The Winner of Greenroofs.com’s “Love the Earth, Plant a Roof!” Earth Day Photo Contest for 2010 is:

ESRI Canada’s Garden in the Sky in Toronto, Ontario, Canada!

“Overlooking one of Toronto’s busiest highways, this 7,500-sq-ft portable garden reduces urban heat, noise and stormwater runoff. It provides lush meeting space for staff and visitors, as well as habitat for birds and butterflies. It helps create a greener, healthier environment. Photo by Margaret Mulligan.”

In our first photo contest ever, we received 30 contest entries and over 1,500 votes for readers’ favorite greenroof!

ESRI Canada’s Garden in the Sky entry received an incredible 735 votes!  Talk about rallying your friends and family for support – quite a networking coop there!

Josephine Chan will receive her choice of a $100 gift card to either The Home Depot or Lowe’s for spring projects or just a good old fashioned check.  Of course, I don’t think people submitted their project for the chance at the whopping $100 prize, but more to share their pride of accomplishment – a gorgeous, earth-friendly, living roofing alternative that only does not harm the Earth, but who’s design can actually help heal the Earth and sooth some of our development problems.

And we all know that living roofs do just that – through living, breathing, plant material.

There were so many awesome, stunning projects!  I had many favorites myself, and it would have been extremely hard to choose one.  Once again, this was a subjective photo contest about which greenroof loves the Earth the best by the photo and the description submitted.  So, basically, it really boiled down to a popularity contest since voting was open to everyone, not judged by a panel conforming to any particular standards.  See all the photo submittals here.

The winner will have “their” project highlighted on Greenroofs.com as the upcoming Greenroof Project of the Week starting on Sunday, May 2, 2010 and we’ll feature the submitter in a Sky Gardens interview so you can learn more about this particular vegetated roof and why she feels it’s so special.

On Monday I’ll also post the Top 10 List of Greenroof Projects in order of most votes received – I’d like to eventually feature these projects, too, as our Greenroof Project of the Week along with all of the projects received, so you can look forward to gaining an appreciation of each one in the future.

So, for now, congratulations to Josephine Chan and ESRI Canada!  Check back here later next week for the GPW, or Greenroof Project of the Week, highlight with plenty of photos, project description and inspiration.

I hope you all enjoyed and celebrated Earth Day and Month in a special way – aren’t we fortunate to be involved in an industry that allows us to feel good every day about what we’re doing and promoting?  I’m sure Mother Earth appreciates organic greenroof architecture, too!

~ Linda V.