Exciting News - Green Roof Tax Abatement Extended

The New York State legislature extended and improved the NYC green roof tax abatement! New changes allow the maximum value to be doubled, which means property owners can save as much as $200,000 per project. It also encourages the use of biodiverse plants (we love!)

Our friends at S.W.I.M. broke the news and we couldn't be happier! They've also shared their independent evaluation of the NYC Green Roof Tax Abatement report which assesses the efficacy of the abatement.

Proving its a good time to go green!

The Grass Is Greener

Today is just the perfect Friday, and while this is perfect weather for many of you and many of your plants, it is unfortunately also the perfect weather for weeds too. Remember to get out there and stay on top of weeding before the mugwort has reached 10’ high!

Its also a good time to cut back tall plants that look better a little shorter: coreoposis, eupatoirum (Joe Pye Weed), Balloon flower, and Asters. We’ve been tending to one of our very lush green roofs in Brooklyn - you can see the Mexican Feather Grass is thriving!

Including another green roof in Tribeca where the same grass is looking beautiful. We’ve experimented with potting this grass in planters before with fatal results - the drainage was just not good enough and there was way too much irrigation. Green roofs are perfect for this grass, they provide excellent drainage and are generally dry, sunny landscapes.

*Baby not included with green roof installation.

Want some more tips? The lovely Jeanne Rostaing featured one of our recent projects in Fort Greene, and I sat in for some Q&A.

Pfizer Goes Green!

The former Pfizer building located in South Williamsburg, Brooklyn is getting a green roof paid for by the Department of Environmental Protection Green Infrastructure Grant. Alive Structures partnered with the buildings new owner, Acumen Capital Partners, to apply for the grant, and we received it! The roof will be 28,000 SF of sedum and native plants, there will also be a section for agriculture.

The building where Viagra was once manufactured is now an incubator for hip Brooklyn food start ups like McClure’s Pickles, Brooklyn Soda Works, Steve’s Ice Cream andMadécasse, to name a few. The building is perfect for food production with all of it's laboratories, sterile environment, and climate control storage. Acumen Capital Partners is committed to restoring old factory buildings and keeping them for local industry as opposed to making a quick buck and turning them all into "luxury lofts".  We're hoping for a fall installation. Stay tuned for more news about it as we move forward. 

See the DEP press release to find out about all the Green Infrastructure Projects chosen for 2013.
Here we are at the opening ceremony which took place on the Pfizer building last week. 

Marni in the middle of a sea of suits. On the Pfizer Building with DEP.

Coldspring to Heatwave

Star Magnolia in full bloom at 23rd St. 

It's 80 degrees this April 9th and you're freakin' happy though possibly overdressed and hating your office job. Even though you might not care on this glorious NYC day, climate change is eliminating spring......and your plants do mind.

This is your plant this past month:

'It's snowing, no way I'm gonna come out now.'
'Nice, finally! I'm going to send out some new growth.'
'Still nice. Sweet! I'm gonna bud.'
'Damn! I'm freezing my buds off! My owner's going to think I'm dead now. And I might be....'
'Oh, good. I'm still alive, and it's nice out again. I wish my owner would water me and stop thinking I'm dead.'
'Damn! It's hot!!!! Water! Agua! Eau! What language do I need to speak to get you to water?!'

Remember to water your gardens, green roofs, and especially potted plants, even when it goes back down to 50 deg.

Coldspring / Hot Blog

Natasha and Marni Majorelle, March 2013, Prospect park- Forest School!

So our blog is back after a year of hibernating, just in time for spring! Even in this very un-spring like spring we're having. The excuse for not blogging, if there can be such a thing, is having a baby! And now that she's 10 months old and can fend for herself, I can blog all I want. Proof of baby posted above. You can tell she's mine because she's already dirty.

The first thing I'm doing is returning to the office - at good old 33 Flatbush! A few things have changed, like a gigantic tower built next door and this terrifying crane. Other than that it's still the great old place it's always been with amazing people and businesses. 

Witchhazel in bloom in Madison Square Park.

Besides doing things like taxes, there's work to be done outside the office as well. Somethings we're doing, and you might want to as well in your own garden, is pruning, cutting dead things off, mulching, adding a layer of compost, and enjoying the beautiful blooms of Witchhazel, Hamamelis  . 
These unusual blooms look like yellow fire crackers or shooting stars.  


So even though you're freezing and haven't finished your taxes, prune your rose (learn how!), cut down the grasses (if you haven't already in the fall), remove all those unsightly leaves surrounding the gorgeous blooms on your hellebore, add some mulch and compost, warm up, and then have a beer and gulash! It will be 90 degrees before you know it. 

Tell the EPA to raise water quality standards!

People swimming at Coney Island in 2010. Image via.

Everyone at Alive Structures got into the field of green infrastructure for a number of reasons, but for all of us one of the most important of those is improving local water quality. So we really appreciate that the folks at S.W.I.M. Coalition (Storm Water Infrastructure Matters) are on top of policy issues that affect water quality and safety. Currently, the EPA has a renewal of their beach pollution regulations on the docket, last updated in 1986.

The proposed standards are not strict enough. They allow for 90 averaging of pathogen levels, a period almost as long as New York City's beachgoing season. As S.W.I.M. put it in their email, "Under the proposal, the pathogen levels could be unacceptably high every Saturday during the beach season but the 90-day average may still meet the standards." And this does happen - Riverkeeper, a New York non-profit, tests water quality at a variety of locations around New York City. Their Pier 96 at West 56th St testing location is a boat launch and recreational kayaking spot for New Yorkers. Enterococcus counts (fecal pathogens) at Pier 96 failed water quality standards on four of the six testing days in 2011, and got as high as seven times the limit on one dirty day in May, but if the tests in the ~90 days between Memorial Day and Labor Day are averaged the water quality was acceptable.

Gross.

National Resources Defense Council has a petition to the EPA urging them to make these regulations stricter. Today's the last day to comment so we hope you'll sign!

Kids are particularly vulnerable to getting sick from dirty water. Image via.

More Terrariums, if possible....

I know the design world is gaga about terrariums. Maybe they've become so trendy, that they're actually no longer in style. This sentiment is expressed in the blog site I was sent by an architect friend : fuck your noguchi coffee table, which states "fuck your terrarium lamp" with image below.

Nonetheless, my enthusiasm for terrariums is actually just now blossoming.

I'm attaching some images of a terrarium we built for a client using a vessel made from recycled glass. The vessel was pretty expensive because of it's elegant shape and lightweight material. But there are plenty of glass jars and pre-existing terrarium like containers which could be used for free or for little cost.

What's fun about building terrariums is the creation of another world and experimenting with different types of plants. I built this one with my mom which was fun. But also getting the plants through the bottleneck and into the soil can be a bit nerve racking. Anyway, nothing is very satisfying unless there's challenge involved.