Bill Grierson Does Green Roof. In 1960.

The late Bill Grierson was a talented architect, teacher and great fun at a party; He also appears to have been well ahead of his time with green design. He designed a 1500 square foot cottage built from stacked and mortared logs, to blend into the hillside like a large, grass-covered boulder, for Molly Ferguson and her late husband south of Haliburton, Ontario. Over the years she has been selling off pieces of the property, but under strict covenants: no jet skis or intrusive watercraft, cottages must be built at least 99 feet from the shoreline, and trees cannot be cut down.

"I feel very strongly about the environment," she says. "There's a way to balance conservation and development." New houses are mostly off grid with solar or wind.

According to David George-Kosh of the Globe and Mail:

There are no solar panels or wind turbines on Ms. Ferguson's property, but she and her husband had a green roof put on many years before today's renewed interest in the feature. With tons of earth on it, the flat roof keeps the cottage cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Wildflowers often grow there, and some years, Ms. Ferguson has kept a vegetable garden on it.

Her last lot is available, subject to restrictive covenants, for C$ 1.5 million.::Globe and Mail

Photographs by Bill Sandford, Globe and Mail

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