As a group, the interns had a chance to visit the Emery Knoll Farms nursery last week. On the way down there I found out that it was a green roof plant nursery and that it was owned by Ed Snodgrass. Ed Snodgrass!!! He and his wife Lucie are the ones that wrote the book “Green Roof Plants”, which was (as far as I know) the first book in the market to be directed towards green roof plant selection. So yeah, I was pretty excited that we were going to his place of business.
Little did I know we were going to be given a personal tour by Ed! And its not like it was a rare occurrence that he was giving a tour. He shows people the production facilities and farm all the time. I was really pleasantly surprised at how open he was with his knowledge and his expertise. He’s so successful and yet its not about the money for him at all. Its always nice to see that there are people out there doing what they’re doing because they love it, not because they want to “get ahead”.
We were given a tour by their Intern Jamie who has been working on research. The research was on what types of plants are suitable as green roof material. Even though its a lot more intensive than that. There are just as many different types of environments for a green roof as a regular in-ground landscape. And these plants need to have multiple capabilities, such as water retention and good filtration.
They also showed us some of the environmentally friendly things they do not only to conserve power but to prevent damaging the earth around them. The biggest item of interest to me was the way they dealt with water run off. The most basic principle was that the water didn’t run off onto the soil and cause sediments to be displaced. The photo below shows how one of the run off pipes hits stone and gravel, then travels down into their water retention pond.
They had lots of different styles of a green roof, and they also had them on the majority of their buildings. This is their main green roof that they use for display for visitors (its a normal green roof, they just have a set of stairs and a small deck beside it to make it easy for visitors to see the details. Pretty cool!)
Here’s some proof that they really did have a green roof wherever possible! haha.
Emery Knoll stocks over 100 different varieties of green roof plants that they will ship out as soon as they are contacted by a contractor. The research house they have is what allows them to continue to grow the number of varieties they sell, so who knows when they’ll be able to say they stock over 150 different varieties or over 200! On their website under the ‘Catalog’ section, they have lists of plants that they recommend for the green roof your working on. Its very user friendly information.
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