Peter Shute wrote: “By “green roofs”, do you mean green in colour, or roofs with solar panels on them?” in response to Jim Tate’s e-mailon the “Brisbane River terns” chain.Jim will undoubtedly reply for himself, but just for the wider readership it may be of interest to highlight the interest in the utilisation of urban rooftops for augmenting the natural environment (or countering negative impacts on the environment) in Britain and Europe. Undoubtedly this is because of the much greater percentage of urbanised land. It has spawned a movement variously known as the “greenroof movement” – (or the related “brownroof movement”) which aims to persuading the developers of urban buildings to incorporate natural vegetation and soils/gravels on the rooftops of new buildings. I have placed to links below (or phrases to enter into Google or other search machines) – one UK focussed and the other a European focussed link. The photo image which appears on the Home page of the first link i s of a modest demonstration of the philosophy which is a shelter built in a demonstration sustainable garden built at the London Wetland Centre (where I act as a volunteer guide). The two sites show many images of buildings with green roof treatment.One of the most spectacular examples that I have seen is the roof treatment of the hotel at Uluru, although that was obviously intended for landscape blending purposes – but with terrific plantings of desert flowers amd shrubs (or at least it was n the 80s). The links: livingroofs.org AND http://www.efb-greenroof.eu/index.html Angus Innes.
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I did not get Peter Shute’s message that you passed on to me. But, the answer is GREEN as in plants growing on the roof. In the US we have Canada Geese ans Mallards nesting on green roofs too high for the hatchlings to jump from. We get many calls to rescue ducklings each spring. I note that Graeme Hopkins mentions a roof nesting goose in his book (Living Architecture)- but it must have been a low roof. -TATE Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry