It’s not just a roof â€- it’s a garden
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By Bob Reeves/Lincoln Journal Star
Carl and Janet Eskridge moved into their apartment in University Towers a year and a half ago. They enjoyed all the amenities of downtown living, but they missed their garden.
“We were used to spending a lot of effort in the yard, and we had all this time and energy we didn’t know what to do with,” Carl Eskridge said.
Then he found his outlet. The 11th floor had a walk-out area on the roof, complete with several terra cotta planters. He took it over as his pet project, adding more planters and filling them with plants that he figured would be hardy enough to endure the heat and wind 11 stories in the air.
A recent tour of his roof garden showed that the plants were doing quite well, despite this summer’s scorching temperatures. They include mostly annuals, such as purple fountain grass, petunias, coleus and portulaca. Several low metal planter boxes have a short variety of sedum, which grows well in shallow soil with little moisture.
Residents of University Towers enjoy the plants when they use the rooftop for personal relaxation and getting together with neighbors.
“I love the rooftop,” said Rita Lester, who grew up in urban Chicago. “I wanted a downtown feeling, and to me that means being able to go outside and see the city.”
Lester said she enjoys reading on the rooftop. The plants are a welcome contrast to bricks and concrete.
The rooftop also is used for parties and special events. On Fourth of July, residents watched fireworks around the city from their high vantage point and were entertained by folk singer Chris Sayre. Earlier this month, they enjoyed a presentation on kestrels and falcons that live downtown, by Betsy Finch of Raptor Recovery.
Citing a survey of residents of Georgian Place, the apartment building converted from the former YMCA hotel in 1983, Jim Arter of the Arter Group, which manages a number of downtown buildings, said a high proportion of residents wanted a place to enjoy the sun, barbecues and outdoor parties without leaving the building. So when the Arter Group developed Centerstone, 100 N. 12th St., they added a rooftop common area with a grill for residents’ use, tables and deck chairs and several built-in planter boxes filled with flowers and shrubs.
Over the years, the planters got a little scruffy looking, so last spring they brought in Susan Palmer of RNS Gardening to renovate several of them. The soil in the Styrofoam-lined planters was several inches below the top, so she added a mixture of peat moss and bedding soil to create a light and nutritious medium.
She then selected a number of plants — once again, mostly annuals — for showy blooms, but which could stand high heat and dry conditions. By mid-August the planters were still very colorful, with orange lantana, summer snapdragons, blue annual salvia, geraniums, cannas, zinnias, vincas and ageratums.
They make a bright backdrop to the outdoor space, which is used for individual, family and group events. “What a great place for people who live here to enjoy,” Palmer said.
A number of downtown residents are fortunate enough to have their own terraces or patios on rooftop areas accessible from their apartments.
Cecil and Mary Jane Steward have a west-facing roof deck on their downtown home in a former typewriter store at 125 N. 11th St. Steward, former dean of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Architecture, said they wanted an outdoor space with plants that would be easy to maintain.
The result is two large, flat planter beds that are filled with petunias, plus a couple of potted trees and a small fountain.
“We eat most of our meals out here in the evening, if the temperature’s under 90 degrees,” Steward said.
They have a pull-down awning for shade and a propane heater for chilly fall and spring evenings.
The flowers provide a connection with nature and make it seem more like a backyard. “It doesn’t take much to give your eye a relief from all the hard surfaces,” Steward said.
One of the most lush and showy downtown roof gardens belongs to Judith Andre, who lives in the Mission Arts Building (the former City Mission), which houses Gallery Nine and artists’ studios.
Gallery visitors are familiar with Andre’s green thumb since a plant-lined corridor leads to the building’s entrance. The narrow space is filled with plants with a tropical character, such as elephant ears, magnolias, begonias, passion flowers and angel’s trumpet.
The roof garden is up a metal staircase at the back, atop Andre’s studio, which was built entirely of concrete. She has two large concrete-sided beds she can plant much like ground-level beds. They have a splashy display of annuals and perennials, including roses, verbenas and day lilies. Pots and smaller planters fill the rest of the deck with a mix of colors and leaf textures. There are cannas, petunias, moonflowers, purple-flowered lisianthus and trailing lismachia, among many others.
