Planning and evaluation of rooftop garden designs: A survey-based assessment study at faculty of Agriculture

Abstract Rooftop gardens provide valuable opportunities to increase green space and improve sustainability on college campuses. Nowadays, the Egyptians have begun implementing roof gardens on their buildings, but on a narrow scale, although university campuses suffer from deficiencies in this regard. Therefore, the current study was conducted during the 2022 and 2023 years in the College of Agriculture, Zagazig University, Egypt, to propose landscape layouts for the agriculture college roofs. Three landscape designs were planned using 3D software and evaluated by a group of specialists and users. Results showed that trees and palms were preferred to some extent by 60% (specialists) and 48.6% (users), while flowering herbaceous plants were preferred by 100% (specialists) and 91.7% (users), followed by medicinal and aromatic plants. Furthermore, total responses (specialists + users) regarding the five human senses’ satisfaction by proposed designs were 75.7% (Site A), 69.4% (Site B), and 75% (Site C). As for specialists’ total responses, design fundamentals were achieved at 66.7% (Site A), 70% (Site B), and 70% (Site C). Also, results revealed that 70.6% (Site A), 78.4% (Site B), and 65.8% (Site C) of users’ responses agreed regarding the existence of suitable recreational areas, whereas 58.8% of users’ responses agreed about the possibility of using the proposed design of Site A for conducting agricultural experiments. The study recommends implementing the proposed designs to use these rooftops as educational models and provide recreational areas and an aesthetic appearance.