SCH Student Transforms Urban Home, Demonstrates Sustainable Living

SCH senior Lida Goloveyko is transforming her urban Northern Liberties house into a thriving eco-friendly home. From her rooftop garden overflowing with produce to her irrigation system, she isn’t just talking about change, she is making it a living reality.

While traditional building practices are contributing to climate change, depleting natural resources, and driving up energy costs, senior Lida Goloveyko is embracing sustainable solutions. She believes in creating healthier, more resilient communities.

The Goloveyko family bought their home in 1999 along with a community garden. The roof of the house was decomposing so badly that “there were times people fell through,” Goloveyko recounted. Eventually, the family installed more doors to the outside space in order to better connect it with nature. Since the house had previously been a factory, there was an abundance of piping in the walls, which Goloveyko decided to transform into an irrigation system for a roof garden [shown on right].

Goloveyko’s roof garden has five rows of plants which provide her family with the long-term financial advantages of regular access to food while sustaining a healthy ecosystem for wildlife.

“We have a water garden now, so we have a bunch of water plants, and all the rain that falls goes in there, and there’s a couple of little snails in there. When we’re done with our watermelon rinds, we put them in this water garden, and the snails all eat them,” said Goloveyko.

The family grows several types of melons, four varieties of peppers, many kinds of lettuce, and six different varieties of tomatoes. There are two bins for compost [shown on right].

One compost bin holds the biodegradable food waste from their kitchen, and the other holds the soil that they produce from that food waste to use in their garden.

Goloveyko said her inspiration for the rooftop garden were her parents, who are avid gardeners. She says they have always loved growing vegetables in their community garden. She said this is how they all love “connecting with the earth.”

The several trees planted around the roof deck of the Goloveykos’ house and garden provide privacy and shade for her and her family. 

Julie Knutson, an Earth Science teacher at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy who teaches her students about sustainable solutions says that “tree cover is associated with up to 20-degree differences in temperature in Philadelphia…Vertical gardens and small forests create biodiversity and absorb carbon, which is really important and it’s not even that hard to create them.”

Goloveyko  added, “It’s good to have access to all these fresh vegetables because a lot of people don’t have access to that…Food gardens are great because people can spend their time doing something, and it’s also kind of a way to get away from work and life, specifically in the middle of the city, where there are so many houses and not very many plants or trees.”