Roof Top Gardening is an effective means of eliminating water run off. Roof Top gardens are self sustaining, designed to save water, reduce energy costs, and provide a beautiful ecological setting for native plants, herbal gardening, rolling exotic grasses, and much more.

Water conservation increases a landscape site’s ability to thrive amid drought conditions, water use restrictions and the rising cost of municipal water and to be a responsible guardian of nature in the process. The scope is to present a wide range of water conservation strategies. Rainwater retention will vary due to the depth of green roof growing medium, type of drainage system and intensity and duration of the rain event. It is difficult, then, to cite definitive retention statistics for all green roofs and all storms. As an example, a 4" layer of expanded clay growing medium retained 47.29% of a 2.2 inch rain event lasting 30 hours. To get some idea of the annual storm water load reduction potential with th e help of this data 1000 square foot green roof might relieve the municipal storm water system of approximately 14,500 gallons of rainfall annually. Without the green roof this rainwater would otherwise be channeled through the public storm water drainage system, unused by nature. For municipalities with already taxed and/or aged storm water and waste water systems, green roofs alleviate a crucial burden on the municipal infrastructure.