Landscapers set hundreds of sedum starts last spring. By next summer the roof of Ford Hall should be abloom.

By Elise Gibson

Anyone flying over Ford Hall next summer could catch a view of this: a massive checkerboard of white, pink, and yellow flowers arrayed against low-growing foliage, filling a 19,000-square-foot rooftop.

Ford Hall’s green roof, planted in several varieties of alpine and desert sedum, is more than an architectural novelty, though. A integral part of the building’s environmental focus, the planted areas will insulate the roof in summer and winter, and will play a key role in the building’s stormwater management system. “Sedum absorbs a lot of water quickly,” said Joe Payne, senior associate with Towers/Golde landscape architects. During light rainfalls, water might not even leave the rooftop; heavier rains will send runoff into a series of cisterns that will then return gray water back to the building for use in laboratories and other nonpotable needs.

Payne used a variety of sedums, planted alternately in repeating squares, so that the plants could be studied and compared over time for durability, dominance, water retention, or other characteristics. “We’re hoping study programs will develop,” he said.

At sixty-five feet above the ground, the rooftop doesn’t have railings, so it will not be accessible to the public.
One floor down, though, a stunning terrace garden—filled with ornamental grasses in different shades and textures, low-spreading juniper and even a few small flowering fringe trees—will offer a casual spot to sit and enjoy the campus view. “I wanted it to be interesting year-round, and to have a lot of contrasting textures and colors,” Payne said. Among the plants are summer-flowering yuccas and alliums, bluestem grass that turns rusty orange in the fall, white-flowering fringe trees, and evergreen grasses.

Unlike the shallow rooftop garden, which will “get the water that Mother Nature provides,” the terrace garden will be irrigated and will require minimal maintenance, Payne said.

On the ground level, the relatively small area that surrounds the building has been heavily planted in trees, ground covers, and shrubs. The landscape architects worked with a diverse group of trees—shadberry, trident maple, magnolia, cherry, hackberry—to complement the campus arboretum. “It will be a very nicely vegetated site when we get through,” Payne said. “It will be quite lush.”

Ford Hall dedication
Two years after it broke ground, Ford Hall, all 140,000 square feet of it, will be ready for its close-up on October 16.
The dedication ceremony will be preceded by a 4 p.m. panel discussion at Sage Hall, featuring an alumna representing each of the five sciences. The actual dedication will be at 5:30 p.m. outside the main atrium doors. A reception will follow.
The building will house classrooms, faculty offices, and research labs in engineering, computer science, chemistry, molecular biology, and biochemistry. Other science buildings on campus, including Bass, Sabin-Reed, and McConnell, will continue to be used.  About 30 percent of Smith students major in the sciences.