Sustain Award for Biodiversity

Ecobuild week is a mammoth week. So we are a bit late in announcing that we at GRC have received the Sustain Magazine Biodiversity Award in the Business and Society Section.

Green roof designed for biodiversity in the Victoria BID area

The award was for our design of the 55 Broadway Green Roof above St. Jame’s Tube Station in central London. We entered with the University of East London, who are involved in monitoring the roof as part of a Buglife – the Invertebrate Charity project funded by Sita Nature Enhanced. The project was also substantially funded by TFL.

It was a great pleasure and an honour for Dusty Gedge to receive the award from Mike Wells of Biodiversity by Design, who sponsored the award. Unfortunately Dr. G. Kadas, one of the world’s leading biodiversity and green roof researchers was unable to be there on the day.

The design of the roof is based on over 6 years of study by Dr. Kadas on green roofs and rare invertebrates and green roofs. The design incorporate a number of features and is an important extension on the idea of brown roofs for biodiversity. The original idea formulated back in 1997 by members of GRC was for local recycled aggregates were to be used and allowed to colonise naturally. However the research showed that this siuch an approach though, in principle of ecological merit, delayed colonisation by invertebrates and could lead to ‘eco-dumping’ by contractors.

This new design uses a variety of commercial green roof substrate blends and native wildflowers plugs and seeds as well as native sedum seeds. The roof will be monitored by UEL for another two years. This will add an even greater understanding on how green roofs are used by invertebrates.