Archive for Lawn and Garden
August 16, 2007 at 2:01 pm · Filed under Basement, Green Building Tips, Green Home Building, Green Stories, Heating and Ventilation, Home Building Activities, Home building on the Web, Home Building Pictures, Interior Design Ideas, Lawn and Garden, Smart Home Building, The Johnston Family
A number of weeks have passed since the last update here. Our family participated in some weddings, a funeral and a sailing trip around Vancouver Island, Canada.
Over the next two weeks we will post a daily collection of great links that were forwarded via email while we were away.
HGTV with ideas for greening your home
If you like the idea of being green but aren’t sure how to achieve it, visit the HGTV green home blog. HGTV is building an eco-friendly home and then giving it away upon completion. I have learned a few helpful tips and for those just dipping their feet into the pools of eco-awareness you may renovate or decorate with a whole new mindset. – link
Green Home Makeover Video – Part 1
Alive & Well TV Green Home Makeover Part 1. This is great video to watch to get ideas to make your home more eco-friendly. The video features furnishings that are free of particleboard and made from environmentally friendly, natural, sustainable and/or recycled materials. – link
Green home arrives via truck
The PowerPod is a modular home that incorporates many green design elements, including a solar butterfly roof that collects rainwater and includes an active solar array for electricity and hot water. – link
Green home going up in British Columbia
But the house isn’t just a flashy modern pad, it’s loaded with environmentally conscious design features, such as: Reclaimed cedar siding, Concrete floors with hydronic radiant heat, Recessed compact fluorescent lighting, Ecosmart fireplace, Double glazed windows, Construction with insulated concrete forms, Low-flow toilets, faucets and showers, On-demand hot water heating and Good passive solar heat gain. link.
Top 10 Green Building Blogs
I’ve been at the blogging thing for close to a year and wanted to celebrate some blogs that are doing a dang good job providing green building information. There’s nothing empirical about this list. I didn’t use Technorati or Google Page Rank, although these metrics are important to look at. . link.
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April 20, 2007 at 9:41 am · Filed under Green Stories, Interior Design Ideas, Lawn and Garden, Smart Home Building
We just got this in our inbox from our friends at Vermont Woods Studios. Please subscribe and pass this on to your friends!
Dear Friends,
Welcome to the first Vermont Woods Studios Quarterly Newsletter. This is the first of what we hope will be a long line of issues providing you with interesting news and discussion about luxury eco furniture and how it has the potential to help change the world. We wanted to use this inaugural issue to celebrate Earth Day, this Sunday April 22. With that in mind we are bringing you a fabulous sale on our beautiful line of eco-friendly, indoor-outdoor FSC-certified garden, porch and patio furniture. Just in time for Spring, we are offering this luxury line of porch swings, Adirondack chairs, classis rockers, bar stools and occasional tables for up to 70% off. It is the same gorgeous furniture that is being offered in Neiman Marcus for $600 and up per piece, but we have priced it at just above cost for our Earth Day Sale. Prices are good through the month of April only.
We hope you will take advantage of this opportunity to acquire some of the finest and most durable handcrafted indoor-outdoor furniture available anywhere, at prices you can afford. You’ll feel great relaxing in them knowing that, like the forests they came they will still be around for many years to come!
Please let us know what topics you might be interested to see in subsequent issues. Our intent is not to spam you, but to offer beautiful furniture and raise awareness about the positive impact you can have on the world, through your purchases. We will offer an exciting sale with each edition, so feel free to browse through our collections, Custom Lyndon Patio & Garden Reclaimed Limited Edition and tell us what you would like to be included in our next sale.
For an idea of what we’re all about and how we’re trying to change the world, please visit my blog, Peggy Farabaughs Blog
Do you know someone who would like to be added to our Newsletter email list?
Thank you for reading. I look forward to hearing your feedback and suggestions. Happy Earth Day!
Very best regards, Peggy Farabaugh
Vermont Woods Studios
[tags]Earth Day, Eco, Recycled, Reclaimed, Furniture, Safe, Healthy, Natural[/tags]
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January 5, 2007 at 10:05 am · Filed under Green Home Building, Green Stories, Home building on the Web, Lawn and Garden
Found at naturalhomeandgarden.com
Our picks for the country’s top urban neighborhoods encourage the healthy, eco-conscious good life. These burgs boast community involvement; shopping, libraries and schools within a walkable area; public transportation; and locally owned businesses.
Some are more affordable than others, but most have mixed-income housing and relatively diverse populations. They encompass environmental and/or social programs; parks, green spaces and neighborhood gathering spaces; farmer’s markets and community gardens; and sometimes alternative-energy programs and green building practices.
Read the rest of the article on the best eco-friendly communities in America.
[tags]eco-friendly,communities,homes,cities,environment,climate change[/tags]
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October 16, 2006 at 4:08 pm · Filed under Green Building Tips, Green Stories, Home building on the Web, Home Building Pictures, Interior Design Ideas, Lawn and Garden, Smart Home Building
Found this story today on cbc.ca.
Drive responsibly and help save the environment, the president of the Canadian Automobile Association said on Monday as the club unveiled its plan to address climate change and improve air quality.
The club, which has a membership of 4.9 million members, partnered with the environmental group Pollution Probe to produce a report titled Driving Towards a Cleaner Environment to be released later this year. The report calls on the federal government to encourage Canadians to change their habits through incentives and education initiatives.
“We’re … seeing a shift in attitude on the part of Canadians and we want to help them in terms of ‘How do I do something that’s environmentally responsible?”‘ CAA president David Flewelling told Reuters.
