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Traci Huth of Green Scene Landscaping in Stafford County prunes the rooftop garden at Carrabba's Italian Grill in Central Park. |
A Tuscan-style garden is grabbing drivers' attention as they zip along Fall Hill Avenue.
But it's not planted along the edges on either side of this quickly developing area.
It's on a roof.
"It does catch the eye when people are driving by," said Chad Jordan, manager of Carrabba's Italian Grill in Central Park. "And that gets them down in here."
The lush, rooftop garden--which features columnar junipers, creeping junipers and daylilies--is something of a trademark for the national chain.
"We try to get the 'Wow!' factor into everything we do here at Carrabba's," Jordan said. "The roof is definitely a 'Wow!' factor."
The idea was dreamed up by Manhattan architect James Wines, whom Carrabba's executives hired about six years ago to create a distinctive look that captured the flavor of Italy. Founders Johnny Carrabba and his uncle Damian Mandola use recipes brought over from the old country by their families.
"Originally, the plans were a lot more lavish," said Rick Beach, Carrabba's vice president of construction. "He wanted to add a 2-foot-wide landscaped trench that went up the side of the building, but the costs were ridiculous."
Wines' plans were trimmed to just the sloping, poured concrete roof that wraps around two sides of Carrabba's restaurants. It overhangs wide front and side porches, forming a 1,000-square-foot, L-shaped planter.
"It's tied to the existing structure, but beefed up to support the landscaping," Beach said. "The beams are thicker and spaced closer together than they'd be in a normal building. The structural engineers designed it to support more than it actually holds."
Carrabba's installed its first landscaped roof in 1998 in Orlando, Fla., and it has been a feature of every restaurant the chain has built since then. Currently, about 100 Carrabba's Italian Grills in 29 states have them.
While the chain's executives see the design as a way to draw customers and create a sense of place, such living roofs can have a variety of other benefits. Germans started the trend 30 years ago as a way to help replace land lost to development and manage stormwater runoff, said Linda Velazquez of greenroofs.com.
Additionally these eco- or living roofs, as they're also known, help offset the "urban heat island" effect, lower heating and air-conditioning bills, and serve as resting places for migrating birds and butterflies.
"There's a drive in London to establish green roofs just to help bring back the black redstart [a robin-sized bird]," Velazquez said.
Green roofs started popping up in the United States in the mid-1990s. Ford Motor Co., for example, put 10.4 acres of plants atop its Dearborn Truck Plant in Michigan, and Gap Inc.'s office building in San Bruno, Calif., has six varieties of native grasses on its roof. There's even a new green roof on part of the Pentagon, she said.
"It's so much prettier to see flowering plants on a roof than gravel or tar," Velazquez said. "I'd love to see Home Depot and Wal-Mart incorporate this."
Building a green roof, however, is much more complicated than a more typical one. Workers laid down a waterproof barrier, hauled up about 100 cubic yards of rich loam, and installed a sprinkler system last spring to prepare the roof at the Central Park Carrabba's.
Keith Hurley, manager of West Orange Nurseries in Winter Haven, Fla., then spent three days selecting and installing plants. The mix of trees, shrubs and perennials he chooses for each restaurant varies because they have to suit the local climate.
"The biggest thing I've learned is making better choices," said Hurley, a former Disney resort landscaper who travels 150,000 miles a year to install and inspect Carrabba's roofscapes. "We're now at a 90 to 95 percent survival rate for all our plant materials."
Besides junipers and daylilies, the Carrabba's in Central Park features redbuds, barberries, spireas, Wisteria and several different types of grasses. Artificial rocks help hold some of the larger shrubs in place.
To keep the plants from getting unruly, Traci Huth of Green Scene Landscaping in Stafford County grabs her pruning shears and climbs onto the roof once a week to give them a trim. She arrives long before the restaurant opens, but occasionally people will spot her at work.
"Usually," she said, "they'll wave."
To reach CATHY JETT: 540/374-5407 cjett@freelancestar.com
