YMCA MK scores green roof first

Green roofs are permanent, right? Wrong – and the recent World Green Roof Day event on the top of Milton Keynes’ £13 million YMCA building provided a brilliant opportunity to see at close quarters how flexible, beautiful and relocatable they can be. 

The nine-storey YMCA MK became the first building in the UK to be topped off with a green roof moved from one building to another, in this case from former council offices in the city to the new-build YMCA, which provides almost 200 apartments for its residents plus offices, community facilities, a cafe, nursery and social enterprise spaces.

Each month YMCA MK holds a community lunch, with June’s dedicated to World Green Roof Day and, fittingly, held on its rooftop to allow city dignitaries and visitors to see at first hand how a living roof can be incorporated into a build project and find out more about the many benefits they deliver, from supporting pollinators and insects to helping prevent flooding by managing stormwater run-off, cooling buildings/cities and improving air quality.

Dubbed ‘The Green Roof Project’, the installation has played an important role for YMCA MK, with a key part of the socially responsible and eco friendly project involving the training and certification of young people in the installation and maintenance of green roofs, giving them a qualification and career path. They also have a quiet, calming space to make use of, growing fruit and vegetables, keeping bees, learning about biodiversity etc, as well as aiding their mental well-being.

Milton Keynes regularly claims top spots in listings for the UK’s greenest city, with councillors having stated their aim to make it one of the greenest cities in the world and be carbon negative by 2050. Living roofs play a starring role in this aspiration, with councillors describing The Green Roof Project as ‘an asset to the community’ and  ‘key pillar’ of the city’s drive to be more environmentally friendly. Developers are being encouraged to incorporate green roofs into as many commercial and domestic projects as possible, converting unused flat roofs into biodiverse spaces blooming with bee-friendly sedum or wildflowers.

A leading light in this greening movement is Chris Bridgman of city-based ‘gardens in the sky’ specialist installers Bridgman & Bridgman, which trained and supported the YMCA residents to first install the green roof on former council offices at Saxon Court and then lift and relocate it less than a mile to their new building.

Key to the success of the project was utilising a modular green roof system with all elements (including substrate and plants) contained within one-man lift trays. The award-winning M-Tray solution from British manufacturer Wallbarn was chosen, allowing the green roof sections to be relocated with little or no disturbance to the plants.

Chris said:

“M-Tray allowed us to quickly lift and transport. It is totally unique in that way. You can take M-Tray and turn roofs green overnight.”

Wallbarn director Julian Thurbin and the relocated M-Tray on the roof of YMCA MK

Wallbarn director Julian Thurbin visited site on a number of occasions to see work progressing:

“Seeing M-Tray installed first on the roof of Saxon Court and then after being moved to YMCA MK was a first. The trays look great, with gorgeous flowering sedum and wildflowers bringing colour, texture and habitats for a wide variety of pollinators and insects. We’re delighted to support Chris and his team by donating the M-Tray and it was great to return and see it – quite literally – blooming. It just demonstrates how versatile the system is and how easy it is remove and re-lay.”

Julian and his team are no strangers to greening more unusual spaces. Working with out-of-home advertising specialist Clear Channel they have pioneered the installation of green roofs on to bus stops, with many hundreds of square metres of M-Tray topping off transports shelters up and down the country, creating ‘bee super highways’ in urban settings and softening hard city landscapes.