The report encouraged consumers to use public transportation, car sharing, and car pooling as a means to help the environment.
Read more about the pollution fighting auto club.
[tags]cbc, green, gas, fuel, environment, auto club, news[/tags]
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July 4, 2006 at 4:18 pm · Filed under Basement, Green Building Tips, Green Home Building, Heating and Ventilation, Home Building Activities, Home building on the Web, Home Building Pictures, Interior Design Ideas, Lawn and Garden, Smart Home Building
We found the following green stories for July 3, 2006 via Google Blog Search.
Daily green stories from Google Blog Search
Interested in learning more about Biodesiel?
Biodiesel magazine launches new website [www.renewableenergyaccess.com] : JUNE 29, 2006-To accentuate its existing publication Biodiesel Magazine, BBI International Media has launched it’s newest Web site, http://www.BiodieselMagazine.com.
Need more incentive for building green?
Building Green = $$$ [www.thingsaregood.com]: “A new study by the Real Property Association of Canada reveals that adding green features to a building equals better sale value! Rick Nevin and Gregory Watson found that people pay $10-$20 more for a home for every $1 reduction in …”
Learning to conserve from the energy-poor
Will Energy-Poor Nations (and States) Become Models for the Rest [sustainablog.blogspot.com] …: “In both places, the governments have implemented ambitious conservation, renewable energy and green building standards that they hope will lessen their dependence on imports. What really got me thinking, though, was this statement: …”
Wind energy being harvested in South America
Wind Energy Park in Brazil Starts Operating. [www.renewableenergyaccess.com]
[tags]Google Blog Search, blog, blogging, daily, internet, reviews, weblog, news[/tags]
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June 15, 2006 at 3:01 pm · Filed under Green Home Building, Lawn and Garden, Smart Home Building
Kids learning about building their own compost garden? Sounds too good to be true but it’s happening right now. It’s encouraging to see programs like this helping the next generation of eco-friendly home builders learn about making a compost garden! Read the rest of the article at The News and Star
Compost Garden – teaching the next-generation about healthy eating and composting
Health-Conscious kids at a Workington primary school learnt about fruit, vegetables and composting when cartoon characters Egon and friends visited their classrooms yesterday.
Ego’s Green Gardening Lunch aims to promote healthy eating and the benefits of composting in a compost garden.
Cumbria County Council is offering home composting bins to residents at discounted prices.
As part of the scheme, schools can receive up to three composting bins free of charge as well as a visit from a home composting adviser to get them started.
Youngsters at Victoria Infants School in Workington prepared a meal using fresh fruit and vegetables straight from the compost garden and then learnt how to compost food waste such as vegetable peelings.
Waste education officer Martin Allman is visiting school assemblies to talk about waste this week.
He said: Last year Cumbria composted over 36,000 tonnes of domestic and compost garden waste, but we could compost over 130,000 tonnes.
Children play an important role in spreading the message about waste and recycling, and really enjoy learning how they can protect the environment by composting their lunch-time and break-time waste.
[tags]compost garden, healthy-eating, composting, blog, blogs, blogging, daily, current events[/tags]
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June 13, 2006 at 1:10 pm · Filed under Lawn and Garden
We were browsing the internet looking for a lead on a discount tire when we found a green related story about tires. Read about a new technology for taking that discount tire and fixing your cracked sidewalk. It may not seem entirely green at first – but considering that it keeps that discount tire out of the landfill and that the product can be recycled into more pavers, this has to be a good thing. Found at B2DAY.
Discount tire – New technology for fixing those cracked sidewalks
You know how sidewalks are always cracking and breaking up as tree roots push them up from below? A former public works inspector from Santa Monica has the answer to this problem: make sidewalks out of recycled tire rubber. His startup, Rubbersidewalks, sells rubber pavers that can be easily removed or replaced to give those roots more breathing room. They are supposed to last 14 years, after which they can once more be recycled.
Not to mention, they’ll add a nice spring to your step.
Read more about a new green method of using a discount tire to fix your broken sidewalk.
[tags]discount tire, sidewalk, rubber, environment, green, blog, blogs[/tags]
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June 12, 2006 at 10:49 am · Filed under Green Home Building, Lawn and Garden
We want to build a compost garden when we are finished building the Ramsay Home Project. In our research to find more information about a compost garden, we found these tips on setting up a vermi-composting bin with Red Wrigglers from the Solana Center for Enviornmental Innovation.
Compost Garden – red wrigglers for your composter
1. Buy or make a bin 10 to 15 inches deep with a tight-fitting lid and drill holes in the bottom for drainage and ventilation.
2. Make a bed for the worms. They like to live under lots of moist paper and leaves. For instance, you can tear strips of newspaper and soak them in water and wring them out.
3. Add worms and bury a handful of food scraps underneath the newspaper. Feed them slowly at first, about a handful of fruits and vegetables scraps every day. No meat, oil, dairy.
4. Gradually increase worm food. Bury it in different areas around the bin so you don’t disturb them while they are feeding.
5. Harvest castings in about three to four months. One way to do it is to place food in one-half of the bin to attract worms over and harvest the other half.
