Rooftop Gardens Could Create 'Huge Green Spaces' in Australia's Biggest Cities. So Why Are There So Few?
Sourced from ABC Net
If you look down from Helen Baker's apartment balcony, you'll see big communal gardens filled with daises and olive trees, kangaroo paws and carpet roses.
What you won't see is the concrete slab most of the garden sits on.
"Looking down here, it just gives you so much joy," Helen explained.
Where she lives — at a retirement village in Aberfeldie in Melbourne's north-west — the rooftop garden sits on top of an underground car park and, like rooftop gardens at higher elevations, it is helping to solve a number of problems.
Rooftop gardens and green roofs — which can be shallow gardens used primarily for environmental purposes or deeper, larger gardens which can also be used as recreational spaces, have long been known for their range of environmental and wellbeing benefits.
Depending on their design, they can help cool hot urban environments, improve the energy efficiency of buildings, reduce stormwater runoff and flash flooding, improve air quality and biodiversity, and increase wellbeing of those who can access them.
But, despite their long list of possible benefits, experts acknowledge their take-up in Australia has generally been slow, and much slower than many comparable cities around the world.
Geoff Heard designed the Aberfeldie rooftop garden and says they can be challenging to build but they come with many benefits.
He says the retirement village garden at Aberfeldie has, for example, helped to reduce heat in an area that can be a bit of a "furnace" and has helped solve a problem of limited space.
And for residents like Helen, this unique garden has helped to overcome the sadness of leaving her own backyard to downsize to an apartment.
"I grew up in the country and mum and dad always had a garden, it was a produce garden, as well as for picking flowers," she remembers.
"When I came to the city, I guess gardening just followed."
While she waits for the rose bushes on her apartment balcony to grow, the communal garden has given her a place to once again smell the roses and pick flowers.
She's one of many to spruik the benefits of green roofs.
From the Living Architecture Monitor
