Roof gardens are a natural specialty. This is a departure from terrestrial gardens at different levels, especially the height above the ground, reduction of available rooting volumes, change of growing media to suit the use of structures and as important, the stresses imposed on the plants grown on- and on the ” edge” of the buildings.
Plants are dynamic life forms that evolve within mixed species communities in different habitats that differ due to their conditions and stresses inherent in their unique locations. .
Climate type; type of soil; nutrient availability; day; shade; wind and moisture all affect how plants grow, the forms they develop, and how these forms affect their capacity to cope with change.
These factors are the basic considerations that most gardeners and designers think about, although it is the entry-level considerations that form the foundation upon which ecologies develop. Plants do not grow in isolation as specimens that develop in a static environment, they develop in the midst of competition for all the aforementioned resources with random challenges that influence them between storms, droughts, migration of herbivores and short- and long-term changes in the balances within their immediate and extended environment. Because of this, plants are in the process of continuous evolution, trying to survive visible and invisible influences.
Image Credit: Fytogreen Australia
The shape, size, color, and rate of growth and reproduction of plants that develop are the only visible aspects that we can easily observe. As medicine, education and science continue to learn and understand the development of life, we know that we need to gain a higher understanding of what things are and how they fit into their environment in order to use them. , treatable, and use it most effectively. It’s not just humans as animals but plants that our entire human habitat evolves into, feeding the animals and other plants that we rely on for survival and that support our ability to live. within this closed ecological system on Earth.
Ornamental gardens are part of human habitats whether they are visual extensions of what we surround ourselves with, or functional, multi-functional installations capable of providing additional benefits to people. and our wider environment. Roof gardens are the main solutions to achieve this in our built environments. Healthy, dynamic and adaptive roof gardens require healthy, dynamic, and adaptive plants. While plants do not work in isolation, we therefore understand that achieving favorable outcomes that offer longevity and adaptability requires healthy, dynamic, and adaptive plant communities, mixed species plantings which act as more than the sum of their parts.
Image Credit: Fytogreen Australia
Emerging Roof Garden Biodiversity
Each garden is therefore an ecology, where the constant competition for space and resources plays out as an unfolding process as the gardens mature. Static gardens are snippets of reality, suspended by continuous human effort and therefore offer reduced sustainability, ecological function and support not only for the garden, but the roof garden industry as a whole. living and evolving entity.
Biodiversity in roof gardens is not a choice based on aesthetics alone, biodiversity is a technology, it hosts the moving parts that make up a biological machine that can be used to achieve a different results, a car that increases its influence in a wider area than just its footprint.
It’s an exciting space to be a designer, a client, and for the wider industry. Biodiversity is especially needed to meet the challenges inherent in gardens located within the urban sphere.
Image Credit: Fytogreen Australia
Achieving the above results for roof gardens requires special design input. Understanding the technology, its tolerances, capacities, and local climate conditions is essential. Similarly, the technology is best used by understanding which plants do best in the condition of the garden roof. The plants are constantly tested and monitored through long-term maintenance, post installation, which allows us to create a detailed detailed understanding of the performance.
Image Credit: Fytogreen Australia
Rooftop gardens experience a variety of exposures that terrestrial gardens often do not; therefore, the choice of species is often very different from how we design a general outcome of the garden. Many species are well adapted for use in roof gardens from habitat types that exhibit similar types of exposure similar to specific types of roof exposure. Air exposures involving high levels of turbulence or laminar air flow, coupled with rapid transitions between wet and dry cycles and heating of the root zone, require species with special adaptation to live or thrive indoors, so it cannot be denied that it is a succulent or drought tolerant species. may not survive in a roof garden even if they exhibit such characteristics in the general landscape.
Image Credit: Fytogreen Australia
By extension, ecologies and associated species associated with a particular species or type of exposure evolve specific behaviors to cope with those exposures. In many cases assessing a single species alone may not provide a significant benefit to the functioning of a roof garden as a whole while the plant community, when acting as a whole as a whole, it can be more robust, dynamic, responsive, and consistent than the sum of its parts. Some species provide protection from the wind, others provide protection from the sun, many thrive in the shade of others and act as living mulches, while many others can spread and prevent weed growth between many long-lived species and structures that offer a variety of habitats and visuals. interest.
Image Credit: Fytogreen Australia
Designing with ecology and therefore biodiversity based on functional and resilient gardens is a multi-dimensional approach that is under-represented in the garden design, landscape architecture, and living architecture industries. According to the ecological assessments of the residence, the design using the ecology of the buildings requires repeated observation and adjustment to create stability, adaptive and site-specific (suitable) results.
Image Credit: Fytogreen Australia
As we move through Australia, many of its climates range from alpine; cool temperate; ocean; hot temperature; subtropical; tropical and wet to dry exposures through each (to name a few), we also encounter windy and protected, coastal and land matrices that each require differences in assessment and design methods. Biodiversity gives us tools to be responsive to site, client needs, expectations, timelines, and to create functional ecologies.
Image Credit: Fytogreen Australia
Whether we are designing for formal, informal, natural or residential aesthetics, biodiversity helps us integrate platform gardens into the surrounding landscape. This ensures that our human settlements are up to the task of coping with change, joining the wider community and providing for us as opposed to constantly needing inputs from us to survive or cope.
Biodiversity allows us to design with nature, thereby gifting ourselves, our clients, and the built environment with added value that is inherently creative, responsive, and self-sustaining. It is a valuable tool that provides cost savings and stability when we need it most.
~ Erik van Zuilekom
Erik van Zuilekom is Fytogreen’s in-house Botanist and asSpecialist in the selection and design of pecies – vertical garden applications and residential architecture. Offers agile design and evaluation skills for creating adaptive, sustainable and sustainable (designed) ecologies. I want to see green ecologies of life deeply integrated into the urban fabric & psyche, not as passive claddings, instead of responsive technologies.
Fytogreen is Australia’s leading green infrastructure specialist and its technical know-how is derived from a focused research and development process. Fytogreen is fortunate to be a leader in this field, with experience gained through exposure to a wide variety of applications, combined with long-term monitoring of these installations.
Contact Erik: unitednatures@yahoo.com.au.
