What it takes to manage a green wall & roof company

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Your one stop shop to Green Roofs and Vertical Gardens

As David Suzuki said in his recent speech in Adelaide, "clean air, water, soil and biodiversity are the things that make us flourish, we must be protected them before anything else."

Over the past 3 years I had the pleasure to develop a new installation division dedicated to greening our planet for a product only company Atlantis, in Sydney. I am now designing a new company dedicated to the environment using a range of products inspired by my travels.  Our new company is called Evolvement Pty Ltd. 

Understanding your clients needs, use of good products and attention to detail is what it takes to make quality. 

At the Northern Sydney Institute of TAFE students of the Advanced Diploma of Environmental Management receive "Green" business development training.  It has been my pleasure to provide some 200 students structured training at TAFE. Skills and knowledge gained have great potential to increase the human resources required by the green industry. 

It goes without saying you need to employ good staff, train them well and reward them for their efforts.

Planning for success, a short business plan was written that identified strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. A to do list was prepared and prioritised based on our strategic competitive advantage. Budgets and targets were prepared for the new division.

Planning gave us a benchmark to aim for. Increased sales, quality clients and beautiful projects were the result.

The green roof at Bondi with iconic Bondi Beach in the background. The plants are a special variety of Carpobrotus (the greener ones), I propagated for the job in my nursery. They grow very flat and flower well. I keep these in stock for green roofs. 

Install the business management systems, I was able to share the following systems developed over my 30 years in the industry. None of which existed in the company previously. Your are sure your business is unlikely to fail and will be worth more when you decide to sell it.

• Proposal templates, that show you understand client needs and provide solutions
• Job filing and numbering, to organise the business as it grows
• Tendering budgets, to provide targets for the site staff
• Invoicing systems, to maintain cashflow
• Cost control, to monitor job performance
• Risk management, to reduce problems and learn
• Work safety plans, to meet government regulations
• Contract review, to keep the balance right with clients
• Quality Assurance were instigated, to meet international ISO9000 compliance 

The upshot of this is we won the first installation project soon after I started followed by many more including iconic sites. See pictures below.

Here I worked with Lend Lease to establish an all green indoor wall for their Winter garden development in Sydney Atlantis Wall system.

Marketing

Along with web marketing, I sent regular newsletters out to many thousands of contacts. All newsletters highlighted successful projects we implemented for green roofs, vertical gardens, food production and water sensitive urban design. Over this period I had the pleasure of providing green infrastructure training to over 2000 professionals in Australia, The UAE, Malaysia and Turkey. My structured courses gave each individual an understanding of what can be achieved in terms of water management, reduction in carbon emissions, biodiversity and local food production.

See some successful green walls we built whilst I managed the installation division at Atlantis below:

Here we worked with Trico Constructions and the developer to pick suitable plants for this hot western facing wall in Bondi Sydney Atlantis Growall. I predominantly chose succulents that would provide an attractive display under the conditions.

THE BRIGHT Comprehensive Cancer Centre Randwick Hospital, here green walls and beautiful landscaping help patients cope with their predicament. I selected plants for windy shady conditions on the North side of the building. Plants are growing well. I worked with Oculus landscape architects an AW Edwards builders to ensure plants were safe for patients. Atlantis Growall.

More landscaping by Oculus at the Hospital for patients and staff alike. Beauty helps recovery.

On this one I worked with the architects, Mirvac and the builder Mainbrace to develop a green chimney for the kitchens below. North Sydney Council would not let Greenwood shopping centre build any more restaurants unless they had chimneys, and chimneys had to look beautiful from the surrounding high rise buildings.

Australian native biodiversity for a Green Roof is possible

Over the past 3 years I have been studying Coastal Sandstone Plateau Rock Plate Heath for its resilience. I am particularly interested in the way plants grow on shallow soils around Sydney in this vegetation type. There is a wide variety of diversity in both flora an fauna in this heath. There are some special plant adaptions and symbiotic relationships that make these plants thrive in harsh conditions. Wherever plants grow there is a rich abundance of lichens, mosses and insects above the ground. The symbiotic relationships ensure moisture is retained and nutrients provided to sustain a growth. Below the ground fungal mycorrhizal associations are related to nutrient exchange with fungus benefiting from sugars created by plants photosynthesis. The plants benefit from the nutrients available from the huge surface area that fungal hyphae provide. When plants are under extreme stress, after a few months without rain some take a deep red colour in their foliage. This could be a defence mechanism which is often associated in red leaves and toxic compounds.  Apart from field research my experiments included growing these plants in green roof modules over a 3 year period.  I observed how species persist and thrive. On the ridge tops around Berowra plants will grow in 15mm of soil and are possibly decades old. I grew plants in trays 45mm deep with great results. Plants were grown from collected seed and cuttings, I included lichens and site soil to include fungus. It is my hope that emulating this vegetation type on our buildings that biodiversity, particularly birds will have their habitat enhanced in our urban environment.

There are many species, some include Leptospermum arachnoides, Calytrix tetragona, Gahnia aspera, Patersonia sericea and my favourite Micromyrtus blakelyi.

Green roof plant Baeckea brevifolia turning red in a dry summer period. 

Green roof plants here is Baeckea and Casuarina nana growing in a mere 45mm depth of growing media for over 3 years in the same tray.

Trees led us to ourselves

We wrote philosophies, built faiths and took every kind of comfort from trees. They gave language to our existence as we put down roots, stretched our limbs, budded in infancy and were felled in old age. They were mute companions to our lives and worshipped beyond themselves as the better part of balance and aspiration. They offered steadiness and long patience even as we failed in those. They were meeting points and sites of rough justice. They gave the idea and supplied the material for shelter. They offered an image of completion, which was an illusion, but enough. Theirs was a whisper in the wind to the human ear both tragic and hopeful. Civilisation grew from exploiting, destroying, venerating and looking back on them. Trees led us to ourselves and we stood against them, trunk to trunk, arms upon branches, our thoughts tangled in the stars.

from: The Tree in Changing Light by Roger MacDonald (Random House, Sydney, 2001, pp. 153-169)

Ghaf tree Prosopis cineraria, Evolvement expedition to the UAE.

Take this Ghaf tree (Prosopis cineraria) I found on a journey in the UAE. It survives in the fiercest climate with roots down 30 metres indicating water. Providing relief for people and camels alike.