Im working on a project and we are counting our green roof/roof garden towards this credit. All the plantings on the roof are native/adaptive/hight drought tolerante except the few vegetables and herbs that will be up there (cherry tomatoe, Mint, sage, Garden Beans ,Egg plant, Green onion
Parsley,Oregano) all of which need daily watering. I assume since they need daily watering they would be NOT be considered native/adaptive, but maybe not? In the case they do not count towards native/adaptive do I need to calculate the sq footage (would be very minimal) they take up on the roof garden and subtract that from the protect/restore habitat sq footage? Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated!!!
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Mara Baum
Partner, Architecture & SustainabilityDIALOG
674 thumbs up
August 12, 2010 - 12:06 pm
Great question. Where's the project located? You're first instinct is right, in that most farmed vegetables are not indigenous to the place they're being grown. Chances are good that you will have to exclude that area from the calculations, so you should plan to have enough other planted area to make up for it. You should talk to a local landscape architect versed in native and adapted species for your area.
Nelina Loiselle
Above Green239 thumbs up
September 10, 2010 - 12:16 pm
thanks Mara! It's located in the Carribean, so I'm not versed myself in native/adapted plants for that area.
Nadia Ayala
Architect / LEED AP BD+CKILTIK Consultoría
52 thumbs up
August 31, 2014 - 2:05 pm
Nena, Mara, and all LEEDUsers, I hope you're doing great.
I have a project in Mexico where we are trying to create a rooftop food garden. I found this LEED Interpretation #10155 regarding urban agriculture and WEc1, but I don't know if I could count the "food vegetated" area towards SSc5.1 compliance... It's a mixed used project where, appart from having regular ornamental vegetation in many areas of the building terraces; the residential component would have access to rooftop terraces with permanent planters where the appartment owners can grow vegetables of their choice, because planters will be their "private property". Since you can't really tell them what and what not to grow, I can't guarantee that all species would be native/adapted, but surely there would not be monoculture practices, and many plants are likely to attract biodiversity. Also, it is considered that gardening practices will be organic. We are in a zero lot line project, high density area, in a city where 99% of built areas are low density.
Do you think this could count towards SSc5.1?