House and Garden
Above is a close-up of bracken (Pteridium aquilinum)--a deciduous fern native throughout the northern hemisphere--in fall.
When I purchased my Potter Street house in 1998, I decided that I wanted the property--where I planned to create a nature-friendly building and landscape--to be open to the public. To that end, I designed it to be both inviting and easily accessible to anyone who wishes to visit.
My permanent "open house and garden" have worked splendidly. Neighbors, casual passersby, school groups, and others visit regularly. My university students bring their friends to see what I've done, and introduce my place to their parents when they visit Eugene from out-of-town. The property gets a lot of attention, not just because it's open to the public, but because people truly find it very inviting. And because of the informational signs scattered throughout the property, visitors can get ideas for transforming their own properties into more nature- and people-friendly spaces.
West façade of house in late summer—showing porchlight shield (to eliminate light pollution, trespass, and glare) and fine black mesh covering the windows (to prevent bird strikes).
THE HOUSE
The original house on the site was built in 1949. In the early 1980s, that structure was demolished except for the concrete slab and a couple of walls, and the current structure was built. At about the same time, the wooden shell of the garage--which was located just south of the house--was moved to the back of the property and plumbed and fitted with windows recycled from other buildings, with the idea of it someday becoming a small secondary residence. Following the relocation of the garage, the former gravel driveway was abandoned.
The house is essentially a single room that is heated on sunny winter days completely by sunshine that streams in the large, south-facing windows. During the summer, the dwelling is kept cool, in part, by ample eaves on the south side, and plantings east and west of the house. Like the windows and doors in the cottage in the back, most of the house's downstairs windows are recycled from other houses.
The first-floor siding is unfinished shingles of western red-cedar, and the second floor siding is red-cedar boards; the roof is metal. All first-floor windows are fitted with black plastic "bird netting"--typically used to protect fruit trees and berry bushes from birds--that very effectively eliminates bird fatalities, which occurred on a regular basis before the installation of the mesh.
In April 2011, I installed a two-kilowatt phovoltaic array--purposely not visible to casual passersby--atop the south dormer of the house. Most of the time, the system provides more electricity than I need. The surplus goes back onto the local electrical grid, and my electric utility pays me for it. Thanks to federal, state, and local tax credits, the system cost relatively little (see the attachment, Powered by the Sun).
South façade of the passive solar house in late summer, when the vegetables growing on the trellises--tomatoes and cucumbers--are still shading the south windows. This prevents overheating of the house as the sun drops lower in the sky at this season, when there's no need yet for the sun to heat the inside of the house.
THE GARDEN
The plantings around most houses play largely an aesthetic role. On my property, however, being "pretty" is just one of the roles plants get to play. Some of the plants play environmental roles--shading the west façade, for example, both to cool the house in summer and to extend the life of the cedar shingles and painted surfaces by preventing the sun from striking them; others play ecological roles because the plants are native to this area and thus serve to help restore natural habitat that is destroyed or displaced when we plant non-native plants; and the rest of the plants are food plants for the household.
The food garden provides year-round all of the vegetables and fruits that I consume--as well as providing food for many neighbors and friends. My hens provide eggs for the household, eat slugs and snails during their daily walks through the garden, and get to rummage through all kitchen scraps. The chickens' manure then goes into the nearby compost silos, and eventually everything gets returned to the food garden to start the cycle over again. And the honey bees? They sweeten our lives in more than one way--they're so much fun to watch!
An effort is made in my garden to have zero input from off-site (soil amendments, fertilizers, etc.) and zero output from the site (yard debris, etc.). If natural habitats can recycle everything on-site and keep growing--and they do--we need to do the same in our own yards.
The attachments below include more details about both house and garden. They are simply digitized versions of the signs posted around my property.
Boardwalk entry to the house from the public sidewalk. Visible trees are valley ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa willamettensis) and aspen (Populus tremuloides). Blue-flowered herbaceous plants, in early fall, are Douglas aster (Aster subspicatus).
(This page updated 09 November 2021)