The Green Roof Project in Milton Keynes is a community project which aims to encourage the use of urban greening nationwide, using an accessible roof space in one of the fastest growing city in the UK. Living roof specialist Bridgman & Bridgman is spearheading this beautiful project. Let’s have a chat with Chris Bridgman.
Can you tell us about the project?
“The Green Roof Project in Milton Keynes has been developed to encourage people in Milton Keynes to green their rooftops, in the fight against climate change, to reduce flood risk and to increase biodiversity in the town and city centres. But the Green Roof Project has is also been about the skill shortage in our industry. In Milton Keynes we’ve trained residents of the YMCA in green roofing and they have gone to their LANTRA qualification and now they are fully trained green roofers, which means they can help with our growing industry and potentially work anywhere in the UK.”
That’s great! How did you do this?
“Initially we’ve built a green roof on the old council offices. And part of the project, the legacy, was then to move it to the YMCA, when that site was redeveloped. And we were fortunate enough that the developers associates let us use the roof, as well as Milton Keynes council. And they both helped with the funding towards it. When we came to move the green roof itself, we needed additional support. There was an amazing response on Crowd funding platforms to help us with the cranes, haulage and all the forklifts to get it moved. We are incredibly thankful to all those people!”
What do you want to aim with this project?
“We’re going to create a showcase to green roofing and all the different types of green roofs that you can have: bio-solar, blue roof, green roof. But what’s really important and what’s great about this project, that we’re going to grow and produce food on the roof with residents, which can be used in the social enterprise café on the ground level. So it’s got a lot of meaning. It’s got reason for those residents to use the space and ultimately it can provide food for them as well.”
What does this mean for the industry?
“We are incredibly grateful for all of the industry partners that have joined us on this, including Zoontjens. Without them we couldn’t have done this. And this is such a strong coming together of the whole industry and all the suppliers. It just shows how well our whole industry works together and I think that will help us going all forward in the future.”
More about this project?
Take a look!