The William Jefferson Clinton Library in Little Rock, Ark., is getting a green roof.
Bill Clinton likes to brag about his presidential library being an eco-friendly building.
Now even the roof is going green.
Over the past two weeks, workers have been hoisting 90 species of plants and more than four truckloads of soil atop the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum to create a garden on an area surrounding Clinton’s penthouse apartment.
Instead of bare concrete, the glass and steel building will be topped with strawberries, ferns, switch grass, roses and other greenery.
“This is just an area he can come and relax in and just enjoy the view,” Clinton Foundation Facilities and Operations Director Debbie Shock said in a recent interview on the roof.
However, it’s not just for looks. That layer of soil and plants will provide insulation and capture rainwater that otherwise would just be wasted as runoff.
You can hear ‘Bill’ wax eloquent on the roof via the Stephanie Miller Show [mp3]. “You can lead a whore to culture but you can’t make her think.”
I’m a little confused, because looking for better images of Clinton’s green roof garden I ran across this image of a tornado threatening the Clinton Library.
How do they cut that switchgrass? Do they haul a mower up to the roof, or do they have a controlled burn up there? I have been involved in planning a project that will include a green roof, but the roof design is sloped, so the architects advised planting short things such as sedums so the maintenance staff wouldn’t have to worry about falling off the roof with a mower.
MMD: I don’t know how they will cut the switchgrass. Maybe like I do with pruning shears in spring.
The living roof plants I’m most familiar with are short-statured sedums and other drought- and heat-tolerant plants. A friend of mine runs a company called MotherPlants that sells such roof-adapted species. I blogged about them here http://www.remarc.com/craig/?p=210 and here http://www.remarc.com/craig/?p=154. At the latter, you can see the dog house installation.
I love seeing these high-profile buildings (the Clinton Library, the city hall in Chicago, etc.) getting green roofs. What I really want to see, though, is a great way to retrofit existing houses with green roofs… say, something that would work with a 2-1/2 story foursquare house built in 1919. *grin*
Maybe if you check out some articles on Chicago’s city hall, you can find out how they tend those larger grasses and such? They apparently use them:
http://www.asla.org/meetings/awards/awds02/images2/imagesjpg2/Chicago%20City%20Hall-6.jpg
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