Natural and Sustainable

Want a good way to help protect the value of your home? Remember these two words: Green Matters! It’s an umbrella term for the trees, lawn, shrubs and other plantings that can affect not only the salability of your home, but your utility bills as well. Improving the green space around your home can have real economic benefits.

Protect your homes value. Consumes value a landscaped home up to 11.3 precent higher than its base price. Landsacping investment is normally recovered fully and sometimes doubled by its ability to increase the home’s value. Sophisticated landscape design with trees and large, colorful bedding plants can raise the perceived value of a home between 5 and 11 precent. A minalist landscape (i.e. with smaller plant size and low sophistication) actually decreases the preception of home value.

Saving energy costs is a must for any home-buyer. Planning the right mix of trees, grass and other plantings can also make a difference in a home’s energy consumption. When properly placed to shade your home, trees can reduce air condtioning demand by 10 to 30 precent. Attic temperatures could be up to 40 degrees lower when adequate shade is precent. There are two ways you can take advantage of this natural cooling effect.

First: If you have mature trees make sure they’re pruned properly to maximize shade, seek professional advice as to the type and location of the trees you should pant. Both steps can help lower your electic bill.

Second: Don’t overlook how maintaining a thick, healthy lawn and other plants also provides cooling benefits. This is due to a prcess known as evapotranspiration. When vegetation is warmed by the sun it gives iup water that then evaporates to cool not only the plant itself, but the surrounding area as well. The result is one of nature’s most overlooked, and yet most efficient, cooling systems. In fact, evapotranspiration from the front lawns in a block of eight houses produces cooling equivalent to 70 tons of air conditioning.

Lindsey Lohan is still going strong with new beau (the snowboarder). Read all about it here.

*Natural and Sustainable Living Tip: Try to line dry your clothes whenever possible. During the winter months it is hard to do this, so when you can’t line dry outside, try to line dry inside. Either get a portable clothes line or simply hang wet clothing over a door or a shower curtain rod.