Green Roofs for Stormwater Management – Advanced Manufacturing Center
April 1st, 2025|
Green Roofs for Stormwater Management
Featuring: St. Louis Community College’s Advanced Manufacturing Center
St. Louis, MO | Roof Top Sedum, LLC d/b/a LiveRoof® Midwest
This month we’re highlighting the St. Louis Community College’s new Advanced Manufacturing Center located at the Florissant Valley Campus in St. Louis, Missouri. This leading-edge facility spans nearly 100,000 square feet and serves as a world-class hybrid education facility incorporating multiple types of modern learning environments. The facility focuses on two main areas of study: engineering and workforce development.
The engineering component includes state-of-the-art spaces for engineering sciences, robotics, business, and IT. The workforce development component features spaces for automated controls and composites training, welding labs, HVAC and industrial maintenance programs, along with a pre-employment program.
This LiveRoof® project encompasses three separate roof areas and utilizes the LiveRoof® 8” Maxx system to meet the St. Louis Metropolitan Sewer District Regulations as a best management practice for reducing stormwater runoff. The LiveRoof® Maxx vegetated roof areas will reduce rainfall runoff by 9,936 gallons when fully saturated, based on the total water storage capacity of the LiveRoof® Maxx system of 2 gallons per square foot or 3.15 inches of rainfall (assuming initial moisture of 0.25 inches prior to a rain event).
With an 8-inch soil depth, the LiveRoof® system was planted with native varieties to enhance habitat and support pollinators. Each square foot of the LiveRoof® Maxx system was planted with one plant, while Sedum kamtschaticum was used throughout, as a living mulch and provides early spring blooms for pollinators.
The plant mix is diverse, with half of each of the three roof areas containing groupings of the grass Sporobolus heterolepis ‘Tara’, a compact selection of prairie dropseed. The remaining square footage is evenly planted with ‘Kobold’ Gayfeather, ‘Moonshine’ Yarrow, Pow Wow Wildberry Echinacea, and ‘Goldsturm’ Rudbeckia.
The installation was delivered on nine semi-trailers, each loaded on one side with racks of ‘Tara’ dropseed and on the other side with racks of the other four plants. This arrangement allowed the installer to create random groupings of plants while maintaining a consistent distribution across the entire roof expanse. The goal was to create flowing, natural drifts of flowers and grasses throughout the green roof areas.
Project Details:
LiveRoof® Accessories:Architect:JEMA
Landscape Architects: DG2 Design
General Contractor:Kadean Construction
LiveRoof® Installer:Commercial Landscape Services, Inc.
Roof Top Sedums (LiveRoof® Midwest), one of the original LiveRoof® growers, supplied the plants for this project. Co-owners Teresa Nelson, a Landscape Architect, and her sister Roxanne Nagel, GRP, Grower, and Horticulturist, founded Roof Top Sedums in 2007. Over the past 18 years as LiveRoof® affiliates, they have completed numerous amazing projects.
About this Article:
This is the third article in our ongoing series:Green Roofs for Stormwater Management. We hope you enjoy following this series throughout the year.
I’m Jodi Griffin, Business Development Manager for LiveRoof® Global. Feel free to reach out to me via email atjodi@liveroof.com.
For more information about Grower Name - Click HERE
