June Audubon Program – Jennie Russell on Green Roofs

Pop Quiz!
What building innovation can benefit wildlife such as birds and bees, reduce stormwater runoff, and cut the summer heat flux into your roof thereby cooling your house (i.e. lower utility bills)?
The answer is “over your head”.
It’s a Green Roof!

Audubon Society of Ohio is proud to welcome guest speaker Jennie Russell on Wednesday, June 21 at 7 pm at the Sharon Woods Visitors Center (Sharon Centre). She’s been a birder all her life! Check out her amazing professional bio below!

Both Jennie and her husband are landscape architects who for twenty years have been restoring two acres near Winton Woods with native and edible plants. They have persimmons, pawpaws, hazelnuts, pecans, serviceberries, blueberries, and spring ephemerals.
In addition to being a lifelong birder, she’s also been a beekeeper for nearly 15 years.

Her current home project is her very own Green Roof! She has a wealth of knowledge which she’ll share with ASO at our monthly meeting. Learn how suburban, urban, and industrial areas with Green Roofs, green walls, and other forms of living architecture can have economic, social, and environmental benefits.

Professor Virginia L. Russell, MLA, FASLA, RLA, SITES AP, LEED AP, GRP is a Professor of Landscape Architecture. She is the founding director of the University of Cincinnati’s Landscape Architecture and Urban Horticulture Programs. She served on the Green Roofs for Healthy Cities (GRHC, Toronto, greenroofs.org) Board of Directors and as Chair of the GRHC Research Committee (2013-2018). She is a founding member of the GRHC Accredited Green Roof Professional (GRP) Program. She is an editorial board member for the Journal of Living Architecture. She is featured in the green roof and green wall book of pioneers, The Rise of Living Architecture (GRHC 2012). Russell is a founding member and the Associate Director of Pedagogy for the Greater Ohio Living Architecture Center, a Regional Center of Excellence with the Green Infrastructure Foundation and GRHC. Professional projects include green roof feasibility studies for the Cincinnati Main Library, Lloyd Library, and UC Hospitals, sustainable strategies for Fernald Nature Preserve Visitors Center (first LEED Platinum project in Ohio), and a sustainable site management plan for the US World Heritage site of Troy in Turkey. She is a Fellow in the American Society of Landscape Architects and has held several offices in the ASLA, including national Vice President.

We will meet at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, June 21, at the Sharon Centre (Sharon Woods Visitors Center), which is located at 11450 Lebanon Road, Sharonville, Ohio. From the park entrance on Lebanon Road, follow the Sharon Woods Drive to the first large parking lot on the left. The visitors center is the large building at the back of the parking lot.