Emory Knoll Farms on the Edge of Sustainability
Emory Knoll Farms is supplying plants and consulting services for the ASLA green roof project. Find out why this company is on the cutting edge of green roof technology and how they walk the walk when it comes to sustainability.

photo courtesy of Emory Knoll Farms, Inc.

Ask any landscape architect, architect, horticulturist, academic, or anyone involved in the fledgling world of green roof design and installation who the go-to person for green roof plants is, and invariably Ed Snodgrass, the owner of Emory Knoll Farms, will come up. That's because Snodgrass, after embracing the idea of sustainable farming in the 1980s, has dedicated his entire operation to the cultivation and study of green roof plants.

Nestled in the Appalachian foothills of Maryland just south of Pennsylvania, Emory Knoll Farms is part cutting-edge green roof nursery and part old-school sustainable farm. Snodgrass has set up an operation that not only collaborates with major universities like Penn State, Michigan State, and North Carolina State but also proudly employs tried and true sustainability methods such as composting toilets, bio-diesel digesters, and 36 photovoltaic panels and five solar panels for heating water.

Emory Knoll Farms tested 300 new plants for green roof installation last year and has worked on 163 roof projects, accounting for over 1 million square feet of green roof surface thus far.

"We try to produce as much energy as we can," Snodgrass explains. "So as we can afford to make capital improvements, we want part of that capital to go to energy production of some kind."

A focus on green roofs
Snodgrass's long commitment to sustainability—the last time the farm used chemicals was in 1982—has led the business to focus completely on green roof plants for extensive green roofs. Snodgrass made the decision to concentrate on green roof plants because he sees an opportunity to make the technology more mainstream as local and state governments begin looking at ways to lessen the amount of impervious surfaces on building sites.

"The green roof in the United States is an emerging technology, and I want to devote myself to it because I think there's a large fund of knowledge that we haven't arrived at yet," he says. "I don't know how long it's going to take to get it all, but there aren't enough projects, and there's not enough information."

Snodgrass is doing his best to fill those information gaps. The farm tested 300 new plants for green roof installation last year and has worked on 163 roof projects, accounting for over 1 million square feet of green roof surface thus far.

He also sees landscape architecture as a profession that will contribute greatly to the advancement of green roof technology, which is why he has donated plants and consulting services to the ASLA green roof project. Snodgrass says he hopes that landscape architects will come to see green roofs as not only aesthetically valuable, but will use them for "curative and practical reasons."

But regardless of what type of roofs a client is looking for, Snodgrass believes landscape architects are the appropriate profession to take the lead on green roof design and installation.

"I think the landscape architect is very appropriate because it is a blend of horticulture and architecture when you're planting on top of a building," he says. "These systems need to be designed in relation to their balance of form and function-and the specifications need to be correct."

Bullish on green roofs
Snodgrass is, not surprisingly, bullish on the future of green roof technology and sees a time when regulations at the state and local level will make it advantageous for builders and developers to consider green roofs. He notes that states in the Chesapeake Bay watershed-Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia-have already passed regulations that will help in the proliferation of green roof technology. These rules mean that businesses that never would have considered a green roof in the past are now seeing them as viable options. He notes that Emory Knoll Farms is currently working on a green roof project for a car dealership in Maryland.

"I got a call from a general contractor in Washington the other day," he adds by way of example, "and he said 'for almost every project I'm doing, a green roof is at least considered.'"

Snodgrass also sees consumer demand driving the adaptation of green roofs. Noting that consumers are becoming more "eco-savvy," he predicts the day will come when green roofs may be used by businesses as a marketing tool. "The consumer," he notes, "extends to people who lease office space and people who work in malls and strip malls."

Green roofs on strip malls-now there's a vision for the future.