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Sidonie Carpenter is a landscape architect and designer, and recipient of the Pratt Foundation/ISS Institute overseas fellowship. Sidonie is also the owner of two successful landscape design companies based in Brisbane.
A prominent figure in the green roof movement, Sidonie Carpenter is the vice president of Green Roofs Australia, a not-for-profit membership organisation that promotes “green roofs as an effective response to climate change and city heat island effects, and to reduce buildings’ carbon footprints”.
So what exactly is a green roof? According to the Green Roofs for Healthy Cities website: “a green roof is an extension of the existing roof which involves a high quality water proofing and root repellent system, a drainage system, filter cloth, a lightweight growing medium and plants.” If you’re like me and you didn’t understand a word of that definition, I’ve included some photographs taken by Sidonie for all us lay people who have never heard of the concept of green roofs until now.
Winning the Pratt Foundation/International Specialist Skills Institute’s fellowship in December 2006, enabled Sidonie to travel to Singapore, North America and Canada earlier this year to study approaches to green roofs. Now back home in Brisbane, Sidonie shares her knowledge and skills with industry, where she is a popular and enthusiastic speaker at conferences around the country.
Sidonie is so committed to the green roof movement, that she and her husband are currently building their own home with a green roof and green wall installed. “Our aim is to use the house to allow people to visit and see how green roofs and walls can be incorporated into a building and the amazing environmental benefits”.
I asked Sidonie to tell us how she got started:
“I was a very young Mum and had to choose a career that I could do while being a Mum – I studied Landscape Architecture and Horticulture and started my own Landscape Design Company”
Sidonie Carpenter Landscape Design & Horticulture provides full landscape design services from site analysis to full horticultural plant lists and plant selection to landscape construction and management. The company website is currently under construction, but if you are interested in hiring Sidonie Carpenter for a landscaping project, please send your details to Australian Women Online and we will pass them along to Sidonie.
More recently Sidonie started a second company, Greens Roofs and Living Walls provides full design and construction management in these very specific landscape and construction areas.
When she isn’t working in her own businesses or promoting the benefits of green roofs, Sidonie enjoys spending time in her own garden at home. She also rows a few mornings a week and when time permits, Sidonie loves to indulge her passion for camping, cooking and pottery.
With concern for global warming and the environment increasing, I am certain we will be seeing much more of Sidonie and the green roof movement in the future. I would like to thank Sidonie Carpenter for sharing her story with Australian Women Online.