6. Transfer composted material to your compost garden annually.
[tags]compost garden, blogs, blogging, daily, current events[/tags]
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June 1, 2006 at 4:57 pm · Filed under Basement, Green Building Tips, Green Home Building, Heating and Ventilation, Home Building Activities, Home building on the Web, Home Building Pictures, Interior Design Ideas, Lawn and Garden, Smart Home Building
We read this post from Andreas Schiffler on the Institute for Distributed Creativity (iDC) mailing list and wanted to share it with the readers of the Ramsay House Project. The iDC focuses on collaboration in media art, technology, and theory with an emphasis on social contexts. As we try to go green and build our new home with eco-friendly materials, it’s easy to forget about all the other ways energy is used in our lives.
I’d like to make a quick ecologically motivated post to the list.
It is amazing how easy it is to forget and ignore a simple fact: the Internet with all its “free” communication and information is a big energy wasting, power sucking HOG of a construction. Once you’ve read the numbers below, there can be no doubt why there is a digital divide and Africans don’t need a donation of our old PCs: only the affluent can afford to “plug-in” and operate that kind of juice-sucking machinery in the first place.
Take Google for a start: Google operates one of the largest computer-clusters on the planet, to provide us with a sub-second search result (and the ads that go with it). They run upwards of 250K servers, collectively consuming a staggering 20 Megawatts of power for a nice electricity bill: 175 Gigawatt-hours per year – almost a Million Dollars a month. And that’s just their server farm, never mind the offices and equipment that connects it to the rest of the world. — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_platform
At the time when “Energy-Star” labels went onto most Dell PCs in 1999, the experts were discussing the total power consumption of office equipment and network infrastructure. An estimate of 74 TeraWatt-hours (TWh) per year is estimated up. The Internet barely makes a blip in the total (copiers and laser-printers are just way better “consumers” than modems), with telecommunications equipment taking about 5-10% of this total or about 7Twh/y … note that this is in 1999 and for the US only. — http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/net-energy-studies.html
A few year later in 2002-2003, the reports were refined and give a number of scenarios with interesting sounding names like “Zaibatsu”, “Cybertopia” and “Net Insecurity” which solidify a new conservative estimate to around 3.5% of TOTAL power consumption. —
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1617/MR1617.sum.pdf
Today usage is further up (as usage grows), so we can assume a conservative level of 4% of total power consumption, factor in the 4TW of US usage in 2006 and get a nice amount of 1401 TWh/year (including all the office equipment again). Thus our 5% Internet portion, is now at a whopping 70 TWh/year – perfectly in line with the 10-fold grows in hostnames from 1999 to today as reported by Netcraft. — http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html
Will the trend continue. Sure it will! With more always-on-devices and entertainment platforms like the PS3 that would be considered a supercomputer just 10 years ago, we will definitely continue to use more power for our IT needs. Even though companies such as Apple like to put a positive spin on it —
http://www.apple.com/environment/energyefficiency/ — the fact is, that current hardware (CPUs, video cards and even networking equipment) will use more power. And new operating systems like Microsoft’s Vista, which will require a 3D accelerator card (the second largest power consumer in a PC) – a software move that will push for more transistors running at higher speeds on Millions of desks. Thermal design is really the primary limiting factor in microchip design today and current processors burn up as much as 100W of power when in use. —
http://tinyurl.com/rpmw4
But hey, I forgot one more thing: The production costs for all the equipment that runs the show! Its a bit like the hybrid-car-connundrum: Forget hybrids, but give me a car that lasts 5 more years – that’s green. Because on a whole, the longer lasting car will probably save more energy than driving one of the latest battery-powered gizmos would – because a lot of energy is spend on making the car in the first place. The same applies to the tech equipment: Five new computers over a period
of 10 years (28GJ) is about two-thirds of a car (47GJ) in terms of energy consumption for production. — http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/19992.html
So this leaves my environmental conscience – as tech worker, full-time programmer, dare I say internet-addict – with quite a bad feeling about the whole thing and one can only hope that technological advances will turn the trend around in the near future. As an individual, I think one
can try to do more with less, keep the old stuff and live with simpler cooler-running technology as long as possible. But in the end it leaves me still a searching for practical answers … Maybe after we get this
email, we can all turn off our monitors for 1 minute (and save some power, maybe the planet). 😉
Technorati Tags: Internet, Energy Consumption, Windows Vista, Apple, Google
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May 30, 2006 at 4:30 pm · Filed under Basement, Green Building Tips, Green Home Building, Heating and Ventilation, Home Building Activities, Home building on the Web, Home Building Pictures, Interior Design Ideas, Lawn and Garden, Smart Home Building
We are looking for fellow green builders and/or eco-friendly construction enthusiasts!
Have you always wanted to be a ‘blogger’ but didn’t know how to get started?
We would love to see more stories posted here, so we are putting out a call for contributors. If you would like to donate some spare time and share the stories you have found on the internet relating to green home building or related topics, then drop us a line. If you have an idea for other topics, posts or stories we would also love to hear from you!
No experience is necessary and we will help you get started.
Please email ramsay@ramsayhome.com if you are interested in becoming a regular contributor to the Ramsay House Project blog.
[tags]blog,blogging,daily,internet,reviews,weblog,news[/tags]
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May 24, 2006 at 12:36 pm · Filed under Green Home Building, Heating and Ventilation, Lawn and Garden
Tree Canada is a charitable organization established to encourage Canadians to plant and care for trees in urban and rural environments. To date, Tree Canada has engaged more than 60 Canadian companies and government agencies to support the planting of more than 75 million trees, the greening of more than 350 schoolyards, 6 national urban forestry conferences, and other efforts to sensitize Canadians to the benefits of planting and maintaining trees. More information about Tree Canada is available at www.tcf-fca.ca.
