Green Building Elements

I’m celebrating Boxing Day in a new way this year – I’m putting all the cardboard boxes saved up from Shipping Month, aka December, to use in my Permaculture garden, by making sheet mulch.

Google sheet mulch and Permaculture. (For those not in the know, Permaculture is a fairly recent term for cultivating an edible landscape that establishes positively reinforcing relationships between water, soil, insects, microbes, sun, etc…for the purpose of sustainably and organically feeding its designing human.)

Sheet mulches are an easy way to ‘compost in place’, delivering all the water-borne yummies to the plants instead of under the compost pile. Design-wise, sheet mulching also avoids the not-so-Neighborhood-Association-Friendly look of compost piles, so it’s a tricky way to subvert the negative effects of suburban sprawl – grow a food landscape!

Read the rest of this entry »

Portland has been recognized for decades as a leader in urban planning. Today its progressive philosophies are being applied to environmental policy-making. Tackling sustainability on an urban scale, the Portland Development Commission has conceived a model neighborhood known as the Lloyd Crossing Sustainable Urban Design Plan. A massive undertaking, the Plan sets goals and objectives that are intended to guide development over the next 45 years.

Read the rest of this entry »