Eco Friendly House And Garden

These little critters will eat 100’s of garden pests and help to pollinate 1000’s of plants.
 
By encouraging these little understood bugs into your garden could really improve your success in the plant world, helping to kills off pests, help generate seeds and fruits throughout the year.

So lets find out about these very different little insects and see what they can do for us - and what we can do for them.

Bumble Bees:
These are the first things we think of when we talk about bees, and we often see them in the garden as a big, furry bumbling bee, humming loudly as it moves through the plants in our yards.

These bees are not kept in hives and actually live in holes in the ground, compost heap, disused bird houses or old trees.  At the end of the summer the queen is mated and heads of alone to live out the winter before producing offspring the following spring.

She generates plenty of offspring and a colony could number up to 300 individuals as it lives out the summer feeding on and pollinating our garden plants and trees.

They have a sting, but rarely use it.

Honey Bees:
These are the ones that are kept in hives and produce plenty of honey - which bee-keepers use for human consumption.  They don’t need human intervention and can make their own hives in trees and roof spaces if necessary.

They are similar in shape and size to wasps rather than bumble bees, but don’t have the pinched-in ‘waist’ of the wasp.

They always live in large colonies and cannot survive alone for very long.  They can, however, travel and arrive in your garden in a huge swarm of up to 20,000 individuals!  Quite a site to witness as they settle as one writhing mass on a tree or building.

They are rarely ever dangerous to humans unless you antagonise them - although they will sting you.  Experts can be called in to move the swarm quite easily to a less populated environment if you don’t want quite that many in your garden!

Solitary Bees:
The other types of bees live in loose groups but do not swarm or form colonies.

They are similar in appearance to honey bees, and can be used commercially to pollinate crops just like the more popular honey bees.

There are about 250 types on solitary bees in the UK, and many live in small holes in the ground but stay close to other solitary bees spread out over some distance.

Wasps:
Although they send us into a fear frenzy on site due to their habit of stinging us - they can be very beneficial to your garden or allotment.

The queen will set up a nest of mushy paper and fibres in the spring and start to produce larvae to build up her colony - which can reach 20,000 in a few weeks if the conditions are excellent!

Adult wasps eat nectar and sugary liquids, but they feed their young on insects, so can be seen feeding off plants and killing aphids too! 1 worker wasp could catch around 100 aphids a day off your plants to feed their young.

However, if the colony becomes too large the adults may require more natural food than your garden can supply and so they will turn to other sources - like our kitchen for jams, bee hives for honey etc. and this is when they come into conflict with humans.

But as with all the different bees, if you can tolerate them around your homes and gardens you can get yourself some free insect control and some free fruit and flower generation!

So what are you doing to encourage them to your garden?

It’s as simple as sitting in your own front room with a cup of tea watching the birds!

What could be a better way of finding out if your efforts to create an eco friendly wildlife garden are working than to record the wildlife that visits it?

Starting with the birds is the best way to start your surveying as they are the most obvious and easy to identify of your garden visitors during daylight hours!

Yes we can all identify a hedgehog and a fox, but you have to stay up late in the cold to do that! Birds come out when the sun is shining and you are wide awake! What could be easier?

Why Count Birds?
The RSPB survey takes place every year - as it has done since 1979.  Joining in this survey will not only help you to identify more and more of your garden visitors, but it will also allow you to take part in national efforts to record and protect our native species and migrant visitors.

It will also help you to gauge the avian diversity of your garden and local neighbourhood - and help you to choose your feeding sites and foods better; for example blackbirds generally feed on the ground, robins would like a bit of animal protein in their diet and blue tits would love some niger seed from a feeder!

If you know which species are around your garden, you can tailor what you offer them.  Not only will this help you attract those birds that you like to see, but could help you see a much wider variety of species throughout the year if you make a few changes.

