PUBLICATIONS

Issue 49 - Summer 2009

EDITORIAL

Having had show gardens in Bloom for the last three years, I have found that it does something funny to the year. For months, daily life becomes coloured by the fear that whatever it is you are planning will not work. Then, during the build and the show, time simply becomes a blur. Afterwards, there is a sense of let down, exhaustion and picking up the threads of normality. Then suddenly, school holidays appear and you wonder what happened to the first half of the year. I share this with you because as I read our reviews of Bloom, and Chelsea I could not but think of all the hours, the planning, the hopes and fears, that went into each of these shows, and yet, they seem now to have happened in some long forgotten Spring, so ephemeral is the nature of a garden show. All the more reason, therefore, to allow Helen Rock and Tycho Mays to remind us of some of this year's highs and to prompt those who missed Bloom and Chelsea to perhaps pop over to England and catch the remainder of the year's crop (see News and Events) including Future Gardens which gets a hurrah from Helen Rock.

I hope Compass will keep us designers, contractors and garden enthusiasts up to date on currant issues. In this edition we focus on the topic of roof greening because this is an infant technology that may well become important. The articles by experts such as Rita Higgins and Noel Kingsbury will give you a good grounding in the basics of green roofs, from sedum blankets, which are so useful for retrofit roofs, to the more complex hybrids of the type explored by Nigel Dunnett in his Chelsea show garden called 'Future Nature'. However both of them point out that we need to understand more about the most effective means of meeting all the obligations placed on green-roofing: in many countries the main interest is in attenuating rainwater run-off but other agendas include insulating buildings, absorbing CO2 and attracting the wildlife displaced by new development. As Rita points out, we also need to replicate the largely German body of research in Ireland in order to understand how and in what forms roof greening will work here.

In some countries roof greening is compulsory on commercial buildings but not for aesthetic reasons. In Colm Doyle's case study however, a traditional roof garden (quite different from a green roof) faced directly onto the staff offices as well as the Board Room. By colonising this extra space, which the developer had clothed in imaginative concrete blocks, direct from the Goebell's School of Landscaping, the client inadvertently found an ideal place to party, helping to boost staff morale.

In our book reviews we return to the subject of roof gardens – well naturally – looking at a book by Nigel Dunnett and Noel Kingsbury. Those of you who came to the GLDA seminar in February will already have met Nigel Dunnett. We were lucky enough also to meet Noel Kingsbury who kept us all riveted when he addressed the GLDA's plant workshop at the Botanic Gardens in June. Oliver Schurmann, who with his wife Liat now holds more Bloom medals than any other designer in Ireland, was also speaking. We have no room to cover this event in detail in this issue but you can be assured that we will do so next time.

Happy holidays and have a good summer.
Sheena Vernon

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