sustainability

Mar 30 2017

A tree is nice – and if you buy one for Earth Day the City of Portland will put money back in your hands

When my kids were little, we read the Caldecott-Award-winning storybook that offers a child’s view of why “a tree is nice.” With Arbor and Earth Day coming up April 22^nd, it’s timely to review the many virtues of trees.

Trees are very nice. They fill up the sky. They go besides the rivers and down the valleys. They live up on the hills. Trees make the woods. They make everything beautiful. – Janice May Udry

Stumptown, 1857 (Oregon Historical Society)

In its frontier days of breakneck growth and timber clearing, Portland was dubbed Stumptown. About 160 years on, the City aspires to the nickname ‘Treetown’ for grown-up economic and environmental reasons.

As every realtor knows, trees boost property values. How much? According to one study, each large front-yard specimen increases a home’s sale price by 1 percent. Neighborhoods with good tree cover enjoy a 6-9 percent price edge over those without. Lower income communities see the highest gains from tree planting and landscaping, by the way.

Trees also reduce homeowners’ utility costs. Two 25-foot trees on the west side of a house result in yearly savings of about 36 percent on cooling bills and 7 percent on heating bills. When whole cities commit to trees, everyone benefits. A good canopy cover lowers both summertime highs (by 5-9 degrees Farenheit) and demand for air conditioning.

Urban tree canopies also help preserve our natural capital, removing greenhouse gases and pollutants from the air. By one estimate, planting 30,000 trees a year for five years will absorb 75,000 tons of carbon dioxide at a cost of just $34 per ton. By another, the tree cover in the Willamette and Lower Columbia Region removes 89,000 tons of pollutants annually.

As they clear the air, trees also clean our water. Urban canopies absorb and filter storm water – to the tune of about 845 gallons per year per tree – that would otherwise flood sewers and pollute waterways. They also help recharge groundwater supplies.

As recently as 1991, 6 billion gallons of untreated sewage and storm water flowed into the Willamette and Columbia Rivers every year. Facing an Environmental Protection Agency order, the City built new “grey” infrastructure like a $1.5 billion wastewater storage tunnel. Over time, Portland has given higher priority to building our green infrastructure, a more cost-effective approach to protecting the watershed.

The City launched the Grey to Green program in 2008. Tree planting is one of 6 key activities to improve water and air quality, wildlife habitat and livability. The other pillars of the program are acquiring and protecting open spaces, constructing green street planters, building eco-roofs, controlling invasive species and restoring natural vegetation.

As part of Gray to Green, Portland runs an annual “treebate” from September 1 to April 30. If you plant a tree during this period, your water and sewer utility bill will be credited for half the purchase price up to $15 for small species, $25 for medium species and $50 for large species. Click here for details. Local non-profit Friends of Trees partners with the City in the treebate, helping homeowners to choose, buy and plant.

In part as a result of these efforts, Portland can rightly be called Treetown. Covering about 30 percent of the city, our urban forest canopy made the top 10 list compiled by conservation group American Forests a few years back. But the City isn’t resting on its laurels. Much of the canopy we enjoy today is the legacy of previous generations and needs to be restocked as it reaches maturity. Its quality can also be improved. There is not enough diversity (for example, maples and elms are overrepresented and vulnerable to disease and pests) and we need more species that will be large at maturity.

You can check out the health of the canopy in your neighborhood here. If your area doesn’t have a tree report card yet, you can help organize one. Across Portland, community volunteers have worked with the Parks & Recreation Department to inventory neighborhood trees and develop improvement plans. There’s always work to be done – pruning, planting and so on.

Well-being, recreation and aesthetic pleasure

In addition to their economic and environmental value, trees provide these social benefits:

Improved health and psychological well-being
Privacy, sound barriers and wind breaks
Lower crime rates
Stronger community ties
Recreation
Aesthetic pleasure

Believe it or not, these intangibles can be quantified with hedonic pricing, a method commonly used to calculate the effect of environmental features on the market price of housing. I suspect the hedonic value of Portland’s urban canopy is a factor in the tide of migration to the city and rapidly rising home prices.

Though my head understands the need for such valuations in public policy and commerce, my heart doubts that you can put a price on our urban canopy – or put the appeal of trees into words, for that matter. Maybe that’s why the storybook comes to mind. Maybe there’s no better testament to their power than the childlike wonder of A Tree Is Nice.

Aug 21 2015

Is your lawn brown? Low-water gardens are beautiful and “green”

Mediterranean gravel garden (Creative Landscapes, Inc.)

Driving through my west Portland neighborhood, I see many lawns gleaming like straw in the August sun. And I wonder – are the owners environmentally conscious, frugal or both?