The Survey:
Added to your own pleasure of watching the birds, you could also be helping the RSPB to extend their knowledge of species distribution and to watch out for serious changes in species number.  Some birds are key indicator species for certain habitats, so watching their numbers increase or decline could make a big difference.

And, the RSPB can’t be everywhere at one time - they rely on people like you and me to spare them an hour of their day at the end of January 2010 to count everyday birds. 

You don’t have to be an expert like Chris Packham or Bill Oddie - you just need to be able to count the most common birds in your garden.

The RSPB offer a guide to identifying some of the species that you are likely to see on their website - and a review of these and a few practice watches should help you to get the basics under your belt.

If you can tell a robin from a blackbird and a blue tit from a magpie then you are good enough!

And, if you want to get the kids involved at school, then check out the details for info packs and guidelines for schools!

I don’t mean badgers and sparrows - I mean plant diseases and pests!

We know that the quickest way to kill off diseases and pests in our gardens is to use chemicals - but that isn’t very eco friendly or organic.

There are alternative treatments, but they normally involve a lot of your time or money or result in dead or dying plants.

So, why not plan to never have the pests or diseases in the first place?

Planning Ahead.
Why not follow these simple guidelines to reducing the chances of anything untoward getting into your garden from the start!

The most likely way to infect your garden is to bring in plants from elsewhere. If you buy plants from garden fetes or charity shops etc, or find them in skips, you have got to expect the worst.

If they were loved and cared for in pristine conditions - people wouldn’t be selling them cheap or throwing them away, would they? So:

1) Use only local and reputable suppliers and nurseries
2) Only use the neighbours you know who care for their plants properly
3) Make sure the supplier or neighbour has been organic too!
4) Avoid semi-mature specimens from overseas - you just never know!

Plants on arrival:
Any plants, seeds or bulbs arriving in your yard should be carefully inspected to make sure they are healthy, especially if they are from a friend/fete/garden show/etc.

If you buy plants that are not looking healthy, you can’t expect them to be healthy - so only take on with care. If you are receiving a delivery of plants - check them too: don’t just look at a few - check them all - you are paying for them. There is no point paying for a plant that is diseased or infested.

Buying dodgy looking plants may be a cheaper way to get them - but won’t be so cheap if they need chemicals to recover, take an extra year to establish or flower, or worse: cause damage your existing plants!

Quarantine the new plants in a specific area away from any other plants or gardens for at least 2 but preferably 6 weeks. Many bugs and diseases can travel short distances so could easily infect neighboring plants if planted too soon.

And finally, make sure you don’t cross-contaminate the tools and equipment used for new plants. Disease can be carried on your tools and hands - so be fussy and make sure you clean everything.

I recently moved my plants to a new home and picked up a strange mite - which has all but killed a tropical plant of mine that took 6 months to germinate last year!

So Finally:
Find out what the common pests and diseases look like and what plants and conditions they prefer so you can spot the first signs of trouble - hopefully before you buy them!

Also, knowing the visual identification of garden pests and preferred conditions of certain diseases means that you can act fast at the first sign of trouble and save your plants - and all your hard work!

Welcome back, and I hope you are ready for more top tips for your eco friendly vegetable garden!

Moving on from just growing too many in the first place, these next 2 tips cover storage issues and gardening overload!

2)  Where can we put them all?
What could be more disappointing to the end of your growing season than to have runner beans (or whatever you grew too much of) going rotten in the fridge. 

Home grown crops - especially when grown organically - do not have the same shelf life as those brought from super stores.  They are not designed to stay fresh for a week or so for retail purposes, and if picked or dug out of the ground will only last a few days.

Yes, there are many veg that can be stored for months if you do it right, like potatoes and onions for example, but generally everything else needs to be eaten or preserved as soon as possible really - or given away to who ever will take them!

So, you need to learn which crops can be stored for a long time, those which can be frozen, veg that need processing in some way before storing, and which ones only have a short shelf life.  Then plan how many of each you can grow.

