LAKE PLACID -- Hotelier Jenn Holdereid climbed onto her Lake Placid roof, arms wide open, and smiled.

From eye level on the balcony next door, it looked as if she was standing in an alpine meadow two stories above Mirror Lake.

But Holdereid had scrambled out to explore a grid of living, breathing green plants: chives, hens and chicks, coral carpet and other ground cover that grows horizontal to flower in stages -- yellow, green, white and pink.

With purple chive blossoms swaying in a breeze below the restaurant windows, the black expanse of sticky black roof shingles was gone.

The new 3,800-square-foot "Green Grid" green roof system was laid out on the Golden Arrow Lakeside Resort this week after nearly a year of winter "hardening."

Some 400 trays of alpine perennials and evergreens rooted in shale took five hours to install.

Jim Bolinsky, 29, a buildings-and-grounds worker for the hotel, cast a shy glance at the green roof and grinned.

"Gives you a lot more to look at," he said.

Bolinsky, who lives in Lake Placid, helped physically lay the grid out over tar shingles in 85-degree temperatures this week.

It matters for many reasons, he said, especially improved energy efficiency.

"People do look for that now."

Holdereid slipped back through the restaurant window at Charlie's and brushed off.

"My father (Winifried) said, see, since we got the green roof, the weather got cooler," she quipped.

But the Holdereid family, who owns and operates the Golden Arrow Lakeside Resort, have pushed aggressively toward green solutions for the past five years doing all they can to conserve energy.

Their continued work has earned four leaves in the Audubon Society's green initiative.