Livinggreen living green roofs

The stable yard renovation is almost complete! In the meantime, we've been busy planning our new cycle shed, which will have a living green roof.

We've already talked about how we've been increasing the green space at the project, by turfing out the tarmac and putting grass in its place. A living green roof will add to this. As our cities get hotter, due to climate change, green roofs will become increasingly important - not only do they help keep buildings cool, but they also provide an important habitat for wildlife and so help to increase biodiversity. And they can also be beautiful, such as this one at the Abbey Hive Community Centre in North London:

Living roof at Abbey Hive Community Centre, NTPL/Caroline Pankhurst

To find out more about living green roofs, see http://www.livingroofs.org/ or go to RESET's conference, "Ecosystem Services Come to Town", next Tuesday 18th October: www.reset-development.org/conference-2011. Dusty Gedge, President of the European Federation of Green Roof Associations, will be among the speakers, and the conference takes place at the Museum of London, which has a variety of living roofs.

Here at the HOP Project, we're hoping to hold a workshop when we build our green roof, with some of the green roof experts, so watch this space for details.

And from green roofs to no roofs....We've also been down at the beautiful ruins of Nymans, the National Trust property down in Sussex, promoting our project at their solar-powered Green Fair. It was good to talk to people from further afield about what's happening in our stable yard - we're hoping that lots of them come to visit after we open on 5th November.