Many beans and peas can be blanched before freezing so as to increase the number of nutrients remaining in them, and others need a certain amount of other actions before they are ready for freezing or turning into preserves or chutneys, etc. 

You also need to make sure that you only freeze them in portion size amounts, otherwise when you want to eat them you have to take the whole lot out and smash off the amount you need to cook!

And do you have enough freezer space in the first place?  Most avid vegetable growers need another freezer to store all their summer veg to last them through to the winter!

Planning ahead is the key here - and if in doubt ask someone who is already growing their own crops what they do with all their veg!

3) What a waste of your land:
If you are turning over great swathes of your garden to vegetables because ‘that’s how many seeds there were in the packet’ then you are taking the fun out of your garden.

Imagine the kids playing ball and they keep tripping over plants and cane poles.  You want a few minutes to yourself on the patio but all you can see are plastic bottles and rows and rows of pots and mud!

You won’t get a moments peace either, as you will have so many crops to keep an eye on that you will constantly be out there checking on everything.  When you look out of your windows making your morning coffee - you’ll see something wrong with the plants, or something has fallen over or whatever.

You could end up out there on your afternoon off from work, tending to a huge number of plants that you might not even end up eating (see points 1 and 2).

The Answer?
Growing your own veg should be fun, and if you grow too much of one thing, then you lose that fun. 

Eating artichoke every so often is a nice treat, but when you always have another 2 in the fridge, it loses it’s speciality.  It’s not even fun to eat it anymore.

Also, if you know that you always have more of something growing outside, you may actually care less about each individual vegetable you have indoors.  For example, will you care if one parsnip goes rotten waiting to be eaten in the fridge if you have another 2 meters of them left outside to dig up?  No, you won’t. 

Too much of something actually tends to encourage waste as if you have so much - why does one matter?

This certainly wouldn’t be true if you had brought the parsnips. Every penny counts these days and you can see it when you have brought something yourself out of your wages.  But vegetables you have grown don’t seem to be worth anything, you don’t see the money and energy they have cost.

Your back yard vegetables aren’t free, so don’t treat them as such.  Value them as your time - and your time is worth more than money.

It really is a light for your garden powered only by the wind!

Imagine sitting outside in your garden or on your balcony and you are being mesmerised by your spinning light! Sometimes it is a solid tube of color and other times it is a pulsating spiral of energy!

How Does It Work?
Well, there are 14 LED lights embedded on the edges of the product which are powered by the spinning of the FireWinder in the wind.

The Firewinder itself is made of 100% recyclable materials and is moulded in the shape of a helix. This way it can catch the wind from any angle and any strength.

Any breeze over a few miles-per-hour will spin the helix around - giving the illusion of a rising edge and in daylight this is more like a mobile than a piece of cutting edge eco-technology!

However, what makes it light up are the 14 LED ‘bulbs’ or ‘patches’ spread out all up the outside edge of the spiral which are powered by the tiny turbines inside.

As it is the outer rising edge of the FireWinder that has the lights on it - when the wind picks up, these lights spin around really quickly forming a continuous band of rising light around the lamp: See Light Spinning.

In slower winds the light pattern is mesmerising and moves upwards around the FireWinder at differnt speeds, sometimes throbing in the breeze. But at higher wind speeds, the lights stay solid and so you will have a what appears to be a static column of light 14 bands high!

It really is something to just stare at for hours!

Is It More Of An Ornament Then?
I suppose you could say that. I mean it is not going to be bright enough for you to read books by or offer home security features - but it will be a welcome edition in gardens during those warmer summer months.

FireWinder is I think the first and only wind-powered outdoor lighting product - all the others on the market are solar-powered - and offer a less fun form of lighting! However, if you don’t get a lot of wind then you best opt for these!

One great eco-friendly product for garden lighting are the solar-powered ‘rock’ lights. As their name suggests, they are plastic ‘rocks’ that have a tilted and so hidden solar panal on the top. By day they look like a simple stone and by night they emit a quite powerful beam of light.