Planting trees may sound simple, but it’s also a sound strategy to combat the effects of global warming through carbon sequestration. That’s just a fancy way of saying that planting trees increases the absorption of carbon dioxide and the production of oxygen in its lifetime. The average Canadian tree sequesters 200 kg of atmospheric carbon. “We thank Tree Canada for allowing us to offset our own carbon emissions and we encourage others to do the same,” said Sorensen.
“We are proud that Thrifty Foods has chosen Tree Canada to help lessen its carbon footprint,” said Jeff Monty, Tree Canada President. “We urge other companies, suppliers and individuals to follow Thrifty Foods example and offset their operating emissions by planting trees with us.
Technorati Tags: Carbon Neutral, Eco-Friendly, Environmentalism, Green House Gases, Conservation
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April 25, 2006 at 9:36 am · Filed under Green Home Building, Home building on the Web, Interior Design Ideas, Lawn and Garden
Found this press release on the news wires this morning.
Decorative Concrete Stains Made from Bio-Based Building Materials Meets Environmental, Green Building and Design Objectives
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“Finding effective environmentally safe solutions to reduce toxic chemicals is the challenge we set out to find for our customers when selecting our building materials,†states John Bennett, President of Eco Safety Products. “We launched the ECO ProCote™ line because it effectively addresses many of the issues from architects, installers and end-users. Whenever we can effectively balance cost, safety and efficacy, everyone wins.â€
The ECO ProCote™ is a bio-based non-toxic, low VOC, low odor permanent concrete stain. It utilizes a proprietary chemical technology that incorporates soy esters and special colorants that create decorative semi-transparent color variations and tones unique to each surface. The product allows penetration and colorization that integrates into porous substrate surfaces enabling designs that can simulate the look of natural stone surfaces. ECO ProCote™ provides an appearance similar to acid staining, but with more consistency and without the toxicity.
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Other staining products have entered the market throughout the years. These types of topical coatings are essentially floor paints in solid or semi-transparent formulations. The common problems encountered with these solutions are toxic ingredients, changes to the surface friction and proneness to peeling, cracking, chipping and eventual wear.
“Our product addresses these common problems since it is not a topical coating, but instead a penetrating stain that bonds and integrates with the substrate surface,” Bennett says. “Surface friction is unchanged and there is no topical coating to peel, chip or wear.”
Read more about ECO ProCote™
Technorati Tags: eco-friendly, Green Building, Environment, Healthy Home
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April 23, 2006 at 6:17 pm · Filed under Green Home Building, Home building on the Web, Lawn and Garden
Found this product designed Matterinc.
Solar powered house number lights from laser-cut aluminum
The number itself is laser cut from the aluminum. Since this plate projects 1″ from the wall, the LED’s will illuminate the background to reveal the number.
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They’re solid aluminium fixtures that absorb energy from the sun to power two white output LEDs during the night for 8-10 hours. Could be a very cool replacement for your home street address number plates.
Technorati Tags: eco-friendly, Solar, Environment, Design
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April 20, 2006 at 10:50 am · Filed under Lawn and Garden
Found this article at The Observer Magazine [http://observer.guardian.co.uk].
Growing an ethical permaculture garden that produces food
In fact, reducing dependency is at the heart of the ethical garden, which is why every gardener should grow some food, even some leaves that will decrease your reliance on supermarket bagged salad, washed in chlorine and packed in a plastic bag full of modified atmospheric gas. Seed saving and swapping get permaculturists very animated (Back Garden Seed Saving by Sue Stickland will tell you all you need to know), but if you don’t have any, the Real Seed Company has saved its GM-free vegetable seeds for you (both from http://www.vidaverde.co.uk).
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In fact, the average suburban garden is a prime target to be ‘retrofitted’ into an ethical permaculture garden that produces food. After years of doing little, the soil is usually nicely fertile, ready to work hard by growing all manner of produce.
This is provided you have beds rather than lawns, known by horticulturalists as ‘the spoiled brats of the plant kingdom’. Lawns do not like to be productive. They guzzle water, are routinely covered in herbicides and traditionally mowed by a polluting mower with all the energy efficiency of a knackered old motorbike. One study even found higher incidences of bladder cancer in dogs exposed to lawn fertilizers. Perhaps, the Viscount’s plastic grass is a symbol of sustainability after all.
Read the rest of the article at The Observer.
Technorati Tags: eco-friendly, Gardening, Earth Day, Organic
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April 10, 2006 at 2:30 pm · Filed under Green Home Building, Heating and Ventilation, Interior Design Ideas, Lawn and Garden
Here is a small portion of the 16 ways to celebrate Earth Day 2006 in your home, provided by GreenHomeGuide.com.
On Earth Day 2006, thanks to GreenHomeGuide.com, getting from green question to green action will get a lot easier. For the first time, a homeowner planning a more energy-efficient and healthy home will have a one-stop resource for best practices and experiences, as well as 14 regional directories of locally available green home products, services, and retailers.
Join GreenHomeGuide.com in celebrating Earth Day 2006. Here are 16 quick and easy ways to save the earth in your home today.
Connect with the earth just outside your doors:
- – Plant herbs in small pots — or one big pot — and place them near the closest door to the kitchen.
- – Plant a fruit- or vegetable-bearing tree, bush, or plant, and commit to organic care.
- – Plant a native plant in your yard.
- – Set up a bird feeder or a birdbath. If you don’t have a yard, get one that attaches to your window or wall.