A decorative iron railing that Andre bought as scrap metal graces the side of the deck above the stairway.
Andre said she spends a lot of time planting the garden each spring, and each fall brings many tender plants indoors. For several years she watered it all by hand, but recently she added a drip irrigation system that delivers the precise amount of water needed by each plant. “It took a lot of work getting it set up, but it was worth it,” she said.
Her garden gets raves from visitors, but Andre said it’s mainly for her own enjoyment. Future plans include a fountain or other water feature — and, of course, she’s always looking for new and interesting plants.
Coping with hot sun and wind are the two biggest problems with a roof garden, said Becky Van de Bogart, who has a large private terrace at her apartment in Centerstone. It has a number of larger plants, including two redbud trees. She also has several prairie grass clumps and an herb bed.
Winter is hard on rooftop gardens, she said, especially for potted plants that are unprotected. Wind can blow plants over, and pots actually lose dirt because the wind blows it away.
The value of a common roof area for downtown residents was emphasized by Michael Cartwright, who has lived in University Towers for six years. “Having a rooftop garden just gives us that much more space,” he said. “We have our apartment on the eighth floor, plus our outdoor area on the 11th floor.”
Reach Bob Reeves at 473-7212 or at breeves@journalstar.com.
Green roof concept on its way to lincoln
Flower beds and potted trees add beauty to a rooftop, deck or terrace. But what if you could stroll through a grassy lawn or a field of wildflowers atop a downtown building?
That’s the concept behind the “green roof,” which transforms a barren roof surface into an urban park.
The idea is as old as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the wonders of the ancient world.
Today, more and more green roofs are sprouting up, especially in Europe, but increasingly in American cities as well.
So far, Lincoln doesn’t have any real green roofs. But leaders of the National Arbor Day Foundation are hoping to create one, probably covered with native grasses and wildflowers, on the roof of the former Plaza Theater, which forms the lower two stories of the foundation’s building at 211 N. 12th St.
While renovating the former movie palace into offices, they’re making sure that the roof is strong enough to hold the added weight of soil, water and plants, said Matt Harris, a senior vice president at the foundation.
They’ve talked with Jeffrey Bruce, a landscape architect from Kansas City, whose firm has designed a number of green roof projects in major cities.
Bruce also met with residents at Lincoln’s University Towers who are looking at ways they can improve their roof garden by adding vines, shrubs and other amenities.
Bruce’s firm has won awards of excellence for designing two major projects in Chicago: Soldiers Field, which has a five-acre green roof atop a parking garage, and Millennium Park, which has 22 acres of gardens and lawn with buildings underneath.
Green roofs have many social and environmental benefits, Bruce said. Plants help cool an urban area, add oxygen to the air and help reduce noise. A roof covered with plants in a soil medium can capture up to 75 percent of the rainfall, reducing runoff. It also provides a welcome relief from the hot, hard surfaces of glass, steel and concrete — a place where urban workers or dwellers can rest, relax and recreate.
Green roofs require a specially designed surface with an “egg crate” texture to hold water and a drainage system channeling water into the storm sewer system, Bruce said. Special lightweight soils have been developed that reduce the overall weight but have high water-retention properties.
The city of Chicago has long recognized the value of green roofs, and has set a goal of being the greenest city in the United States. Special tax incentives and building code allowances encourage buildings with extensive plantings and green areas on roofs and terraces.
As of last year, Chicago topped the list of North American cities with 295,600 square feet of green roofs. Washington, D.C., was second with 206,900, followed by a couple of Washington suburbs. New York City was fifth with 119,895, according to the survey by Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, based in Ontario.
Harris said it may be a couple of years before the Arbor Day Foundation installs its green roof, but it’s definitely in the planning stages. By doing this, he said, the foundation will be setting an example to its 800,000 members nationwide of what the future urban environment ought to be.
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