As an attempt for the Students Society of Landscape Architecture to recruit students for its academic department, the organization decided to do something visual for VEISHEA.

Placed in front of the College of Design, SSLA spent 6 months planning and constructing a display to demonstrate the uses of green roofs.

The idea came when Jessica Teskey, president of SSLA and senior in landscape architecture, attended a class where Jennifer Bousselot, lecturer in horticulture, gave a presentation about green roofs. Allie Loecke, student representative for the American Society of Landscape Architects and senior in landscape architecture, also attended and gained interest.

“We thought it would be a really interesting thing for us as a club to build, and so we got in touch with [Bousselot],” Teskey said. “We’ve been getting in contact with a bunch of different companies to help provide the plant material, it’s been a really long process but we’re really proud of how it’s turned out.”

The display has three miniature roofs or modules to it, each displaying a different type of green roof.

“When Jen came to talk to us, she described the different types of green roofs,” Loecke said.

Intensive green roofs are a thicker green roof in which heavier plant materials such as trees and shrubs can be planted with a thicker soil content.

An extensive green roof is basically just sedum modules, like the plants seen on top of the King Pavilion. Those are two to thee inches minimum, and up to six inches deep, Loecke said.

“We thought it was important to show both green roofs in our display and the design came about where we would have the intensive green roof and extensive green roof and then something a little bit smaller as an extensive green roof,” Loecke said.

Loecke said green roofs have many benefits. They help collect storm water, preventing run-off, they prevent roofs from overheating, otherwise known as the heat island effect, their longevity beats ordinary roofs and the green roofs themselves provide habitats for birds and other animals.

The group hopes to grab students’ attention at VEISHEA, but also alumni to get the word out about green roofs, answering student questions and demonstrating the uses of a green roof.

“The other audience that they’d like to attract are the alumni who are coming back for VEISHEA,” Bousselot said. “They want them to understand that Iowa State and especially the landscape architecture students are interested in looking at green building designs.”

Teskey said she hopes the display will help promote SSLA and interest students about landscape architecture.

“We also wanted to promote our SSLA, so often we’re just pushed underneath the wing of architects or lost in the college of design,” she said. “We really wanted to come out and say we’re our own major and we’re very capable of doing really beautiful work.”

SSLA wants to keep the display up until graduation since most of its members are graduating. Once the display is deconstructed, the group has plans of what to do with the modules. The group currently is working with CyRide to implement some of the modules for a bus stop.

“We’re in the very early stages of talking to CyRide to offer a living on project,” Loecke said. “What we’ve proposed to them is to take one of the existing CyRide bus stops and to place a couple of the modules on top of the CyRide bus stop.”