Read the rest of this list over at Greenhomeguide.com
[tags]blog,blogging,daily,internet,reviews,weblog,news[/tags]
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April 4, 2006 at 9:40 am · Filed under Green Home Building, Interior Design Ideas, Lawn and Garden
Found this article about the importance of greenery in homes at Lawn & Landscape.
plants are natural born air filters
The incorporation of indoor plants is not factored in under the five primary green design categories [for LEED certification]. While outdoor plants can earn points for native vegetation on the landscape, interior plants are not part of the scoring system at all. Australia already recognizes the importance of interior plants in their designations of green building status. The rating system for the Australian Green Star specifically includes credits for the provision and maintenance of interior plants.
As president of Initial Tropical Plants, a provider of interior landscaping, design installation and maintenance services, I see the restorative power of plants in action each and every day. Plants are installed in buildings because they look attractive and help to provide a tranquil environment in which to work or relax.
As plants are natural born air filters that absorb impurities in the air and transfer toxins to the soil, it’s only natural to assume that plants should be a primary component of a true green building. A myriad of studies confirm that plants reduce stress levels and make people happier overall. Plants have been proven to help people in demanding environmental situations to reduce their blood pressure, recover from the stress, and improve their overall health and well-being. The plants on your desk, in your conference room or lobby even can help with the dry air you’re breathing. In the summer, office workers who have interior plants notice a reduction in air temperature. Plants continually spin off moisture into the air as they take in oxygen which lowers cooling costs with indoor plants. In the winter, plants act as a humidifier and increase the level of moisture in the dry air.
Technorati Tags: LEED, Green Homes, Interiors, Health
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April 1, 2006 at 1:38 am · Filed under Lawn and Garden
Found at TreeHugger.
5 recommended home composting bins
Now that spring has sprung and April is right around the corner, the time to start a garden is now! And what is great for gardens? Compost! If you’ve been meaning to get out and pick up something to help you turn organic waste into nutrient-rich soil additive, here are some we’ve featured for both indoors and out.
1) Compostadores are the first and only company, so far, that specialises in domestic composting in Europe.
2) BluePlanetSMART‘s globe-shaped composter is faster, more functional and better looking than many we’ve seen out there.
3) Happy Farmer Kitchen Composter is made from 70% recycled plastic and, according to a TH reader, doesn’t smell at all!
4) NatureMill‘s onboard computer controls the mixing and air flow, brewing up delicious compost about every two weeks without funky compost odors or having to hand-turn the mixture.
5) Sharp‘s 24-hour kitchen composter reduces your kitchen waste by up to 92% in just 24 hours by breaking down and digesting organic food waste at room temp using a proprietary blend of microbes and yeast cells.
[tags]blog,blogging,daily,internet,reviews,weblog,news[/tags]
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April 1, 2006 at 1:37 am · Filed under Green Home Building, Home building on the Web, Lawn and Garden
Found at TreeHugger.
5 recommended home composting bins
Now that spring has sprung and April is right around the corner, the time to start a garden is now! And what is great for gardens? Compost! If you’ve been meaning to get out and pick up something to help you turn organic waste into nutrient-rich soil additive, here are some we’ve featured for both indoors and out.
1) Compostadores are the first and only company, so far, that specialises in domestic composting in Europe.
2) BluePlanetSMART‘s globe-shaped composter is faster, more functional and better looking than many we’ve seen out there.
3) Happy Farmer Kitchen Composter is made from 70% recycled plastic and, according to a TH reader, doesn’t smell at all!
4) NatureMill‘s onboard computer controls the mixing and air flow, brewing up delicious compost about every two weeks without funky compost odors or having to hand-turn the mixture.
5) Sharp‘s 24-hour kitchen composter reduces your kitchen waste by up to 92% in just 24 hours by breaking down and digesting organic food waste at room temp using a proprietary blend of microbes and yeast cells.
[tags]blog,blogging,daily,internet,reviews,weblog,news[/tags]
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March 25, 2006 at 2:04 am · Filed under Green Home Building, Lawn and Garden
Found this story at The Discovery Channel .
Recycle water with a rooftop garden
A new vegetated rooftop recycling system uses plants to filter waste water from washbasins, baths and showers.
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The Green Roof Water Recycle System, or GROW, was invented by Chris Shirley-Smith, who founded Water Works UK and who is currently collaborating with scientists at the Imperial College London and Cranfield University to test the invention’s effectiveness.
“It’s a new idea of supplying non-drinking water in an urban environment,” said David Butler, professor of water engineering at the Imperial College London and the director of the Water Cycle Management and New Development consortium.
Read more about water recycling rooftop gardens.
Technorati Tags: Recycle, Water, Rooftop Garden, Conservation
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March 22, 2006 at 11:13 pm · Filed under Lawn and Garden
We found this story over at Horticultural. The author describes her experiences this year with setting up raised beds. We are planning on building some raised beds on the top of the roof of our garage, which is partially underground. Making a raised garden bed with the Link-a-Bord raised garden sets sure seems like a good idea!
Raised garden beds
I have ordered two new raised bed sets from Link-a-Bord, which are made of recycled plastic, but I decided to do a bit of impromptu recycling by making a bed from bits and pieces I found around the plot. Granted, it’s not the most beautiful construction ever to grace a plot, but it’s an allotment, not Kew, right?
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Link-a-Bord product
The items used were: two bits of board left over from flooring my bathroom, two strips of brick-effect stone edging left over from a garden project, plastic slats originally used to form a compost bin that I found on my plot when I first took it over, and two separate bits of defunct wooden shelving. It’s not quite as deep as I would have liked, but it’ll do.
