7.From dream to reality.Let us build a dream!
But then... everything changed!
Well, after visiting the Barracks of Ballajá and researching information about green roofs, we discovered there is a HUGE difference between both types of GREEN approaches. We realized that building green roofs was actually out of our reach and that we needed to make a decision on what we would end up doing. That's how we all got along and relearned that what we wanted to do were actually roof gardens and not green roofs.
With our minds and goals finally set on the right direction we were ready to start our main project on becoming the first school in Puerto Rico to incorporate ROOF GARDENS into their infrastructure and take our school a little closer to become a GREENER institution!
We had a Dream...and then we built that dream...
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| On this drawing we present our expectations of what we hope our rooftop garden will end up looking after we place build it. Thanks to the Industrial Arts class I took in Middle School with Mr. Matos I learned how to make a sketch to represent an idea into a drawing. This is an aerial view, it shows both the rooftop area will use as a control group (left) and experimental group (on right). |
First step: Brainstorming ideas to get the work done !
| Brainstorming ideas to begin working on our project. | Here we are after taking measurements of the roof area to determine how many wooden pallets we will need to use as our planting medium. | This is just one of the 48 pallets we will be needing. So, lets go get them! |
Let's Begin !
At the top you can see us working our first day as a team. This day was very interesting as everyone submitted ideas for the project. We decided how we would do the project, conducted surveys , researched on species of plants and the amount of these we would use. W e also measured the area of the roof , to know how many wooden pallets we would need, since we decided to use these as roof garden modules to plant them. T his idea came about after our coach showed us a video about the use of wooden pallets for vertical gardens.
Step two
| Picking up the wooden pallet we will be using. We got them for free at a factory here in Peñuelas, Puerto Rico. | Girl Power! | All tired up after filling the van with the wooden pallets. |
Lets Reuse, time to get our wooden pallets
In the pictures above, you can see our team ready to work. The work of this day consisted of transporting the pallets from a candle factory to the roof of our school. On this day we carried around 48 pallets, which will be re-used as posts or containers to cultivate the plants of the project. We soon found out we would end up carrying many more up those stairs!
Step three: Clean up time!
| Did you know? Cleaning is fun! | We used small gardening shovels to remove the dirt that was stuck in the drainage pipes of the roof. | The dust was too much that we also used bigger shovels! |
Clean up time!
We went to the roof of our school to clean the area we planned to use for our project. We used small gardening shovels to remove the dirt (dust from the roof and leaves) that was obstructing the drainage pipes of the roof. But the dust was too much that we also had to use bigger shovels. We also removed pieces of broken glass, bottles and branches that fell from the nearer trees from the roof.
