It’s no secret that green roofs can help with many of the consequences of climate change (while also extending the life-cycle of the buildings they adorn) but they need to be in good health to do so.
And that’s where our Summer Featured Partner, Green Roof Revival, comes into play. Headed up by Lee Evans, Green Roof Revival was inspired by the frequency with which existing green roofs were found to struggle. By taking a three-pronged approach of diagnose, revive and care this innovative business has helped to advise and support many owners and managers of distressed green roofs since it launched in 2018.
Lee originally started his foray into Green Roofs in 2011, when he established the sister company to Green Roof Revival, Organic Roofs. Lee developed his technical competence in Switzerland, training under and learning best-practice from esteemed world experts including Nathalie Baumann & Stephan Brenneisen – and Lee himself is now considered to be one of the UK’s leading green roof gurus.
When he’s not working to get UK roofs to comparable standards in a more challenging regulatory environment, he also returns to Switzerland every year to run workshops with Swiss environmental science students, as well as delivering talks and training to a wide variety of audiences in the UK, Europe and even Central America. He is also constantly innovating to find ways to deliver European standards of quality to the more cost-conscious UK market, and runs a low-cost 1-1 online ‘Project Surgery‘ which provides clients, designers and contractors with the information they need to get the right components, sequencing & vegetation for their specific project.
It was Lee’s extensive experience within the green roof sector that led him to establish Green Roof Revival, focusing specifically on reviving green roofs that had gone wrong. Often specifications for green roofs and guidelines are mismatched, with the resulting green roof failing due to many factors; poor waterproofing, non-viable planting, irrigation issues and inadequate drainage just to name a few.
A recent project for Lee and his team was a garden office in Muswell Hill, North London that was beset with leaks and sparse growth.
The team stripped off the previous green roof and re-waterproofed the surface before installing irrigation and planting the roof out using Wildflower Turf®. Needless to say, the client was thrilled with the result and the roof has been future-proofed thanks to the care and attention of the Green Roof Revival team.
You can view more of the team’s projects via their website, or follow them on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
