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Garden Care News Center > Rooftop herb and vegetable gardening promotes sustainable environment
Rooftop herb and vegetable gardening promotes sustainable environment
 Judy
Creighton, Canadian Press
(CP) - The pavement below may be steaming, but high atop a major
hotel in downtown Toronto there's a lush, green oasis of lavender,
basil, thyme and vegetables.
The Fairmont Royal York in the city's downtown has Canada's largest
city-centre hotel herb garden. The 3,600-square-metre high-rise
herbarium sits on the 18th storey, 60 metres above ground.
The garden was first planted in 1998 and is tended by the hotel's
culinary team, led by executive chef David Garcelon.
"The garden is valuable because it gives us fresh produce
to use in our dining rooms throughout the growing season,"
says Garcelon, 40, a native of St. Stephen, N.B., who has worked
in hotels across Canada and abroad.
It's also "a valuable teaching tool for our apprentices who
learn how herbs can fit into their cooking," he adds.
Rooftop gardening is catching on in Canada because of the importance
it plays as one of the safeguards for a sustainable urban environment.
"Space on the ground is at a premium, and there are a lot
of environmental benefits from green roofs," says Laura Berman,
co-ordinator of the Toronto Community Gardening Network.
"You get a cooling effect from a building with a green roof,
so it really minimizes the cost of heating and cooling, and esthetically
it's a nice thing to have."
Berman adds that roof gardens are a great thing for people in apartments
and condominiums.
"There are acres and acres of flat roof space available in
our cities," she says. "In Europe, especially in German
cities, new buildings are required to have green roofs and older
buildings are required to be retrofitted mostly for the environmental
savings."
The Fairmont Royal York garden is tended by 12 apprentices who
weed, water and harvest the herbs, tomatoes and zucchini daily,
says Garcelon. He says he is talking to the Toronto Botanical Society
about getting some gardening experts to advise his team on what
else they can grow on the roof.
As the world's green spaces are paved with urban concrete, "cities
are becoming little pockets of heat which are radiating back up
and affecting the climate of the planet," says Berman.
"Green roofs can help cool down these heat islands."
Whatever can grow on the ground can pretty well be cultivated on
a roof.
"With a good irrigation system a roof can really grow everything
from tomatoes, eggplant, beans, peas and lettuce," she says.
"Herbs do really well on roofs because most herbs are from
the Mediterranean and they like a hot dry climate and rooftops generally
are hotter and drier and a bit more windy."
Berman would like to see developers step up to the plate and make
provisions for rooftop gardening while buildings are under construction.
"The engineers typically prepare the roof to be able to handle
the weight of snow so they need to make them strong enough to hold
wet soil in addition to the snow load," she says.
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/agriculture/story.html?id=4dbb9b2f-fa66-4f8e-ac6a-86e730a6e05f&k=6539&p=1
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