These come in a range of different sizes and offer a more continous and reliable solid light in the garden than the Firewinders, but are not so amazing to watch!

There are of course plenty of more light-looking solar powered lights for your garden - some white, some colored and even some color changing lights - but you can’t beat the spiral effect!

Did you know that honey bees make onions and carrots grow?

Bees pollinate a huge number of plants, fruits and vegetables, and help to improve the yields of so many others. So without them, there may be less, smaller or no fruit and veg for us to eat!

Don’t Plants Just Grow Themselves?
Well, yes. All plants will grow into an adult plant or tree from a seed in the right conditions, but most will not fruit without pollination.

Pollination is where the male parts (the pollen) are moved from one plant to another by a bee, another insect or the wind (the pollinator) and join with the female parts (the ova) and make the babies if you like - and the babies in this case are the seeds. Most seeds are normally encased in fruiting bodies like apples, pears or nuts.

So, if for example, you enclosed an adult apple tree in a bee proof environment - it would produce blossom - but not any apples. The apples only grow once the flower has been fertilised, and the apples then grow from where the flowers once were. No pollination = no fertilisation = no apples.

The same is true for any flowering plant.

Can’t Something Else Pollinate Our Food?
Well, yes of course - some are pollinated by a variety of birds, insects or mammals - and many by the wind, but certain plants have evolved over thousands of years to work best with just 1 or 2 types of pollinators.

You may have seen the incredibly long flower tubes that only certain birds can reach into to feed, or the incredibly intricate ways that plants transfer pollen onto butterflies heads. Did you know that some plants will only release their pollen if stimulated by vibrating bee wings!

We can stimulate pollination ourselves if necessary, but it takes a lot longer and is nowhere near as effective long term. There is for example a town in China where villagers have to rub feathers across all their pear trees to make sure that they produce fruit - as they killed off all their own bees with pesticides.

This is all well and good for 1 small location where everyone chips in a bit of time for their own rewards, but imagine how many people you would need, how much time it would take and how much money it would cost to pay people to pollinate - by hand - the 60 million almond trees in California alone?

And this is just one crop. We farm a tonne of other more important crops - all of which will suffer if there are no bees.

What Can I Do?
Firstly, you can make sure that you limit or stop your use of pesticides or garden chemicals for ever and garden more organically. Bees are insects and so an insecticide used to kill those pesky aphids could well be killing bees too as well as butterflies and ladybirds - and possibly even birds and mammals.

Ladybirds which eat poisoned aphids could build up the toxins inside themselves before getting eaten by birds and passing these poison on up the food chain to larger birds or mammals! So insecticides can poison sparrows, falcons and even domestic cats!

Secondly, make a home for them! Now I am not suggesting that you need to set up a hive - you can easily make a home for a single bee in a tree or a hole in the ground and help to encourage wild bees (domesticated bees in hives cannot survive without human help) into your garden.

Make sure you leave wild areas in your yard - and make sure it has flowering plants in it so the bees can eat the nectar. A garden filled with decking and concrete isn’t going to make a good home for any animal!

Wild bees are just as good if not better at pollinating some plants and foods, but they live singly or in much smaller groups and don’t always want to live in the same hive. Your garden could supply the next home for some travelling bees - helping to keep your plants alive at the same time!

Thirdly, you could support local bee keepers by buying local honey - after all - their bees could be helping to pollinate your garden and local parks. They could also be creating all the yummy fruit you keep buying from your local farm store!

Nationally, Hagen Daz have made a Vanilla Honey Ice Cream to help highlight the plight of the honey bee (bees pollinate vanilla orchids if you didn’t know). By buying some of this delicious product - I have tried it myself - you can help fund research into what is causing the massive bee losses across the world - and hopefully prevent the honey bee as we know it ceasing to exist.

As a result, you will be keeping (excuse the pun) all those apples, pears, melons, cherries, blueberries, pumpkins, carrots, onions, broccoli, soya beans, almonds and sunflowers on your table!

