360 Skyline - East Village
A groovy garden in a funky neighborhood allows for another unconventional alliance between Ross Martin Design and Highview Creations. Here a floor through rooftop terrace, broken up by elevator bank and stairwells, makes two distinct garden rooms providing views of north and south skylines and all three iconic bridges spanning Manhattan to Brooklyn.
RMD also works with John Wagner’s Bluestone Contracting to create costume trellising, decking, and pergolas, incorporating barndoor sliding panels to hide maintenance, storage, and mechanics. JWBC sources sustainably grown and harvested clear cedar for these projects.
Here a HVC devised arc of green roof blurs the edges of the new deck and provides expanded planting spaces. This allows RMD to experiment with an ancient German growing method called hugel Kultur recently reemerging in ground permaculture projects. This is likely the first time they’ve been tried on a rooftop. Hugel beds are mounding gardens with altering layers of biomass (plant cuttings), decaying wood, and soil. Food crops are planted directly into the mounds where roots find their way into the soft rotting wood siphoning nutrients, water, and minerals it retains and releases. The entire contained ecosystem becomes habitat for nourishing microbial life. Talk about outside of the box!
Once again, space and light a premium, RMD creatively maximizes the incredible potential. Upwards ho once again! Flattened this time. Custom metal planter boxes are fashioned perfectly atop parapet walls. Espalier—fruit trees and shrubs trained horizontally—apples, pears, plums, and cherries sprawl along the trellises and on the hugel mound. While grapes shade the pergola on the south facing trellis. Meanwhile blueberries flourish on the north. Stately Canadian hemlocks and Wate’s Gold white pine, service berry, and redbud shade, soften, and color as well.
Throughout the two garden spaces splashes of tropical color pop from the native and food planting brightening the whole with a bit of levity.
