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Let’s Tour and Critique the 2012 HGTV Green Home
On its website, HGTV is showcasing the 2012 “Green Home”, the eco-friendly, LEED-certified hippie sibling of their regular “Dream House.” This year’s Green Home is located in the “sustainable...
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The Creepy (and Pretentious?) Sustainable Community of Serenbe
As noted in my last post, HGTV’s 2012 Green Home is located in the bucolic and “sustainable” community of Serenbe, Georgia. I find the idea of building a “sustainable community” from scratch to be...
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Keep Writing, Keep Digging, Mr. Merwin
Yesterday the Library of Congress announced Natasha Tretheway, a Pulitzer-prize winner and professor at Emory University, as the new poet laureate. I’m not familiar with her writing, but I like that...
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Will We Grow Nostalgic for Strip Malls?
Yesterday I came across this article about a competition at the University of Alberta called “Strip-Appeal” in which architects and other designers submitted proposals for re-purposing abandoned strip...
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“Now Entering the Xeric Hardpan Forest”
Recently I purchased and read Wildflowers and Plant Communities of the Southern Appalachians and Piedmont. Now, before you go labeling me as a mega-dweeb, you should know that plant communities are...
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Conservation vs. Protection
What’s the difference? I ask because I came across this quote from Teddy Roosevelt when I visited Roosevelt Island this weekend: “Conservation Means Development as Much as it Does Protection.” Coming...
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HGTV 2013 Dream House Has Lots of Plants!
It’s a bit premature to make a final judgment, but it looks as though HGTV’s 2013 Dream House – located on Kiawah Island, South Carolina – might actually be worth cheering for! Over on their website...
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National Mall Renovation Lookin’ Snazzy
I went downtown today to hit the US Botanical Garden and a couple of museums, and I got a peek at the renovations to the National Mall. Here is my exclusive, professional-quality footage: Turf...
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Fairfax County Sustainable Garden Tour
A few shots from Fairfax County’s 2017 Sustainable Garden Tour: This year the gardens were in the Alexandria area — some down around Mason Neck, others near Mount Vernon, and then all the way up to the...
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