Tips On How to Create And Manage Your Environmentally Friendly Gardens.

There are many things you can do around your garden that can make it more environmentally friendly - and this doesn’t just entail dragging bath water in buckets to the garden or picking slugs off your plants under the moonlight!

More people are moving into their gardens to make a difference to their lives, either to enrich the wildlife they attract, or to grow their own food and rear their own chickens!

This article hopes to highlight a few things that you might not have thought of in your garden plans, and explains why they will benefit you and your family.

Weeding:
Try to make time to weed by hand - not only does this reduce your dependence on artificial and possibly toxic chemicals, it will also give you a little bit of exercise and allow your skin to produce some Vitamin D - essential for health!

Obviously you will need some tools to weed with - but try to use manual equipment to do so. Not only is is quieter (there’s nothing more annoying than finally getting out in the garden to enjoy a good book and next door start their leaf blower or hedge trimmer!!) but it uses less energy. No petrol or electricity is needed to use your favourite pair of shears!

If you do have an extensive lawn or plenty of hedges, etc - then large - and often expensive - equipment may well be required. But rather than buying it all yourself and then leaving it in the shed until next year - why not borrow or hire a neighbors. Some communities join together to buy ’shared’ equipment which you rotate through the group.

However if you do need these things - then it may well be cheaper to pay for a professional gardening company to do it once or twice a year for you, rather than buy, store and repair all your own items. This will then, of course, free you up some valuable time to do something more fun!

Avoid mowing your lawn in summer as young amphibians may well be killed.

Plants:
Make sure you don’t use peat products in your garden. Not only is it taken from a fragile and irreplaceable habitat - it is also a carbon sink - basically it is keeping all the carbon it absorbed years ago within itself. Digging it up releases this carbon into the atmosphere again - and I think we already have enough up there already!

Source local, native seeds if possible to limit invasive species gettting a hold here. Also local plants will be best suited to the environment you live in, therefore limiting their damage in terms of extra water demands and possible toxins if eaten by our native wildlife. Hopefully you will help to increase biodiversity with your choices and start to attract local species instead of killing them! Ideally, you would aim for the most drought-hardy versions of your selected plants where possible to reduce demands.

Ponds:
By putting in a garden pond, you could also attract frogs and toads who delight in eating garden pests! And you could also attract a whole host of other garden-friendly pest controllers with the mini wetland you create!

Ideally, you wouldn’t put fish in a wildlife pond as they may well eat insects, amphibians and their young. Also many products need to be used to keep the fish healthy including energy sapping filters and pumps (unless you install solar equipment) and these can go against the ‘eco-friendly’ grain so to speak. Having a few healthy fish at the expense of a delightful and welcoming wildlife pond teeming with local species and plants is your choice in the end.

Try to avoid to much fuss over the pond in summer as many creatures will be breeding and there will be young all around. You could throw them out if you start weeding!

Messy Area:
By making sure there is a part of your garden that is a bit dishevelled will ensure that more wildlife will find your garden a safe haven. Essential to attract is the humble bumble bee and you can do this by offering it a home in a hole close to the ground - they will help pollinate your plants and vegetables through the summer.

Your compost heap is an essential part of a sustainable garden - even if you are not growing your own veg. Plants can do very well on the composted result of your table scraps and dead leaves (it also saves a long drive to the amenity facilities to dump all your green waste too!)

Make sure you let nettles grow in a controlled area of your garden as well, as they are a great nitrogen fixer - making the earth beneath then become more fertile.

Ideally, your messy area and lawn should be proportionally larger than any paved or concreted areas, as these hard impermeable surfaces will increase rain run off during storms. As a result, it will divert valuable water away from your garden plants and send it (along with everyone elses run-off) into the drains and nearby creeks and streams. After long periods of heavy rain this could easily increase the risk of localised flooding as all the water gets to the waterways at the same time rather than slowly filtering through the ground first!

