Planting on roofs and walls is one of the most innovative and fast-developing fields within horticulture and the built environment. This authoritative book explores the very latest roof and wall greening techniques.
The environmental benefits of roof greening are now widely understood including their value in reducing pollution and run-off, insulating against heat and cold, and reducing the maintenance needs of buildings. Modern building construction allows a dovetailing of plants, buildings, and people, hitherto impossible with older technologies, sparking a surge of interest.
Planting Green Roofs and Living Walls describes the historical development of both large-scale commercial and small domestic examples from all over the world. It also provides an introduction to the practical techniques required for constructing green roofs including weight-bearing considerations, materials, substrates, draining layers, modular systems, and plants. A chapter devoted to planting considers plant choice in some depth and outlines key characteristics that make certain plants suitable for the extreme conditions encountered on roofs: drought, high light intensity, and wind.
Planting on walls requires completely different techniques. The book explores both façade greening, where plants grow up steel structures pinned to the wall, and living walls, where plants either establish themselves in the wall itself or are able to survive independently on the wall structure without rooting.
With climate and environmental concerns increasingly in the public eye, this informative book answers all the technical questions and will inspire gardeners, architects, environmentalists, and home maintenance enthusiasts to incorporate green roofs and walls in their forthcoming projects.
Nigel Dunnett is a senior lecturer in the Department of Landscape at the University of Sheffield where he has developed innovative research programmes into naturalistic and ecologically-informed planting for gardens and public landscapes. He writes regularly for leading horticultural magazines and journals and lectures widely throughout the U.K. He lives in Sheffield.
Noël Kingsbury is well known as a writer on plants and gardens. He has always been firmly in the vanguard of new developments, in particular playing a major role in popularizing a more naturalistic and sustainable planting style, with The New Perennial Garden (Frances Lincoln 1996). With designer Piet Oudolf he wrote Designing with Plants (Timber Press 2000). He is associated with the Landscape Department at the University of Sheffield, as part of his active involvement in promoting quality planting in public spaces.
