CASCARA

ROOFTOP · VANCOUVER · 2024

Gastown Rooftop Terrace

Six hundred square feet above Water Street, engineered light and planted tough — a native meadow that shrugs off wind, drought, and seagulls.

Location
Gastown, Vancouver
Size
600 sq ft
Completed
2024
Scope
Design, structural coordination, custom planters, irrigation
A single trailing stem falling from the dark boards of a deep timber planter onto silvered decking.

Rooftops are cliffs: thin soil, hard sun, constant wind. We treated this one as coastal bluff habitat — tufted hairgrass, nodding onion, and stonecrop in deep cedar planters that double as wind screens.

Drifts of grasses spilling over the paving along the glazed edge of the terrace.
Water beading along a slim irrigation line strung above the planting.
“It's the only rooftop I know that smells like the Gulf Islands.” — Project architect

A drip system fed from a rain cistern keeps summer water use near zero. By the first August, the owners were cutting flowers on their own roof.

Planted here

Tufted hairgrass · Nodding onion · Broad-leaved stonecrop · Coastal strawberry · Yarrow