photo via Lisa Town

Even the phone booth in the Hoh Rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State is dripping with green.

The Bastille restaurant in the Ballard district of Seattle, Washington not only serves fantastic French-inspired cuisine but it’s as fresh as fresh can get. They are so committed to this concept that they grow their own produce on their roof.

One of the things that I found particularly interesting was the chef’s comment regarding new kitchen staff and students. He said that many aspiring chefs don’t fully understand or appreciate where food comes from and how precious it really is. Then he said that after a day of pulling weeds and picking produce for that evening’s dinner menu, they have a new-found respect for food and they are even more careful during preparation and they try harder not to waste anything because suddenly they have a full understanding of all the hard work involved in getting it there to their counter, ready to be prepared for a gormet dish.

Like most restaurants that pursue rooftop gardening, it started out small and there was a lot of trial and error but now they’ve pretty well figured out what works and what doesn’t.
In fact, one of their lessons learned is that something like the picture above with the nicely built, expensive wooden planter with removable doors, irrigation and even heating coils was just not necessary to have good plant growth. As pretty as they are, they work just as well as the images below.

This container is really just a kiddie pool filled with rock and topped with another kiddie pool with drainage holes in it then covered in a sort of black plastic (which they learned was necessary to keep the kiddie pools from breaking down in the sun) and filled with the appropriate growing media. Extras include irrigation and a removeable wall and lid that can open and close. And this much cheaper and easier to build than the more sophisticated wooden planters yet functioned just as well.

Just as simple as the kiddie pools are the buckets for the tomatoes.

The Bastille also has bee hives integrated with the roof for both pollination and a portion of the honey for their restaurant. The bees are provided by Ballard Bee Company as a pollination service for the restaurant and honey for the owners.

Ultimately, with all the success they’ve had from their current rooftop, their looking to expand further and take over the neighboring rooftop!

While enjoying some time in the San Juan Islands a few weeks ago, I snapped a few shots of a small green roof in the village of Eastsound on Oras Island. The two plots of vegetation are part of the roof of a stage called “Stage at the Green” at the Village Green park area in the middle of town. It is not easily seen though unless you walk all the way around to the back. The stage is used for community music events especially accompanying fairs, festivals and the Saturday Farmer’s Markets.

The stage and it’s accompanying green roof were built in 2007 with the local sedum-based vegetation covering 150 s.f. of the roof and incorporating a photovoltaic solar array. The stage and it’s green roof are the product of collaborative design within the local community of architects, artists, engineers, craftsmens and mostly built with donated labor and materials.