RBC Blue Water Roof Garden
Designer Professor Nigel Dunnett and The Landscape Agency
http://bluewater.rbc.com
For the third year in a row, Royal Bank of Canada returns to RHS Chelsea Flower Show with
an urban, rooftop garden, integrating a recreational space with innovative biodiversity and
habitat features. Designed by Nigel Dunnett and The Landscape Agency, the RBC Blue
Water Roof Garden explores the potential of ‘skyrise greening’ to bring trees, meadows and
wetlands into the heart of the densest of cities for the benefit of urban dwellers. Almost every aspect of the design and the garden is about supporting wildlife and biodiversity. A central wetland area captures rainwater runoff, whilst a winding boardwalk leads to a dramatic building
clad in habitat panels. Low-tech living walls that require no irrigation help to enclose the garden. The rooftop infrastructure of cooling vents and air-conditioning units are transformed into sculptural habitat features. The whole garden is filled with flower-rich planting, divided into four main planting zones. A shade/woodland zone, based loosely on the ground flora of the woodlands of Eastern North America will include plants such as, Aquilegia canadensis, Trillium grandiflora, Mertensia virginica, Phlox divaricatus and Tiarella ‘Spring symphony’. A zone of sunny edges/green roof planting will be a mosaic of bright colours and grasses to create an urban sky meadow. Plants for free-draining soils in sun will be used, such as Allium schoenoprasum,
Dianthus carthusianorum, Erysimon ‘Bowles Mauve’, Festuca amythestina, and Salvia ‘Maynight’.
A wetland marginal zone will be a mass of blue Meconopsis with textural and foliage plants,
such as Deschampsia flexuosa, Dryopteris lepidopoda, Hosta ‘Tom Schmid’ and Lychnis floscucuil.
An aquaticz one will include dramatic foliage plants emerging from the water, such as
Cyperus eragrostis, Equisetum japonicum, Juncus effusus and Phragmites variegatus. The RBC Blue Water Roof Garden is in keeping with the goals of the RBC Blue Water Project, which is a wide- ranging, 10 year global commitment to help protect the world’s most precious natural resource: fresh water. This is the third year that RBC has collaborated with Nigel Dunnett and The Landscape Agency to explore themes around urban water management. The garden also reflects the key principles and ideas of the lead designer, who has pioneered research and application of green roofs, rain gardens and urban meadows in the UK, together with the integration of art and science to promote more widespread uptake of environmentally-friendly design approaches. Nigel Dunnett has designed medal-winning gardens for RBC at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show
in 2009, 2011 and 2012, and was lead horticultural and planting design consultant for the
London 2012 Olympic Park, and joint designer of the Olympic 2012 gardens.