By JOHN DARLING
for the Mail Tribune

When he bought his historic house in Ashland’s Railroad District a dozen years ago, Gary Powell had great views of Grizzly Peak off his front porch and of sunsets to the west. Then large commercial buildings went up nearby, leaving him with a "boxed-in" feeling.

Five years ago, Powell decided to fight back — not at city hall, but by building a two-story rear addition with a flat roof for entertaining, lounging, meditating, watching sunrises and growing a garden and small vineyard.

His view regained, Powell has found unexpected pleasures up on the roof. Surrounded by the increasingly busy Railroad District, he uses the beds and half barrels surrounding his outdoor dining table to grow cabernet sauvignon grapes, tomatoes and peppers, filled in with plants for aesthetic and aromatic qualities: honeysuckle, zinnia, dahlia and sunflowers.

"It was my first project — and my last," Powell said, laughing, "and I think I’ve created a natural, pleasing, Zen-ful, relaxed environment, one with incredible sunrises and which provides natural cooling of the house and yard by maybe a few degrees."

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Powell got the grapes from a friend at a local vineyard and hopes to be able to put by a little jam and wine at the end of the season.

"The plants love it up here, the grapes love it and of course I love it," he said. "So do my guests. We sit around, drink wine, talk about life and share the moment, just like I saw in European homes when I visited there. That was my inspiration for this rooftop garden."

Inspiration aside, rooftop gardens require practical considerations.

Powell had his project professionally engineered to guarantee it could handle the weight of the garden. The structure and its pre-engineered, laminated joists are "overkill," he said.

A slightly sloping roof channels water to gutters. On top of that, Powell and a friend, Steve Grabs, built a surface of plastic 2-by-6-inch decking.

In Ashland, no special building codes cover rooftop gardens. The roof just has to be engineered to carry the load, says Ashland building inspector Dan McLeary. Ashland’s planning department also has no rules about rooftop gardens, only advising such roofs be properly sealed against water, says planner Adam Hanks.

Under Powell’s roof is his bedroom, connected by a steel spiral staircase to a new family room. All of it was approved by the Ashland Historic Commission, a step that Powell knew was not necessary but "meant a lot to me" so as to retain the home’s historic nature.

A two-story Vernacular-style house at 562 A St., the "Thaddeus Powell rental" was built in 1922 and put on the National Register of Historic Places when the whole Railroad District was so classified.

"I really love this area," said Powell. "It’s been a blue-collar neighborhood for a century and a half, and that was one of the big attractions. I borrowed most of the tools for the remodel from Tony at Euromek (auto repair) next door."

Powell smiles warmly, recalling the informal neighborhood recycling program that provided the wood for everything from garden fences to the flooring.

His remodel is not visible from the front — only from the back — inviting alley passers-by to shout out comments of approval, he says.

In his garden as well as his neighborhood, Powell says, "I believe in a lot of diversity. It adds to the quality of the environment and of life. We’re not here in life for a long while and we should be stewards of the place we’ve been given and not make a big indent on it."

John Darling is a free-lance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at jdarling@jeffnet.org.