We all have heard about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon which is one of the Seven Wonders of the world and now Singapore too can boast of its very own wonder – rooftop gardens fitted on top of buses!
Aptly christened ‘The Garden on the Move’, the initiative was launched yesterday at Jurong Lake Gardens in Singapore where 10 SBS Transit buses were fitted with rooftop gardens. These buses will ply Singapore’s roads for at least three months. The routes include one through the Central Business District and another through Orchard Road.
These buses are part of an initiative to study possible energy and cost savings for bus operators.
“The project aims to explore the link between green roofs and the interior temperatures of the buses, how effective these mobile gardens are in cooling the insides of a moving vehicle. This also allows green building technology to impact areas outside of the built environment, helping to go towards a more sustainable way of life,” said Singapore Green Building Council (SGBC) in a Facebook post.
This initiative is supported by National Parks Board (NParks), Moove Media, GWS Living Art and Temasek Foundation.
These buses are fitted with a soilless roof system – instead of conventional soil and the plants are secured on a lightweight mat used for skyrise greenery. This makes it cleaner, easier to maintain and more economical than other conventional green roof systems, which are primarily soil-based.
“This is a creative initiative that seeks to extend Singapore’s greening efforts, and which truly encapsulates the vision of a biophilic City in a Garden. We hope that this will spur others to explore other similarly innovative ways to green up Singapore,” said Oh Cheow Sheng, group director of NParks.
“Building upon the success of our Live.Work.Play.Green campaign in 2018 where we garnered massive support from the public on green buildings, this new initiative aims to once again drive green building awareness to the forefront of the public’s consciousness. We hope to sustain interest in green buildings by putting one of the most recognisable elements of a green building onto a very public platform,” said Dr Ho Nyok Yong, president of the SGBC.
