I’ve greened just about every square inch of Hotelephant—non-toxic hot tub to clay walls, low-VOC paint o recycled marble bathroom, CFLs to fridge to furniture to insulation, even TV. One thing I haven’t done, yet, my backyard. I’ve been looking for a good green landscaping company who could xeriscape it in a everyday user-friendly, Japanesey stylin’ kinda way. So I was int’d to read today’s write up in the Times re how to green your landscape. Excerpt:

IN THE GARDEN

How Green Is Your Garden? A New Rating System May Tell You

…We wandered on through the three-acre garden filled with plants native to the Coastal Plain and Piedmont areas, from New Jersey to North Carolina, many of which can be grown in southern parts of New York and Connecticut and other places where winter temperatures rarely drop below zero.

There were chokeberry bushes loaded with red berries; beautyberry full of purple fruit; and a variety of evergreens, including pond pine, longleaf pine and the familiar Eastern red cedar, with waxy blue-gray berries that attract flocks of cedar waxwings.

Even in this frozen state, the garden serves as a model for the Sustainable Sites Initiative, introduced in November by the United States Botanic Garden, the American Society of Landscape Architects and the Lady Bird JohnsonWildflower Center.

Here’s the rest of the article.