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By Rebecca Wade, Abertay University | Photo Credit: Leong Him Woh, CC BY-SA

How a garden on your roof could fight floods this winter

In recent years, there seems to have been a rise in the extreme weather all over the world from terrible flooding in Bangladesh and Pakistan, the record cold snap in North America, to one of the wettest winters on record in the UK.

Extreme events are very difficult to tackle, and in some cases there is little we can do, other than increase our preparedness and our recovery response. However there is one thing we can do in response to smaller scale, more common events such as flooding from intensive rain showers. As winter closes in on, it's worth looking at some of the ways we can better manage excess water.

People have tackled floods for centuries, but modern urban development has thrown up a set of new challenges. The more we develop the landscape, the more rainwater stays on the surface rather than sinking into the soil. That means water gets onto the roads and into drains more quickly, bypassing some aspects of the natural hydrological cycle.

Green roof at Arlington County. | Photo Credit: Arlington County, CC BY-SA

Rooftop plants (including green-roofs and roofgardens) along with rainwater collectors and rain gardens can help slow things down and spread the impact of heavy rain out over a longer period. The idea is to replace some of the trees, grass, hollows and wetlands that have been lost to concrete, and so mimic a more...

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Rooftop gardens can help control urban flooding

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