week
The Project of the Week section has been moved to the top of the left side in order to attract the first look of our visitors.  Well-documented eyetool analysis has revealed “hotspots” where visitors looked the most on a webpage – and people look most at the left top side. This visual image of the featured greenroof project should instigate additional interest and thus a click-through that brings the latest project profile to the forefront in a separate window.  As you probably know, the project profile contains various photos and detailed content describing many important and relevant aspects of the case study.  The data associated with these profiles is administered on our MySQL Greenroof & Greenwall Projects Database via PHP scripts.  Our database currently has 1,022 project profiles with many more being added every day. By the way, the content of this database is currently indexed by Google and Google News – which means when visitors search online, the results page will contain links to the data from our database.

The Greenroof & Greenwall Projects Database has been open to the world since 2004, evolving from the “International and North American Case Studies” portion of Linda Velazquez’ initial 1999 independent research study.   Read more about how Linda selects the Project of the Week.

The Greenroof Directory
Visitors looking for companies to work with on their projects now have a quick search capability from the homepage, direct to the Greenroof Directory.

The Greenroof Directory is also a MySQL database which contains essential information (contact, products, services, photos, etc.) about Manufacturers, Suppliers, Professional Services, and Organizations in the greenroof industry.

All this information is searchable from the main Directory page and now, for the first time, from our homepage with our new quick search feature.  The most popular main categories are highlighted in this new search box, and you can also access more categories from here, too.

In a guest feature article submitted by Adam Henige, a Web consultant, he states “An analysis of search engine data for 2009 clearly demonstrates a rising trend in the general public’s awareness of and interest in green roofs. Looking at these estimates for a cross section of the most popular general roofing terms and green roofing terms performed on search engines, there was growth in both areas, but by November the monthly search volume had grown only 51 percent for general roofing terms while green roofing terms had grown 155 percent.”

No one knows the secret formula that search engines use in order to optimize a particular site and improve rankings, but fortunately for us, we have enjoyed the number one spot in all the top search engines for the most significant keywords in our industry for over 10 years.  In addition to creating lots of organic content on a consistent basis, we also have a high number of sites that consider us a great resource and thus add links back to us, which also improves search results positioning and site PageRank.  So, if you want your company to be found online, make sure you get listed with us (shameless plug!).

Video player
An embedded video player showing the latest videos from our greenroofsTV channel on YouTube has been moved to the top right side for better viewing.  YouTube is the most popular video hosting and sharing service and is owned by Google.  Their service lets users view and upload video files, and in addition to hosting videos, the service lets users rate videos, add comments, and subscribe to their favorite producers.

Public videos uploaded by YouTube online users are selected by us based on their relevance to the greenroof and greenwall industry, and then added to the respective playlist that feed the various video players throughout our entire website.  We encourage all of you to upload your videos to showcase and increase your exposure by sharing experiences, projects, interviews, tours, product demonstrations – with our marketplace and the rest of the world.

Industry News, ResearchLinks & Industry Support
The extremely long Industry News content that used to be displayed in the center column has been consolidated to a short list of the latest news with links to a new separate page fully dedicated to all the industry news associated with the greenroof and greenwall community.

The ResearchLinks section on the Navigation Bar has now been replaced simply with Industry, which now houses Industry News, Industry Support and ResearchLinks.  Industry Support used to be under Greenroofs 101, which was the basis for Linda’s 1999 paper and Greenroofs.com.

Guest Features
You’ll find them now in a highlighted box displaying the latest two features with links to the full articles. If you are an expert on a particular greenroof or greenwall design topic, you may submit your content to our Editor and it will be reviewed for publishing on our site – just email your information to: submissions@greenroofs.com.

NewsLinks
The long list of NewsLinks has also been reduced to a shorter one of the latest few, with links for more news on our page dedicated to all our NewsLinks.  We have also added a section that will highlight a particular event during the month – like the 2010 Olympics, Earth Hour, etc.  Make sure you visit often for all your industry news!

Contributing Editor Columns
Similar to Guest Features, another highlighted section now houses the latest from our contributing editors, prominently displayed within the body of the homepage with links to the respective columns.

Other changes
· The Google Search Box that allows for searching our entire website is now more visible.

·  The banners on the top and bottom of the page rotate randomly with a fade transition instead of the old slide in a sequential order.  This will allow for all of our advertisers’ banner ads to have equal exposure to our visitors.

·  Social Media icons are now top and center for easy clicks.  Make sure you stay connected with us by following us on Twitter, becoming a fan of our Facebook wall, joining our Greenroofs.com Network group in LinkedIn, subscribing to the greenroofsTV channel on YouTube and our monthly eNewsletter.

·  Finally, the bottom of the page is now filled with small logos from all our sponsors linkable to their respective color brochures in The Greenroof Directory filled with lots of pertinent information about their products and services.

·  The Sky Gardens blog box, Upcoming Events, JobLinks, and our Advertiser Press Releases and are still pretty much in their respective spots, just cleaned up a bit.

We’re still in our tweaking stages, and have a lot more work to do to the rest of our site, but we welcome your feedback for what we have done so far.  Keep us informed of all your greenroof and greenwall happenings, and stay on top of the greenroof world with Greenroofs.com!  We look forward to hearing back from you.