From the category archives:

Build Green – Design

Tweet Sophisticated design for exterior garden rooms Admired gardens have focal points that support a garden room theme.  Within that area, you then showcase its best features using focal points. Focal points can be created using splashes of color. They direct views toward desirable spots, and distract the eye from focusing upon unsightly things. Red […]

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Tweet Jingle Bells or Messiah – You Pick Many holiday songs praise the wonder of our natural world, so good stewardship of our resources is cause for celebration. Here is the next idea in our 12 part series: If you’re lucky to get a snowy-white Christmas, imagine bringing the Hallelujah choir with you sliding. Inside […]

Tweet You Deserve Better Value, Health & Balance Harness the Holidays and de-stress with these green building ideas to manage your extra decorating and entertaining costs or you’ll end up with financial troubles in January – and beyond. In this series, we’ll focus upon one of 12 smart ways to give yourself Holiday Breaks at […]

Tweet You Deserve It – Celebrate! Start the holidays right and avoid senseless holiday expenses at home. That means use seasonal green building ideas to control your extra decorating and entertaining costs or you’ll end up with financial troubles in January – and beyond. In this series, we’ll focus upon one of 12 smart ways […]

Tweet I am always fascinated by the names of odd things. Take for instance the white, inner rind of a citrus fruit.  It’s called an ‘albedo’.   Who thinks up this stuff? I’m humored because green builders also use ‘albedo’ when choosing different types of cool roofs. By the way, cool roofs lower your home air […]

Tweet When entertaining outdoors, you obviously want to create a comfortable setting. A combination of decks and patios don’t have to be elaborate to impress your guests, just well built. Besides they also add property value and expand the functionality of your home. Green builders favor more patio than deck surfaces because the low-maintenance brick, […]

Tweet Along the time when tea was dumped into the Boston harbor to protest Britain’s rule over the colonies, naturalist William Bartram filled his breakfast tea cup in the Carolina Piedmont. It was the 1770’s. He sat reviewing his plant journals recently inked while traveling throughout southeastern North America. One spectacular native plant he observed […]

Tweet Isn’t it true that most folks treat their front yard like some department store display? Look but better not mess it up! Unlike Victorian homes, modern houses lack comfortable porches so little time is spent loitering there. Visitors step from the car into an invisible ‘front yard’ zone that urges them straight to the […]

Tweet By Joanne H. Shawcross I once  had some friends get married and they combined two apartments full of stuff into one house. What a design ‘train wreck’  that was – A maroon sofa with a turquoise coffee table… Don’t feel bad if you’re a person who has difficulty with coordinating colors in a room. […]