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Want to keep those energy costs low and protect that budget? Keeping your green roof sound is the place to start.

Keeping your green roof nice should provide its own motivation, but let’s face it: Life is busy.

There are meetings to attend and spouses to appease and dogs to feed. (Also, we should feed our children occasionally.)

We can’t always get to everything on the to do list, and the fact of the matter is, green roofs often take the hit when it comes to schedule rearrangements.

Sometimes for months. Or years.

The problem with that is, you could be wasting a huge amount of money on energy costs and setting yourself up for big problems later.

So just how do green roofs and stewardship work together, and how does regular oversight reduce energy costs? Let’s take a look.

We rely on pollinators for our food supply and other important plant crops, so it’s time we turn our gardens to their benefit.

Hanging hummingbird feeders are a lovely addition to the landscape, and no doubt your teeny feathered friends appreciate them.

No really, they do. We asked them.

But that’s not enough. With our ongoing destruction of natural landscapes in the building of urban and rural human structures, pollinators have faced steady habitat depletion. Many of them no longer have resting places or food, and so are declining alarmingly.

“Worldwide there is disturbing evidence that pollinating animals have suffered from loss of habitat, chemical misuse, introduced and invasive plant and animal species, and diseases and parasites,” explains Pollinator Partnership, adding that many are federally “listed species,” animals for whom there is empirical evidence of destruction and decline.

It’s time we start gardening for pollinators.

Wondering why pollinators matter? Because they help feed us and keep the environment in good shape.

With all the hype about honeybees these days, you’ve likely wondered at least once why pollinators matter.

We don’t blame you. The coverage of devastating (but probably overblown) conditions such as Colony Collapse Disorder have made it seem as though A Giant Bee Crisis and Probably Worldwide Famine are imminent.

We don’t mean to make light of environmental degradation, but you can relax: That’s not going to happen soon.

More importantly, the fearmongering over the honeybees has obscured other important issues, leading fewer people to ask themselves why pollinators matter beyond honeybees.

The simple answer to that question is: Pollinators provide services that humans simply can’t mimic by hand or with machines, so we must protect them at all costs.

Here’s a closer look.

Stormwater is liquid that results from rain, snow and other forms of precipitation. In an urban environment, we typically use the term “stormwater” in the context of surface water that aggregates on impermeable surfaces. 

Stormwater.

It just sounds kind of scary, right?

I mean, you’ve heard the term. You know it’s a problem. You understand that addressing it is of critical importance.

But unless you work in landscaping or an environmental niche, you may not understand what to do about it. As a homeowner, building manager, investor or institution, you probably feel unsure what your responsibility to the environment should take – and that’s okay.

Let’s talk about the definition of stormwater and what it means for you today.

Rooftop gardens bring more than beauty and energy to a formerly lackluster space. They also bring nature into the city, IMPROVING human health and offering valuable real estate for plants, pollinators and other wildlife.

Ever look out your office window and seen people having drinks on a rooftop garden across the way – and feel a serious urge to gatecrash their party?

Ever wish you could turn that abandoned roof space into a plant-bedecked, fairy light-strewn Eden, right in your own building?

Ever want to increase the psychosocial and physical healing times at your hospital with an elaborate green roof space, but you’re not sure how?

You, my friend, need a rooftop garden.

While sustainability and resilience should mean the same thing in urban ecological design, they too often do not – leading to misunderstandings that work against both.

The word “sustainability” conjures up everything from reusable grocery bags to solar panels to biofuel to green roofs … but how many of us actually use the word correctly in reference to any particular system?

Moreover, how many of us ensure, when we use it, that we’re actually contributing to the overall resiliency of the system in question?

We recently had a chance to speak with the inimitable Keith Bowers, president of Biohabitats and a renowned landscape architect and restoration ecologist. One of his most interesting ideas, in our humble opinion, is that resilience and sustainability should amount to the same thing, but too often they do not.

The question is, where did this divide come from, and what can we do to heal it for the sake of understanding urban ecology and creating meaningful programs to foster it in cities?

Rural stormwater management is a critical – and often under-addressed – need in our world today. Anywhere humans live, we need a smart plan for purifying water and funneling it where it needs to go. 

We should definitely celebrate the fact that stormwater management has become a better-known concept in cities across America.

* pause for champagne and party crackers *

However, the focus on cities has had one unintended side effect: In the effort to respond to urban needs, many people have forgotten the importance of rural stormwater management.

To us dark-defying humans, flipping on a light at night is as natural as eating or breathing. Unfortunately, it is incredible unnatural for many animals that rely on darkness to thrive.

It’s easy to go through daily life ignoring our surroundings, especially our external environments when we’re cozied up inside for the night.

Garage lighting? What of it? You don’t want someone to steal the basketball hoop, after all.

Office buildings lit up like Christmas trees all night long? Well, of course! We wouldn’t want miscreants to get the wrong idea – and plus, that skyline looks awfully pretty.

Problem is, the massive amount of light we put out each night is a form of pollution. In addition to obscuring a beautiful night sky, it confused birds and other animals that travel, eat or live their lives after the sun goes down. It’s seriously disruptive to our urban ecology.

We need to do something about it, and now.

Combined sewer overflow events plague many cities that rely on old infrastructure to manage both sanitation and surface runoff. It’s time we made a change.

If you’re like most, avoiding the contents of a toilet is pretty high on your list.

It might disgust you, therefore, to discover that the sewers in many large cities regularly back up and flow into the streets.

While this fact is certainly ripe for some bathroom humor, it’s actually a very serious problem. When heavy rains lead to an abundance of stormwater, some sewers can’t keep up. Current city planning incorporates stormwater management practices to prevent this from happening, but our older urban spaces have yet to hop on board.

it’s time we change that.

Urban ecological design is a critical discipline if we want to bridge the divide between city infrastructure and the natural world.

So, exactly what is urban ecological design, you’re wondering? Well, that starts with asking: What’s wrong with our cities in the first place?

You don’t need to read City Mouse, Country Mouse to understand the divide between our sparsely populated rural places and our bustling urban spaces, complete with all the conveniences of modern times.

(Although if you haven’t read that book, you should – whether or not you have children. It’s a classic, mostly because, mice with clothes.)

The problem is that too many people see cities as centers of civilization, exclusive of the environment. On the other hand, nature is an idyllic escape that simply can’t exist inside metropolitan boundaries.

Frankly, we don’t care for that way of thinking. The only way we’ll heal the environment and transform cities into healthy places to live is to meld the two. That’s where urban ecological design comes in.