Sunday 1 October 2017

bus-stop moss gardens

Taking a double decker bus into town lets you look down on the city. Not from a dizzy height; more from a giraffe-neck height. You get the megafauna view of the urban environment. And new vistas unfold, like these bus-stop roofgardens:

bus top roof gardens bus top roof gardens

These are under mature trees and the amount of biomass falling from them is magnificent. Where the leaves brush the bus-stop, algae has grown in the green dimness, scraped by the bus-gusted leaves of the Plane trees.

bus top roof gardens bus top roof gardens

Where the trees are cut higher, lichen has speckled the surface, and wherever there is enough debris or damage to form a small puddle, moss has grown. They say that moss will kill a surface; it's doubtless true. These two stops at the end and beginning of their cleaning and maintenance cycle remind that this is a temporary garden; here until cleared.

bus top roof gardens bus top roof gardens

But below the bleakest of the busstops, there is still a halo of green murk and moss where the water drips down around the stop, and the moss and algae swept down onto the welcoming tarmac.

bus top roof gardens bus top roof gardens

Urban surfaces moss over fast round here. A moment's pause in the damp, and the moss will rise and cover all in the soft, spongy, drenching cushions of the temperate waterworld.

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