GREEN ROOF CONFERENCE

We went to the Green Roof Conference today. Lots of people (nearly 200 we think) had come together from all over the world to talk about what they were doing with planted roofs. We sat in front of Paul.

We met Nigel Dunnett from Sheffield University who has worked hard to find some special money for our special bio-diverse roof. He is also going to help us with how to choose and layout all the plants on the roof so they help all the insects and birds as much as possible.

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Cath introduced us to Dusty Gedge (from London) who loves bird watching and is very interested in green roofs because of a little bird called the Black Redstart that likes to live on them.

We thought we had better get up close to some of these green roofs...this is a sedum roof (little tiny plants). People said it was a 'monoculture' because it is really just one kind of plant and not lots of different ones (which is apparently better). We suppose a monoculture is a bit like having the same thing for shool dinner every day, boring and only a few people who like that food would stay to eat it. It's much nicer to have lots of different things that change over time so you will always have things you like, lots of different people would stay for dinner then. It's good to make our special green/eco roof provide lots of different things and then many different insects and birds will like it, this is called bio-diverse. It's a bit like Sharrow School: the children are from different places, like different dinners and speak different languages we suppose that makes Sharrow School diverse as well.

This one is more diverse and Brix had a good look close up. Can you see Morta in the picture?

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Keith Missen from Sheffield City Council Planning Department did a really good talk how green roofs could help stop Sheffield flooding and help to keep us all cooler in the summer. You might just be able to see that he showed pictures of our new school to everyone. He said of the 12 or so green roofs going to be built in Sheffield ours was the most interesting and would be a flagship project for years to come!!!

He also showed our BLOG site to everyone!

There was so much to learn and we didn't want to miss things so we tried really hard to remember it all so we could tell you folks all about it.

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We needed a drink to keep us going though! Phew, we're really tired now and need to get some sleep...bye.

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