Adding greenery to an urban space is a welcome addition to any city, but with overpopulation, more and more cities are also running out of room for additional parks or natural spaces. Rooftop gardens provide a solution to the problem of a shortage of space.
Rooftop gardens are not only saving urban citizens from the hot temperatures of desert regions and the cold of highly populated areas but also improving air quality, reducing noise levels, and saving water. In this essay I will explain why green roofs have conquered our skies. Rooftop gardens are becoming an integral part of city living. They are winding between buildings and saving our skin. In the highest populated corners of our world, the air is stuffy and polluted, and it is easy to feel like we are suffocating under a cloud of smoke. New York, for example, hosts many green roofs as a solution to air quality problems. Similarly, homes in the Middle East have been benefiting from rooftop gardens, which have been saving their residents from the scorching heat by covering their homes in green oases of plants. In addition to everyday use, rooftop gardens are being utilized for more innovative purposes. These green structures are helping to create sustainable coastlines across the globe. They protect homes from the rising waters as sea levels rise due to climate change in places such as Bangladesh and other large archipelagoes.
Air Quality
Trees and green plants improve living environments by transforming contaminated air into clear air, for example, filtering harmful gases, such as dense smog, photochemical ozone, and chemical fumes from motor vehicles, into fresh and clean air. In order to keep the environment in good condition, an urban area must try to decrease the amount of ozone and particulate matter emissions to maximise air quality.
These green spaces both reduce the outdoor air temperature and the urban heat island effect, which in turn decreases the need for expensive air-conditioning systems. Plants likewise act as an extra layer of insulation for buildings, trapping the heat during winter and then releasing it through evapotranspiration in the summer.
Other studies also suggest that being in green spaces – for example, in parks, on city greenways, walking through your neighbourhood park, sitting under a shady tree at city greenways, or even just looking through a window at vegetation – leads to significant psychological and cardiovascular health benefits. This includes being in nature on a more regular basis, or having access to nature through your window, or even being in a shared green space environment, which aids mental health by reducing anxiety, and promotes an overall sense of pleasure and calm. Green spaces are also a great place for socialising with friends and family!
Noise Reduction
Roof gardens can serve aesthetic and recreational functions in addition to carbon capture and sequestration, and can provide numerous environmental, energetic and economic benefits including the decrease of air temperatures, enhancement of biodiversity, reduction of the urban heat island effect and noise levels.
By absorbing, reflecting and scattering sonic waves, plants attenuate traffic sounds as well as noises from sirens, conversations, and bird chirping, contributing to the reduction of vehicles noise, sirens, and conversations, which helps to promote relaxation, mood improvement, and lower stress levels.
Another approach to stormwater retention that involves vegetation is rooftop gardens that collect the rainwater that otherwise would have flowed into stormwater pipes or sewer drains and would have caused floods: by soaking up the rainfall in its soil and mulch layers, the rainwater is retained on the roof and can be used by the plants growing there.
Water Conservation
Roofs draped in greenery and plants can retain heavy moisture with their roots and therefore retain the most moisture to reduce the amount of rainwater that runs off roofs into combined sewer or storm water systems in heavy downpours, which can overload the system.
Grasses and plants in rooftop gardens provide ‘natural insulation’ that helps keep energy costs down by keeping temperatures inside a building more consistent, reducing the need for heating and cooling.
At UMass Lowell, the Office of Sustainability teamed up with the urban farming nonprofit Mill City Grows to design a 500-square-foot herb garden on a second-floor landing in University Crossing that faces Salem Street and uses milk crates full of compost made from food waste generated at campus dining halls.
Increased Value
Many urban areas lack public green spaces so that Rooftop gardens (or green roofs ) has become increasingly popular to meet people’s needs. Moreover, a rooftop garden gives support to the efforts to improve air quality, conserve water and promote biodiversity.
Photosynthesis in rooftop gardens mitigates air pollution by filtering out air pollutants (for example, dust, smog, greenhouse gas emissions and other air pollutants) and reducing ambient temperature. Rooftop gardens also offer noise-absorption qualities. At the thermal level, they can mitigate by absorbing heat by their plant roots and subsequently evaporating away water vapour around their roots.
Roof top gardens serve as a green approach to food production, supplying residents with fresh food for years to come. Cities, with their need for local agriculture, as well as the desire to connect residents with their food sources, are turning to these types of rooftop farmers.