At one end, I planted red sun shallots, interspersed with a catch crop of French breakfast radishes, and at the other, I put in one short row of white beetroot, one of bleu de solaise leeks, one of perpetual spinach, and finally, a row of turnip black sugarsweet from the Heritage Seed library. I was ridiculously excited by the whole afternoon, and came home grinning ear to ear. Even my aching limbs today haven’t put me off.
*If you’re interested in the pros and cons of raised beds, there’s a good piece in the latest edition of Organic Gardening magazine (not online, alas). But let me sum it up for you this way: the pros are better drainage, less (or no) digging, not so far to bend down, soil doesn’t get trampled – the cons are that it takes a little time (and money, unless you do it my way) to set them up, snails and slugs can hide against the walls and launch sneak attacks on your seedlings at night, and if your plot’s too dry, it could make the problem worse. Unless you mulch, which of course you should. Have I missed anything, chaps?
Technorati Tags: gardening, raised beds
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March 22, 2006 at 9:30 pm · Filed under Green Home Building, Lawn and Garden
From We-make-money-not-art via Inhabitat.
Growing plants directly in concrete
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Lisbon based e-studio has recently developed an organic concrete. The Bet-o Org-nico has a permeable surface which allows plants to grow out of it. This new material exploits concrete’s capacity to trap water and retain humidity, so the substance can nourish plants even during a dry spell. The organic concrete makes it possible to create permeable living surfaces, allowing architects and urban designers to incorporate a bit of greenery directly into their designs.
Technorati Tags: organic concrete, sustainable, green, plants
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March 22, 2006 at 2:22 pm · Filed under Green Building Tips, Green Home Building, Heating and Ventilation, Home Building Activities, Home building on the Web, Home Building Pictures, Interior Design Ideas, Lawn and Garden, Smart Home Building
Green Spec is a UK website that provides resources for green builders and those thinking of building a green home. We found this over at Hippyshopper, which is full of many great items that are now on our home wishlist. It’s too bad that the ramsayhome.com project is based in Calgary, Canada – I wonder how we can ship everything on our wishlist!
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If you dream of an eco build or just want to use environmentally friendly materials as you renovate your home, then Green Spec is an invaluable on-line reference guide. I could spend hours reading their comparisons of construction materials, insulation, flooring and paints in relation to their effect on the environment as well as their benefit to the consumer. There is a great section on green roofs including a detailed explanation of their construction. The site points to further resources such as Living Roofs and also suppliers, including Green Roof. Anyone with a real interest will surely be headed for the Eco Build 2006 show at Earls Court 2, London on 22 and 23 Feb. [Ella]
Technorati Tags: environmental, sustainable, building, resources, links,bookmarks
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March 13, 2006 at 10:59 am · Filed under Home Building Activities, Home building on the Web, Lawn and Garden
Found at www.organiccentre.ca.
From Canada’s Penticton Western News comes word of a new initiative by British Columbia’s Organic Farming Institute (trying to find a link): an online school devoted to organic agriculture.
The Organic Farming Institute of B.C. will allow farmers to learn how to transition and sustain an organic farm using a Web-based program and gain practical experience on Similkameen farms starting this September.
The idea for creating an institute came out of an Industry Canada-sponsored focus group that looked at using the then newly installed broadband Internet system to create economic opportunities in the valley, said Graham Gore, chair of the institute’s board of directors. Teaching organic farming was an obvious choice because of the valley’s concentration of organic farms – the highest in Canada at 40 percent….
Three courses have been developed for the first semester of the program. The first online course will teach farmers how to transition a conventional farm to an organic farm, the second will deal with soil management and the third will be a practicum, said Gore. At the end of the self-paced course the students – up to 25 are expected to participate in the first year – would get a certificate, which would likely be presented through an accredited college, he said.
Eventually the institute would like to use Okanagan College and Lakeland College to create a undergraduate program, he said.This is a cool development on so many levels. I particularly like the idea of harnessing local knowledge and making it widely available via the Internet. This could become quite a resource for other schools of agriculture, as well as other disciplines (i.e. landscape architecture). If anyone from the Institute or the WPN is reading, I’d love that link at the end…
While looking for images, I also came across another source of online education for organic farming in Canada.
Technorati Tags: organic, farming, <a href=”http://technorati.com/tag/naturenature, health
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March 8, 2006 at 11:39 am · Filed under Green Home Building, Home Building Activities, Home building on the Web, Lawn and Garden
Found at indyweek.com. The layout of our lot (we are on a steep hill) influenced us to build the garage for the Ramsay project so that it is embeded into the ground. When it is finished, our vision is for the roof to become a green area for play and relaxation that blends seemlessly into the rest of the back-yard.
Anyone building a new home or business–or renovating an older structure–could slash their heating and cooling bills by 25 percent, double the life of their roof, reduce stormwater runoff, help clean the air, create urban wildlife habitat, and make their building look fabulous by changing just one thing. When it comes time to replace ugly asphalt shingles or a tar and gravel roof, do it with what’s called a “green roof.” It’s a shallow expanse of garden that can be installed on any structure–house, office, school, factory, shopping mall.
Green roofs vary in construction, but what they all share are tough-as-nails plants growing in a lightweight soil mix. The soil covers a waterproof liner so all you see are colorful plants. This ecosystem is enclosed by an edging that allows water to drain from flat roofs, and the edging safely contains the plants and soil on pitched roofs.
