Home and Landscape Tour article
Re-printed from the Bellingham Herald:
Sunday, July 6, 2003
Tour features earth-kindly homes, gardens
ENVIRONMENT: Visitors will see gardens that help protect lake, home built of
straw bales.
Ericka Pizzillo, The Bellingham Herald
Environmentally friendly landscaping and home building ideas are the theme for the 'Imagine This ... Home and Landscape Tour" on Saturday.
Those on the tour will get to view 10 different sites ranging from a straw-bale house to lake-friendly gardening sites.
Maps of the sites come with the purchase of tickets and tour-goers can visit all the sites throughout the day, said Derek Long, director of Sustainable Connections, organizer of the tour.
There are four sites that show landscaping styles around Lake Whatcom, the city's drinking water source.
At one site, homeowners have pulled out most of their green lawn and impervious asphalt and replaced it with native plants. Most of the water runoff from the property is directed to a small pond lined with rocks and native plants that filter out pollutants before they reach the lake, Long said.
The next stop, called "The grass isn't always greener" is an example of landscaping put in to a property during the 1960s, which has lawn running down into the lake and a cement bulkhead. The new owners of the property want to redo the landscaping in a more lake-friendly manner, Long said.
Other sites show off a type of asphalt that has holes in it so water can filter into the ground and about 100 acres put into a conservation easement and enhanced for wildlife.
On Lummi Shore Road, tour-goers will see a home with walls built of straw bales covered with plaster. And in Bellingham, a small home was remodeled with reused materials from within the home, reclaimed hardwoods and certified Smartwood, an environmentally harvested wood.
Along with the map, tour-goers will be given profiles of each of the sites along with local and national resource materials about landscaping and home building.
Tickets can be purchased the day of the event at The Gardens at Padden Creek, 2014 Old Fairhaven Parkway, A-1 Builders, 3310 Northwest Ave. and at 2149 Northshore Dr. Individual tickets cost $12 each or $30 for a carload of people. Those on bikes pay $8.
For more information go to http://www.sconnect.org or call 303-7776.
Reach Ericka Pizzillo at ericka.pizzillo@bellinghamherald.com or call 715-2266.
