Living green SOUTHERN REVIVAL

All hands on roof. Ellen Erdreich passes on lessons in sustainability to her granddaughter Sofia, 5, by planting a variety of sedums on the roof of her townhouse in Birmingham, Alabama, designed by her son, a local architect. Greenery helps cool the house in the scorching summers and absorbs rainwater during downpours, which minimizes runoff and the need for irrigation.

When former Alabama Congressman Ben Erdreich and his wife Ellen decided in 2002 to return home to Birmingham after 22 years in Washington, D.C., they wanted to live in the heart of the city to enjoy the downtown revival. Moreover, they were interested in exploring a new style of city living and asked their son, Jeremy, a Birmingham architect, to design a contemporary townhouse that would be “as green as possible.” Although loft-style apartments in renovated factory buildings had recently become popular in this former steel capital of the South, no private single-family home had been built downtown in 60 or so years.

The garden plan called for a large rectangular garden.

“Of course, the greenest thing about the house is just the fact that it is downtown,” said Jeremy Erdreich, “so my parents can walk everywhere and don’t have to use their car.”

The site the Erdreichs chose was a challenge: a 25-foot-by-140-foot strip of parking lot on 2nd Avenue North that backs onto an alley and is near one of the city’s highway connectors. But it is across the street from their son’s o_ce and near the old, brick high-rise buildings where both Ben’s and Ellen’s ancestors lived and worked more than a hundred years ago when Birmingham was a rich boomtown that resembled turn-of-the-century New York. “We were returning to a place that had been our family home,” Ellen says. “It had special meaning for us.”

Dominated by a raised planter with black bamboo and a fountain

From the beginning of the design process, gardens were to be an essential part of the townhouse. And they were especially important to Ellen, an avid gardener. She had a long wish list that her son and Michael Steiner, a local landscape designer, had to consider in planning the gardens, from “moving water that made a noise” to “trees and shrubs that grew quickly.” In a typical row house, light and air enter the house either from the front or the back, but Jeremy designed a three-story, open-air atrium to bring light into the center of the new house, which was finally completed in 2007.

“Because of the atrium, during the daylight hours, my parents generally don’t need to use lights, which cuts down dramatically on electricity,” said Jeremy. “Floor-to-ceiling glass sliders open the rooms to the atrium, which even in the heat of summer is cool and shady, lessening the need for air conditioning in the house.” The atrium is a private place where Ellen sometimes has tea while in her bathrobe. It is planted with large-leaved bamboo and a Japanese aralia. A camellia is espaliered on the wall; and a creeping fig vine is flourishing, its delicate green fingers already reaching beyond the second floor. Belgian paving blocks used for the atrium floor are recycled and set in sand to improve the surface permeability, sending less water into the drains.

Though Jeremy has not done a detailed monitoring of the utilities in the house, he believes that the shallow green roof - planted with sedums, phlox and a lovely white groundcover rose (Rosa Snow CarpetR) - has indeed cut down the need for heating and cooling in the house. “The cost of putting in the green roof was three times what a normal rubber roof would have cost,” says Jeremy. “We had to use an Atlanta installer, because we couldn’t find any licensed installers in Birmingham. But, as more and more people ut in green roofs, hopefully it will be easier to find licensed local installers and the price will come down.” (The new regional socialsecurity center in Birmingham, completed just after the Erdreich townhouse, includes a large green roof.)

Ellen describes the main garden between the house and the garage as her “oasis” in the city, a place to experience and enjoy the changing seasons. And indeed, the way she and Michael have designed it, there is color and fragrance in the garden year-round. Originally, Jeremy and Michael had hoped to integrate runoff water from the garage roof into the recycling water system in the two pools, but it proved too costly. Instead, Michael used a swale to catch the roof runoff and lead it to the main drain near the house. He filled the area in and around the depression with fragrant, moisture-loving native plants—such as swamp azalea, sweetshrub and leucothoe - from Louisiana plantswoman Margie Jenkins. In the mix too are plantings of Virginia sweetspire that Michael propagated, which produce spectacular fall foliage from crimson-burgundy to yellow-orange.

Between the main house and the garage, as well as an intimate atrium to provide light and air to the center of the townhouse.

Along with the natives are Asian plant varieties that Ellen loves. One of her favorites is a Styrax japonica, which produces a profusion of tiny, fragrant white bell-shaped flowers in the spring. “This year,” she says, “it was so glorious, it gave me goose bumps.” She planted the tree by the kitchen windows so she can see it when she’s both inside and outside. And she has enjoyed the black bamboo in the raised planter, which has quickly sprouted to more than 15 feet and bends slightly now, providing shade on a hot Birmingham summer day over the path leading to the garage. Asian plants—sweetbox, varieties of oriental hellebores and Daphe odora ‘Alba’—are responsible for a profusion of fragrant flowers in late winter.

Similar materials were used in all the garden areas, such as folded sheets of COR-TEN steel, employed to fence off the property from the neighboring parking lot, while allowing airflow. In the foreground are fragrant, moisture-loving native plants, such as swamp azalea and sweetshrub, supplemented by Asian trees and shrubs that the owners particularly favor.

Ellen wanted a garden that she could take care of herself, and the plants she and Michael chose are fairly self-sufficient and have survived Birmingham’s mild winters well. But in the past few years, Ellen has an increasingly competent helper—her 5-year-old granddaughter Sofia, who has become an astute student of changes in the garden. Every visit to her grandmother’s house is an adventure. “What’s blooming in the garden now?” she always asks. Ellen is passing on to Sofia her love of nature as well as important lessons in sustainability. “It is critical for all of us that children learn to love the Earth,” Ellen said, “and to make sure that it’s there - for their grandchildren.”