Pets:
Make sure that your pets are not causing a problem for wildlife or your garden. Cats for example catch mice and other small rodents which unfortunately is having a disastrous effect on bumble bees. These insects like to use old rodent burrows for their new nests, but if there aren’t any rodents digging the burrows in the first place - you can see the problem!

They also kill frogs, toads and wild birds.

Ducks are a tiny bit messier than chickens but they just love slugs and will eat them for you all day. However, they may destroy some plants along the way! Ducks will produce less eggs though if you were looking for a steady supplier!

Guinea pigs make great electricity-free lawn mowers and can keep grass down perfectly low if you rotate them around your garden in their spacious run. Rabbits also eat grass but will almost always burrow into your lawn creating a bit of a mess! Both will eat all the fresh table scraps you can offer and their bedding can be composted.

So, go get outside - and start developing you environmentally friendly gardens into something you can be proud of!!!

Are You Thinking About Creating a Wildlife-Friendly Pond in Your Garden? Well here are a few pointers for you…….

There was a massive reduction in garden ponds and even those on farmlands - and as a result a lot of native mammals have lost their homes! It’s amazing how many animals rely on them not only for living in or breeding around - but as stop-overs on their way somewhere else!

And anyway - why should you just do it for the wildlife - a garden pond is a great place for you to relax yourself after a busy week working. Get yourself a comfortable chair, a drink and a good book and just sit back!

If you are thinking of creating a pond from scratch, then you have an advantage as you can make sure that it is shaped to suit the wildlife you want to see as well making it the safest pond you can and as large as you like! Big is best here.

Where:
A shady site will attract different species to a bright one so check your preferred species with the layout of your garden. If it is shallow and in direct sun you will almost certainly get an algal bloom which can be a nuisance - but could be skimmed off and used for compost!

Smaller ponds may well dry out in sun as they should only be topped up with rainwater. Never be tempted to use tap water to fill up a wildlife pond as you could kill almost everything in it!

A shallow pond will be a favourite for frogs, whereas a deeper one may well attract newts - although the deeper ones are more dangerous for small mammals (and children) and so need an escape route built in to allow creatures to climb out if necessary.

Obviously, a wildlife pond needs to be accessible by these creatures in the first place - so don’t expect your pond to become home to amphibians if it is surrounded by paving or gravel. Make sure tufty grass, lawns and shaded moist ground surround your pond - allowing them to walk or slither in from neighboring gardens or parks.

Safety:
If you have young children, make sure that you fence off the pond, or cover it with a secure metal grid. Ponds can be great fun, but they must be safe.

This counts for mammals too.

When:
If starting from scratch, start digging in the fall, when the ground is softer and the weather is bad (as this will allow it to fill up with rainwater. Make sure the bottom is filled with clay or clean sand rather than topsoil and make sure you have gently sloping sides leading in to it on at least one side. Ideally let this edge have direct contact with an unchecked lawn, allowing the marginal water plants move out onto the lawn a bit to help the transition.

The pond needn’t be over 50cms at it’s deepest - and this is safest for young children - although if over 75cm deep you may well avoid the whole thing freezing solid in a bad winter!

If your garden pond is built in direct sunlight, make sure that taller plants are around the edge to help keep the water cooler and a bit shaded. It’s not a problem to let the water level drop a bit in summer as the wet mud on the ledges will be great for invertebrates!

Fall is a great time to clean out your pond too. Amphibians have completed their life-cycles, the water in the pond will be a bit lower to make your job easier - but make sure that you don’t leave too much open water as this can be unattractive to many species. Offer up-rooted plants to your neighbors or compost them. Ideally you wouldn’t throw them into the ‘wild’ as they may contain invasive or non-native species imported in to the nursery you brought them from!

Plants:
Be aware that you may need to add some species for pond health - not all pond life can walk or float in the wind! There are lots of choices for plant-life but make your choice well.