The plants used on green roofs can survive extreme temperatures, drought and lean soil. Soil as shallow as 4 inches nurtures low-growing succulents such as sedums, hens-and-chicks and ice plants. Wildflowers, bulbs and herbs such as columbine, hyacinth and lavender thrive in only 6-8 inches of soil. Soil more than 8 inches deep allows shrubs and small trees to grow. Philadelphia-based design and installation firm Roofscapes names their various options “Flower Carpet,” “Aromatic Garden,” “Meadow,” “Woodlands,” etc.
Read more about green roofs.
Technorati Tags: green, garden, <a href=”http://technorati.com/tag/energyenergy, environment
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February 21, 2006 at 10:03 am · Filed under Green Home Building, Home building on the Web, Lawn and Garden, Smart Home Building
Found at Tree Hugger.
EcoTraction is a winter traction agent designed to work better and greener than more traditional sand and salt. If icy patches or snowy stairs abound, EcoTraction claims to do it all, providing better traction than sand, absorbing melting ice and snow and providing numerous positive environmental benefits. That’s a mouthful, so we’ll try to break it down so it makes sense. EcoTraction is made up of rigid grains not unlike coarse sand or pebbles. Each rigid grain is filled with micro-porous channels that absorb liquids and chemical ions from the environment. This unique ‘charged honeycomb’ structure allows EcoTraction to not only embed itself into ice and snow, but also to passively improve the surrounding environment; it is proven to absorb ions from the air, soil and water like ammonium, nitrogen, mercury, arsenic, nickel, lead, silver, cesium, and uranium. It will never damage concrete, brick, wood or metal, nor will it harm vegetation in lawns and gardens. EcoTraction does not contain carcinogenic crystalline silica (unlike sand) and is low-dusting, so it can even be used indoors in things like cat litter or aquariums.
[tags]blog,blogging,daily,internet,reviews,weblog,news[/tags]
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February 15, 2006 at 9:34 am · Filed under Green Home Building, Home building on the Web, Lawn and Garden
Found at Land Living.
All right you landscape party people… the American Society of Landscape Architects has done it again, declared the month of April as National Landscape Architecture Month. So, order up a big load of mulch to celebrate, or keep an eye out for ASLA Chapter events… the weekly breakdown listed after the jump.
ASLA chapters across the country will celebrate with public outreach activities to help communities “Discover Landscape Architecture,” the theme for this year. The month encompasses Earth Day on April 22 and the birthday of Frederick Law Olmsted on April 27, who founded the American landscape architecture profession.
Link: ASLA – Landscape Architecture Month 2006
Article: Landscape Career Discovery (pdf)
Article: Hire A Landscape Architect To Add Value To Your Home (pdf)
Article: Design for Active Living (pdf)
To help people nationwide truly “discover landscape architecture”, national ASLA will be focusing on some of the lesser-known aspects of the profession throughout the month.
Read more about Landscape Architecture month.
Technorati Tags: landscaping, gardening, nature, DIY
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February 14, 2006 at 9:16 am · Filed under Green Home Building, Home building on the Web, Lawn and Garden
Found at www.prnewswire.com.
Ranging from novice to Master Gardener, the team spent countless hours scrutinizing products to ensure each tool would be appealing and invaluable to gardeners of every level. To make the list, each gardening product went through an initial review by the team. If it did not meet standards set by The joe gardener Company, the product was eliminated from the process. For those passing the initial review, the tools were then included in a comprehensive evaluation process and truly put to the test. Over the course of several months, the team went to work digging, spraying and wear-testing to unearth the best of the must-have products for gardeners.
“It was not an easy task for our team but it was important to gain hands- on knowledge and experience with the products under consideration,” said Lamp’l. “As a result, we are confident that the items on the must-have list will truly enrich the gardening experience.”
The results are in and include products ranging from the greatest in gardening gloves and watering wands to the coolest in cultivators and carts:
- GreenJeans™ — These innovative, heavy-duty chaps with built-in knee-pads were designed specifically with comfort and durability in mind.
- WheelEasy — The collapsible yard cart has ground-level loading to simply rake, shovel or slide items like leaves, weeds, bark, even heavy boulders, directly into the canvas barrel. When stored, it takes up a fraction of the space of a conventional wheelbarrow.
- BugBand™ — BugBand products feature all-natural, pleasant smelling Geraniol, which has been proven more effective at repelling insects than DEET and citronella.
- Midwest Rake Loop Hoe Combo Tool — The exclusive design of the Midwest Rake Combo Tool combines a 3-prong cultivator with a loop hoe for dual- purpose weeding and cultivating.
- The CobraHead® Precision Weeder and Cultivator — The closest thing to a universal garden tool, the blade is a Steel Fingernail® that becomes an extension of your hand helping accomplish many garden tasks from weeding to de-thatching.
- GardenArmor™ Gloves — The “tough-as-nails” gloves are made with SuperFabric® brand material that is washable and so durable it provides gardeners with 90x the puncture resistance of regular gloves.
- Treegator® — Revolutionary bags designed specially for new plant installations, slowly delivers water directly to the root zone over an extended period of time.
- Hound Dog Edge Hound® and Bulb Hound® — The Edge Hound not only edges walkways, it installs coiled edging, cuts trenches and even chops roots, stumps and ice. The Bulb Hound is specially designed to cut and refill holes in one easy step for bulb planting. The trigger release handle reduces stooping.