In a city where the top 15 residential “hydro hogs” are named and shamed annually, it stands to reason that there are lots of “green” homeowners who choose to forego green lawns in the dry summer months.

Peeling bark and smooth bronze trunk of Madrone tree (Robert Couse-Baker)

At the same time, Portland is known for high utility bills. With the annual rate adjustment that took effect July 1^st, the average household water bill increased by 7 percent, reaching a monthly total of just under $32.

Whatever the reasons for parched lawns, two things are clear. First, there are very good reasons to practice low-water landscaping or “xeriscaping” (pronounced zeer-i-skey-ping). And second, that can be done without sacrificing beauty.

Against the backdrop of a drought emergency in 23 of Oregon’s 36 counties and a rash of wildfires, stewarding water resources has never seemed more important. Though the tri-county area and its water supply are not affected by drought, population growth in our corner of the state will strain water resources in the future.

While conserving water and reducing utility bills, xeriscaping offers other benefits: reduced fertilizer and pesticide use and a healthier watershed, fewer weeds, lower energy use and less maintenance.

Since grass requires more water, maintenance and chemicals than most other plants, re-seeding, reducing or eliminating lawns is a key step toward xeriscaping. A generic name for alternative seed mixtures that are environmentally friendly, ecoturf is sometimes faulted for looking like a meadow. Sunmark offers turf varieties that compare favorably to the look and feel of traditional lawns – without all the water and fertilizer.

Western Columbine attracts hummingbirds (James Gaither)

Reducing or eliminating lawns is the other way to go. Ground covers and mulches can look neat and appealing with little maintenance. Pathways and patios made of wood, rock, gravel or permeable concrete add interest and function to your yard while allowing water to drain to the soil below. For example, the photo top right shows a Mediterranean gravel garden designed by Portland’s Creative Landscapes, Inc.

Plant species that require little water are also a key element of xeriscaping, such as these Oregon natives: Madrones, Blue Blossoms, Western Columbines and Western Hemlocks. Click here for a manual on the subject.

Feathery Western Hemlock a good backdrop for other plants (Roland Tanglao)

You can keep down the costs of adopting low-water landscaping by doing much of the work yourself. For a list of professionals who can help with design and planning, click here. To enroll in OSU’s online, self-paced “waterwise” gardening class, click here. You can also visit low-water demonstration gardens at Metro in Portland, Tualatin Valley Water District in Beaverton, Clackamas Community College in Oregon City, or The Oregon Garden in Silverton.

Aug 07 2015

What’s your vision of luxury living — square footage and mod cons or sustainability and soul?

The Homebuilders Association of Portland bills their annual Street of Dreams event as a luxury home show. And that’s what I expected when I made the trip to Lake Oswego with fellow Berkshire Hathaway brokers on Monday.

The 9 featured properties range in size from 4,100 to over 5,700 square feet and in price from $1.4+ to $2.7+ million. The hillside setting has open fields of wildflowers and many of the homes do a good job of bringing the outside in with floor-to-ceiling and clerestory windows, folding walls of glass and “outdoor rooms.”

But I came away disappointed.

The only home with an architect in the driver’s seat is not new. My personal favorite, it’s a remodel of a 1950 classic designed by John Yeon, a pioneer of the Northwest regional style. My photo and the dark gray paint don’t do justice to its clean, horizontal lines.

Other homes in the show have less graceful and more eclectic silhouettes. For example, the promotional brochure describes one as “classic Victorian design with a Mediterranean style and a unique, modern twist.”

In some cases, the quality of materials and finishes is sacrificed on the altar of square footage. For example, I spotted faux wood laminate on garage doors, a molded concrete fireplace in a great room, and concrete cladding masquerading as brick on an exterior.

Outdoor rooms have every mod con – built-in barbecues and countertops, sinks, dishwashers, sofas, tvs and water features. But most lots are small and some outdoor spaces overlook the same feature in a neighboring backyard.

The brochure points out that all homes in the show have improved efficiency and cost savings needed to qualify for an Energy Performance Score. But it doesn’t reveal actual scores for each property.

In any case, the scoring system compares homes of similar size to each other. The environmental footprint of a home is defined to a large extent by its physical footprint. In addition to being so large, some of the properties have laundry rooms on both floors (in other words, two washers and dryers), as many as 4 giant tv screens, two dishwashers and two refrigerators.

This year marks the 40^th anniversary of Street of Dreams. The Homebuilders Association deserves credit for inventing the show and running it continuously – through good times and bad.

But I wish less money and fewer resources had been spent on square footage and appliances, and more on design, materials and finishes, sustainability, and soul – key elements of luxurious living in my book.

The show runs through August 30. You can buy tickets online for $17 per person here.