Organic Gardening, Landscape Design & Educational Services

The Helping Nature Heal truck arrives - full of organic plant material - perfect for a green roof.

Sue Sirrs' shed is getting a green roof built by Helping Nature Heal - they supplied native plant material and labour. Sue's Halifax-based business is Outside! Planning & Design Studio. HNH and Sue worked together on Eastern Canada's first LEED certified home - when the job was finished, it was recognized with the highest certification: Platinum. The foundation for today's project is a root barrier, drainage mat, growing medium and plant mats.

Sue chose a green roof to deal with stormwater
and offer habitat benefits associated with using native plant material.

The green roof is divided into three sections - each are slightly different and will undergo testing throughout the coming seasons. Sue Sirrs, left, and Rosmarie Bradley Lohnes celebrate a good morning's work.

Technical details: Rosmarie & Greg returned late November to prepare the green roof for winter. "I think your maintenance service," notes Sue, "is one of the things that makes HNH different from other companies."

Geotextiles: Soprema products were chosen to prepare the roof for its greenery. MICROFAB is a coated, woven and micro-perforated polyethylene fabric used as a root barrier for applications in SOPRANATURE vegetated/green roofs and roof gardens. MICROFAB is used as a root barrier above the SOPRADRAIN ECO-5, SOPRADRAIN 10-G and SOPRADRAIN ECO-VENT or to complete the root protection when using AQUAMAT JARDIN or SOPRADRAIN GEO-M, between adjoining rolls and at borders, edges and details. MICROFAB is a physical root barrier it will not leach any type of chemical in the environment. This feature helps in maintaining a long-term anti-root efficiency. The perforations in the filter allow the flow of air and water,
but do not allow the penetration of the roots of hardy plants.

Materials need to be carefully selected and used appropriately (Soprema products were used here for specific reasons, e.g. slope of roof, type of soil, etc. but each roof will have different requirements). Outside! and Helping Nature Heal can help homeowners make the best product decisions related to textile layers.

Builder, Pete Munroe, helped with construction details to ensure weight requirements were up to standards.

Biodiversity: Until recently, the design of green roofs was based almost entirely on engineering considerations. In the past few years, however, researchers have turned their attention to the role that green roofs can play in the conservation of biodiversity. They have produced a small, but growing body of evidence suggesting that green roofs can indeed provide living space for plants and animals, at least mobile species such as invertebrates and birds.

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