(Re)Planting the Seeds of Community

Laura Murphy’s green gift empowers a new era of Innis sustainability

By Cedar MacTavish (HBA ’25 Innis), Innis College sustainability steward

In 1998, Laura Murphy (HBA ‘99 Innis) and a team of fellow Innis students rolled up their sleeves and proudly put the finishing touches on a new rooftop garden at Innis College, only the second rooftop garden on St. George campus.

Situated above the café, the beautiful open-air terrace was replete with flowering annuals, grasses, and shrubs in cedar planter boxes. This student-led initiative transformed an austere rooftop into a novel community space, brimming with nature-infused ambiance.

Nearly three decades later, Laura’s continued dedication to sustainability and college connection is leading to another green community initiative in the form of the “Laura Murphy Green Roof Terrace,” a crown jewel of the College’s Renewal & Expansion project.

bird's eye photo of a group of students leaning around a wooden garden planter box
Laura Murphy (top left) celebrates completing the rooftop garden at 2 Sussex Avenue in 1998 with fellow student volunteers, faculty, and staff, including Environmental Studies Program Coordinator David Powell (top right).
laura murphy stands on the rooftop garden at Innis surrounded by plants and wooden planters

Laura Murphy, 1998.

As an Innis student, Laura’s passion for environmentalism and business-waste renewal grew through her Environmental Studies Major and leadership of the Environmental Students Union (ENSU). In 1996, encouraged by professors in a research and practicum course, she decided to apply her learning to the under-used rooftop outside the ENSU office. Taking the chance to create a green space on the roof was, in Laura’s words, a no-brainer. “I was drawn to opportunities to offset our impacts on the environment,” she explains. “You build a building on the earth, and then instead of having a black roof with no life on it, you take that patch of earth and just move it up to the top, offsetting what the building took away.”

Laura worked dedicatedly for years to get the necessary funding and permissions to realize the Innis rooftop garden. It was a labour of love, and a shared one. She reflects on the community participation in this process as a special phenomenon. “I wanted to build this garden because I wanted the result to be a place for community. But just the process of building it actually built community.”

After the garden was completed and Laura graduated from Innis, she forged an impressive career in the environmental sector, notably cofounding KMI, now Velocity EHS, with her husband. VelocityEHS is a software company, serving the global business sector for tracking, measuring, and reducing impact on the environment and on employee health and safety. All the while, she has still maintained a strong connection to Innis as an alumna, and has been an active driver of sustainable development at the College.

two adults pose for a photo in the Innis Green

Laura Murphy and her husband, Matt Airhart, attend the Innis Alumni “Homecoming” Reunion in 2023.

In 2022, Laura donated a generous gift in support of a new rooftop green space through Innis’s Renewal & Expansion capital project, scheduled for completion at the end of the year.

The “Laura Murphy Green Roof Terrace” (pictured) will include comfortable furnishings, planter boxes with flowers, herbs, and vegetables, and a sedum-covered green roof. It will be a calming, sunny spot to study, socialize, and relax. Importantly, the terrace will functionally link the Innis student experience with sustainability. Volunteer and educational programming, such as plant-tending and food-harvesting workshops, will bolster the culture of sustainability at Innis, and showcase a continuing dedication to ecological and community wellness.

For Laura, the Green Roof Terrace is a spiritual successor of the original rooftop garden and an investment in the College’s environmental values. “I really appreciate community and shared stories, especially ones that define legacy. I’d love to give back to Innis by helping to preserve this part of the College’s legacy. The rooftop,” she says, “is a piece of that. It was a special project that brought people together and demonstrated to the campus and the city Innis’s commitment to sustainability.” 

Laura hopes that the coming changes will inspire other alumni to reach out and re-engage with the College, and to recognize the Renewal & Expansion as more than a building renovation. “I hope the excitement [around the project] will build a stronger connection for people who may have become disconnected from Innis over the years.”

“Innis is a special place,” Laura concludes. “The people here tend to be drawn to initiatives that support community and the environment. It’s just a reflection of who we are, right?”

Rooftop garden photography courtesy of Laura Murphy. Photo of Laura Murphy and Matt Airhart by Zdravko Galinec. Rendering courtesy of Montgomery Sisam Architects.