- AquaVor® Easy Feeding Cans — The ergonomically friendly, integrated design eliminates messy measuring and mixing. It also features a two-position rotating spout allowing delicate flow or fast delivery while the interchangeable fertilizer cartridge makes it easy to select and dispense a variety of liquid products — just like the pros.
- Kombi — “Shovel with Attitude!” A series of hard-working shovels, each with a serrated design, make quick and easy work of any tough gardening job.
- West County Gardener® Gloves — These tough, high-tech, super comfortable gloves help gardeners work with ease and are washer and dryer safe. Gloves are made in sizes to fit all gardeners.
- Nelson® Nozzle Sprayers — Point, click and water with these ergonomically-designed nozzle sprayers. The state-of-the-art, thumb-activated flow control nozzles feature up to 8 patterns of spray.
- TrenchFoot™ — Slip this amazing innovation over a shovel, fork or spade to gain leverage and make digging easier.
- Dramm Watering Wands — These watering wands feature fingertip shut-off valves that reduce overall water consumption by applying water where it’s wanted. A lifetime guarantee spells quality.
Read more about the The 2006 Best of the Must Haves™ in Gardening.
Technorati Tags: gardening, tools, best-of-2006, lists
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February 2, 2006 at 10:23 am · Filed under Green Building Tips, Green Home Building, Home building on the Web, Lawn and Garden
From Treehugger:
Planting gardens could help keep chemicals out of your city’s water. A new study found that building rain gardens, shallow pools in the ground, planted with deep-rooted native plants, can significantly reduce the amount of toxins entering stormwater runoff systems.
Technorati Tags: stormwater, plants, gardens, toxins
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January 22, 2006 at 7:52 pm · Filed under Green Home Building, Home building on the Web, Lawn and Garden
From EcoStreet:
So you’ve had one child and there’s another one on the way. You decide to move to the suburbs to be a stay-at-home-mother while your partner commutes to the city. You start house-hunting in earnest, your head filled with ideas and ideals: the big garden, growing your own veggies, somewhere safe for the kids to play. But the commuter-belt is almost as expensive as the city and you can’t afford the home of your dreams. In the cold light of day it looks like you’ll be buying a three-bed semi with a small(ish) back garden and a front garden that someone has thoughtfully concreted over to park both their cards. Sound familiar?
David Holmgren (co-creator of the permaculture concept), comments in this essay that the Australian suburbs have become “sterile wastelands, lacking in any true spirit of community, impoverished of local resources, and filled with fearful people whose daily efforts are focussed elsewhere”. The same could be said for the UK’s suburbs and commuter belt areas.
Holmgren suggests implementation of permaculture principles to greatly increase the “sustainability and livability of today’s suburbs”: ensuring food security by growing your own fruit and vegetables and passing on this valuable skill to the next generation; improving your family’s health by gardening for exercise as well as eating super-fresh produce grown in your back yard; saving money by growing your own and not depending on food transported from miles away to feed yourselves; fitting a greenhouse to your home to both insulate your house and increase the growing season; rainwater harvesting and greywater treatment to reuse water; keeping small poultry to eat kitchen scraps as well as laying eggs and providing manure; reclaiming the streets by walking more; and recycling creatively and as much as possible. David offers these and more ideas to improve the sustainability of suburban living in his essay entitled “Retrofitting the Suburbs for Sustainability”. Read the full document here.
Original source: sustainablog
Photograph by Rod Miles
Technorati Tags: garden, sustainability, recycling, sustainability
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January 20, 2006 at 11:07 am · Filed under Green Home Building, Home building on the Web, Lawn and Garden
Planting a tree when you child is born is an old tradition that carries on today. Watch this tree, (a Blue Spruce) grow taller right along with your child. The kit comes with a 32 page booklet which contains instructions and background information. A portion of the proceeds is donated to organizations dedicated to the planting of trees. All materials used are organic and recycled or recyclable.
$6.00 at Eco Express
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January 10, 2006 at 11:12 pm · Filed under Green Home Building, Green Stories, Lawn and Garden, Smart Home Building
Via inhabitat.com.
There’s a fabulous article today on BLDGBLOG, about roof-top farming in London.
Being both an avid green-roof fan, and a former London resident myself (and remembering those miserable grey days) – I can’t think of anything more exciting that the possibility of transforming the grizzly bombed out concrete blocks of my old Hackney stomping grounds into lush, green, food-producing gardens.
London-based architecture firm Agents of Change (AOC), proposes that “vacancy in cities” is really “a starting point for a new urban form.” The AOC asks, how could London be adapted “to an agricultural logic � the logic of rotation, seasons, ground and growth?”
From BLDGBLOG:
AOC has proposed a Hackney “New Garden City”, complete with an “Agricultural Action Zone (AAZ).” This would include “a self-sufficient ecology of grass roads, localised rainwater collection, organic solar films and biological compost systems… liberating the ground’s agricultural potential.”
AOC’s Croydon Roof Divercity project which radically rethinks the landscape of Croydon’s roofs (and sounds really, really fun): “Taking the flat roofs of Croydon as our testbed,” they write, “we propose a new roofscape for the city � beaches, ice rinks, golf courses, allotments, skateboard parks and pasture refresh Croydon’s tired concrete.” How about a shooting range?
read more >
[tags]roof-top, garden, london, farming, ecology, green, eco-friendly, stories, blogs[/tags]
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An interesting take on the archetypical terra cotta pot by French designer Vincent Vandenbrouck.
What's happening at www.ramsayhome.com 