Gayle Souter-Brown

I'm about to run an interior design course for the...

2009-05-24T04:00:55.173-07:00

I'm about to run an interior design course for the local Adult Education Centre. It's a look at sustainable interiors - that is, looking at what we've got and making the most of it.

If the afternoon sun shines onto a bare wall of your house, install (opening) windows and let the natural light, warmth and fresh air pour in.

If you have a garden but no easy access, install a door off a convenient room. If you glaze the door you will let more light into the interior, as well as a view of the garden.

With abundant light and views of the garden you may wish to change the interior furnishings. Natural fabrics such as cotton, linen, silk, wool, and bamboo look fabulous in a sunny room opening onto a garden. They feel good to the touch in a way that synthectics rarely can and are sustainable. That is they can be produced locally, at little cost and with minimum impact on the environment.

Hi Gayle,I'd appreciate your insight on small gard...

2009-04-04T12:11:00.000-07:00

Hi Gayle,

I'd appreciate your insight on small gardening on our forum at http://sensiblesimplicity.lefora.com/forum/ as it's great to round out the voices a bit and gain some perspective from around the world.

Hope you can join us!

Jay

Things like hedges and fences get in the way of ou...

2008-11-25T08:17:00.000-08:00

Things like hedges and fences get in the way of our natural light availability.

1.5m is a good height for screening hedges and fences as it is eye-height, or above, for most people. Above this height and the feeling can become over-bearing, as well as the amount of sky you see being reduced.

France is a favourite country for the amount of sky visible at any one time. With divided up small fields, hedgerows and walls, in Britain our sky is hidden and our souls deprived of the wonders of the universe.

"The sky is the limit" is only inspirational if you can see the sky on a daily basis

Building regulations need to change, to legislate ...

2008-11-14T03:06:00.000-08:00

Building regulations need to change, to legislate for minimum amounts of natural light (window size). Currently doctor's surgeries must have more natural light than our homes!

Natural light boosts our feel-good endorphins, and our general health. (That is why outdoor workers tend to have a more healthy lifespan than people who do not get much natural light.)

Natural light costs nothing in terms of energy use or carbon footprints. Yet so many new homes are built by developers using cheap, small windows.

It is possible to design new cost effective homes, even ones which fit within local historical vernaculars, but with larger, healthier, more environmentally sustainable energy efficient windows!

If you look at the peoples of the world and their general dispositions, those cultures who enjoy large amounts of natural light (and I'm not talking sunshine here, just light) are far happier and more content than those who do not.

The cost of mean, small windows is a depressed population who work less efficiently, love less passionately and live less enthusiastically, and have a higher carbon footprint, and increased energy costs from their increased use of artificial light.

Britain is a huge user of electricity, much of which is generated in gas fired power stations. It seems a simple solution to a whole load of problems to just increase the size of windows.

With larger windows in all new homes, we would use less artificial light, live happier, healthier lives, reduce our demands on the healthcare system and above all, feel better about life!

Street plantings need to be upgraded from a few th...

2008-11-11T02:18:00.000-08:00

Street plantings need to be upgraded from a few thirsty, labour-intensive hanging baskets to shade-giving, edible trees.

Birds and all manner of invertebrates can lives in trees, but hanging baskets do nothing for them.

By planting flowering trees we humans get the benefit of the beauty of the flowers, as well as the fruit, as well as enhancing local habitats, sucking up carbon from the atmosphere (something hanging baskets are not renown for), adding valuable humidity to the local area and of course, providing that oft-forgotten life-force, oxygen!

There will need to be some education of how to gro...

2008-10-08T05:31:00.000-07:00

There will need to be some education of how to grow a range of crops, that a) people want to eat and b) grow readily wherever we live.

The problems of a surplus of one crop and then nothing to carry through will be addresed when I publish my new book! - watch this space. I'm up to Chapter 3.

Yes, and most of us will not be able to grow much ...

2008-10-04T07:09:00.000-07:00

Yes, and most of us will not be able to grow much of a range. Are we ready yet to tailor our diet and cuisine to what is available locally or in our back garden? I think we have been too spoilt in our generation and will probably continue to drive our cars and do mainly supermarket shopping until the situation gets so bad we have to change our ways.

My experience of growing our own is that we grow too much of one thing at only a certain time of year and we can't eat it all, so we all get very sick of said vegetable and give it away to others, while still going to supermarkets for other food and loo paper bleach etc.

Many eastern and southern european cultures design...

2008-10-03T11:52:00.000-07:00

Many eastern and southern european cultures design their homes around a central courtyard. This provides both security and light and air to every room in the house. Beautiful courtyards can make a home feel like a resort. Western cultures can re-create the effect by adding utility rooms, garages, even garden walls to the existing house.

It strikes me that we will want easy-to-grow edibl...

2008-10-03T11:40:00.000-07:00

It strikes me that we will want easy-to-grow edible plants. Many of us have no room for a full orchard though so container grown dwarf root stock fruit trees are an ideal solution.