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Angus MacDonald MSP hails success of Grangemouth Green Roof project

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Angus MacDonald SNP party member for Falkirk East enjoyed a trip to a green roof opposite CalaChems reception on the 16th of April. Angus was joined by John Walker (CalaChem Building and Estates Manager), Suzanne Burgess (Buglife Scotland Manager) and Christopher Langton (from Bauder) to discuss the importance of green roofs and other green infrastructure for wildlife and people.

CalaChems green roof is over 140m2 in size and was installed in May 2015 through the Glorious Green Roof project with funding from HLF and EU life funds through EcoCo. This Inner Forth Landscape Initiative project has helped to create a stepping stone for wildlife allowing them to move and mix across the area of Grangemouth. Last year wildflowers on the roof including Kidney vetch, Thrift and Oxeye daisy provided forage for bumblebees, butterflies and even 7-spot ladybirds! An Oystercatcher also nested on the roof!

As well as providing habitat for wildlife at roof level, green roofs have a number of other benefits, including cooling the building in summer and insulating it in winter, reducing noise pollution and flooding, as well as increasing the lifespan of the roof!

Angus MacDonald MSP enjoyed his visit to the biodiverse roof and learning how it is benefitting the local area as well as CalaChem. This spring we will add extra wildflowers that will provide further forage opportunities for bees and other pollinators.

Photograph by Iain Sinclair

Greening the Grey

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The University of Glasgow have been working on a NERC Integrated Green Grey Infrastructure Funded project called Greening the Grey, with the aims of addressing gaps in the knowledge of how we green the parts of our cities and towns that need to remain grey for their primary function like seawalls, pavements and bridges. The project report has recently been completed. 

This report has several key features: 

  • The first UK synthesis of measures that can be used to green grey non-building assets such as bridges, coastal flood alleviation structures, street furniture and linear assets like railways. 
  • It provides an evidence-based directory of measures that can be used to help Green the Grey, drawing on the latest scientific research and innovations in practice from around the UK and beyond. 
  • Historic, urban, mowing and coastal environments are covered including 14 case studies, 22 one page Art-of-the-Possible examples and 16 bite sized Art-of-the-Possible vignettes. 
  • A critical success factors framework has been created to evaluate the multifunctional benefits of green grey solutions compared to business-as-usual grey engineering options. 
  • The framework has been used to provide cost-benefit comparisons for the case studies and art-of-the-possible examples. 

The report can be downloaded in different formats:

The project will be continuing for another 12 months to help embed the Greening the Grey/ Integrated Green Grey Infrastructure (IGGI) concept within organisations and learn how it has been helpful in informing policy and practice.