Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/395149
Lynnfield, an enterprise that amplifies the concept behind green rooftops popping up around the world. And while outfit- ting the MarketStreet building to grow a portion of the supermarket's produce is a big investment, the payoff is on the plate. "The produce we get is more nutri- ent dense and fresher than anything else available, because the distance between where it's grown and where it's being con- sumed is really as minimal as it can be," says Jessie Benhazl, CEO of Green City Growers. Urban farming also makes more locally grown food available in congested regions like eastern Massachusetts, and since rooftop gardens and farms repur- pose unused space, there's no competi- tion for ground-level real estate. Some 20 feet up in the air, if you ignore the HVAC equipment, the leafy rows growing from the soil inside a 130-by-130- foot perimeter with stainless steel edging look a lot like a conventional farm. "We essentially made a giant planter out of the roof by covering the whole surface," says Mark Winterer, director of operations for Recover Green Roofs. While weaving a green roof into the fabric of a building's design before its construction is more direct than retrofitting one already in existence, the considerations remain the same: ensuring the building can handle the loading capacity of the farm, prevent- ing hard-to-fix defects in the waterproof- ing, incorporating safety features, and mitigating storm water runoff. Agriculture ne 108 nshoremag.com November 2014 "The produce we get is more nutrient dense and fresher than anything else available, because the distance between where it's grown and where it's being consumed is really as minimal as it can be." Locally Grown The vegetables cultivated on the roof are sold in the produce section.