Munson Medical Center has installed a green roof it says will help reduce storm runoff into Kids Creek and offer patients a better view outside their windows.

The project is part of the hospital’s partnership with The Watershed Center Grand Traverse Bay and is funded with federal money granted through the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. Inhabitect worked with project engineers and Watershed officials on the design and installation of the roof. Munson Medical Center Vice President of Facilities Steve Tongue says the 3,900-square-foot green roof involves the use of succulent plants in trays that are placed on top of a specially prepared roof membrane.

“The green roof material comes in trays that are four inches deep with a special soil,” he says. “This project will complement what we are doing in other areas of the hospital campus to reduce stormwater runoff and discharge into Kids Creek.”

“These efforts will complement what we’ve already done along the creek to effectively and noticeably reduce the amount of runoff making it to the creek during rain events and snowmelt,” says Sarah U’Ren, program director with The Watershed Center.

The hospital also is partnering with the Watershed Center and Grand Traverse Pavilions to redesign a constructed wetland at the corner of Elmwood Avenue and Medical Campus Drive. Tongue says plans call for reshaping the area and new landscaping to make it more functional and hold more water.

“It will be full of wetland plants, so when it rains the stormwater will go in, the sediments will settle out, and the plants will take up the nutrients and cool the stormwater,” he says. “The basin will hold a lot more stormwater and release it slowly to the creek.”

Construction on the basin is expected next spring.