Only buy native species when stocking up. Definitely avoid buying foreign species as they may be invasive and overrun the rest of your garden, but native species will be the best for native wildlife. Many animals have evolved to benefit from certain plants and this is true for your ponds.

Encourage a mixture of submerged, floating and emergent plants to your garden pond so they offer shelter and protection for your wildlife, but also a range of habitats for breeding and rearing young. Avoid using chemical to encourage their growth - or to reduce their numbers - as this will no doubt impact the wildlife.

Many water plants are very fast growing, so resist the temptation to make the pond perfect on day 1, and let native species colonise your garden pond over it’s first year and you will get that more natural look - free from invasive species!

Fish:
Ideally, you would not add fish to your wildlife pond as they may well eat all the wildlife that comes to your garden!

I must admit that fish tend to be the reason many people get ponds in the first place, and certain species are better than others, but best leave your new pond to the wild animals if that’s what you and your family want to see.

Humans:
Get a color chart of common garden insects and invertebrates so that you and your kids can easily identify anything that they see.

No need for great big books on the subject - just a page or 2 of the most common creatures. There is nothing better to get a kids imagination going than actually being able to know what things are easily. Things aren’t fun if you can’t get them right time and time again - make sure you brush up on it too so that you can encourage them further.

If they see something in the pond and you can tell them what it is straight away - they will learn about them easily and build on this knowledge. You could even learn a few things yourself!!!

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Have you ever wanted to know more about sustainable living, and get advice on converting your house and garden into more energy efficient and chemical-free environments? Well here is your chance.

The Homes For Good show in April this year, is all about offering advice and suggestions for every householder, offering new products and new approaches to old concepts that will make your life more ‘green’.

Why Change?
The choices we make can have a profound effect on the toxins in our home, the environmental impact of our house and garden and the effect on our local community.

Whether you are building a new house, garage, barn or other outbuilding from scratch - or redecorating or modernising an existing room or premises - you can make better choices. However, rather than researching everything from scratch you could always ask the experts, people who have been working in the industry for years.

You will also have the opportunity to talk to others like yourself, who are new to many eco-friendly concepts. We are all here for the same thing, so make sure you are prepared to talk to exhibitors and other visitors to get some answers regarding your concerns or interests.

What’s There?
There will be over 100 exhibitors including Eco Trust (sustainability), Neate (wind turbines), Green Stuff (IT solutions) and many many more covering solar, water, electricity, house-building, architects, conservation of old, lime suppliers and many for the eco garden.

There will also be free demonstrations where you can get your hands on some new and revolutionary technology. There will also be talks from experts and trade workers as well as books for research and products to buy.

All this for only £5 entry fee (£2 for students and senior citizens) and it’s free to anyone under 16 as well!

Check online at www.homesforgood.info for more information and directions.

Hello and welcome to this new, fantastic blog about designing, creating, updating and improving you eco friendly house and garden. It will fill your hearts with joy at the wonders of eco living and design.

Not only are green products and services much more mainstream and competively priced these days, they are also 100 times more stylish and modern. The choice is vast!

This blog hopes to cover all the greatest eco tips regarding your home, the most exciting eco accessories, tips on finding the best eco friendly products and suppliers for your needs, and plenty of advice on planning and creating your dream eco friendly house and designing and relaxing in your equally eco friendly garden!

Choices include designer furniture, energy efficient appliances, stylish home entertainment accessories, fashionable eco-clothing and soft furnishing, environmentally friendly cleaning products and chemicals that won’t damage your health - or the earth. We will also investigate community projects and recycling ideas community-living, wildlife-friendly gardens, great ideas for the kids, fantastic recipes and cooking tips for your fresh homegrown vegetables and fruits as well as tips on keeping eco friendly pets and livestock.

So, from here on in, there is nothing but great house and garden ideas, tips for responsible living, helpful contacts and facts, facts, and more facts!

Enjoy.