Comments on: Parliament House Canberra green roof

By: Juanjo Gari

Juanjo Gari — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 20:34:20 +0000

The architect is right.
Green lawns give peace and show the buildings sorrounding as in the old
monasteries of Oxford,currently colleges.

By: green roofs

green roofs — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 19:28:53 +0000

This is definitely a good use of available space. It helps the environment and provides for the future of mankind. Kudos!!

By: Christine

Christine — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:03:21 +0000

What a beautiful image – outdoor carpets! It makes me think of the very best of urban picnics! And that wonderful sensation of lying on the most bouyant of grasses and staring up at the sky and watching the clouds float lazily by in a warm blue sky!

By: Tom Turner

Tom Turner — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 06:46:51 +0000

Ah yes! Grasses are wonderful plants but lawns by mowing machines are a dangerous element in garden and landscape design, because they are so over-used. People think that since indoor carpets have to be vacuumed outdoor ‘carpets’ have to be mown – and it just ain’t so!

By: Christine

Christine — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:06:22 +0000

Grasslands seem to play an interesting role in the environmental equation. The following is a quote from ‘Methane and Nitrous Oxide fluxes in native, fertilised and cultivated grasslands’ published in the journal Nature (Vol 350 28 March 1991 p330);

“Our data indicate that the semi-arid grasslands represent a
significant global sink for CH4 (ref. 8). Methane uptake in the
grassland ranged from 6 to 6111.g CH4 m-2 h-l, compared with
uptake rates of 6-24,52,0-112, and 10-160 ll.g CH4 m-2 h-1 in
tropical foresf 7, subtropical broad-leafed savannah 18, tundra 19
and temperate forest soils6.8, respectively. If our measurements
are representative of CH4 uptake by these grasslands globally,
then 0.5 to 5.6 Tg of CH4 are removed from the atmosphere in
these grasslands each year.”
[http://ddr.nal.usda.gov/bitstream/10113/40/1/IND91019816.pdf]

By: Tom Turner

Tom Turner — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:41:34 +0000

Lawns have there place but they are also one of the great causes of bad garden design.

By: Christine

Christine — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:09:48 +0000

Perhaps lawns are the third millenium luxury item?[http://www.kilronancastle.ie/]

By: Tom Turner

Tom Turner — Fri, 22 May 2009 05:42:46 +0000

Paul Hoag’s explanations are all possible but I would add another to the list: Megalithic temples had something of the role which books have for us: they explained the ‘nature of the world’ and helped in the organization of societies which were more than ‘collections of individuals’.

By: Christine

Christine — Thu, 21 May 2009 03:55:19 +0000

Apparently a group of American practising architects travelled to Malta in 1995 to visit ‘the oldest buildings in the world’.[http://www.xs4all.nl/~mkosian/architec.html] Architect Paul Hoag asks, before the invention of the wheel, what motivated stone age people to build megalithic temples? He says;

“Lets go back through the possibilities. Fortress protection against attack? No. No weapons have ever been found at these sites. A place for a powerful chief? No. No burial remains of Pharaoh figures with afterlife treasures. Temples for oppressive priestly cults? Hardly. The only deity was the Earth Goddess – the Great Goddess. They were agrarian people who revered her for bringing the seasons and the rain, and enriching the soil which grew their main source of food. They sculpted beautiful figurines of her: gorgeously plump and fecund, forever pregnant with a newly dead soul who needed to be reborn into a happy afterlife, just as she saw to it that new crops appeared from the mystery of last year’s death.”

By: Tom Turner

Tom Turner — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 06:53:26 +0000

Soil substrates with a low nutrient status tend to be more floriferous. This is because on poor soils it is necessary for a plant to produce seeds as soon as possible, as when deserts bloom after a shower of rain. On deep rich soils plants can grow, like trees and shrubs, for many years before it is necessary to reproduce themselves. It could be a wonderful thing if part of the ‘Green Roof’ turned into a fabulous field of flowers after a fall of rain. There would surely be photographs on the national and international news – rather as news of the cherry trees flowering spreads through Japan each spring.