Forget about the hobbit houses: contemporary green living
Prompt: Buildings, cities, architecture
Jane Troughton and her husband Greg have a morning ritual involving their bed, some birds and a pair of binoculars.
In the past, shortly after rubbing sleep from their eyes, each would grab a cup of coffee and spend ten minutes reading in bed to fully waken up.
Nowadays their ritual differs slightly. Binoculars and birds have replaced the caffeine and literature. Each morning, the pair lie back in their bed which has a full view of their roof garden and watch wings flutter about the mini forest of indigenous plants. “The hadedas are out first because they’re the bullies,” says Jane as she recounts the ritual, “Then there are a stream of birds until we get down to the little manikins.”
The roof garden, jam-packed with plants that fill every available surface, acts as a makeshift crown heaving with greenery. This green crown sits atop 12 Sherborne Place, a contemporary green house nestled in the heart of Durban North.
This contemporary version of green living, known as the “Gorgeous Green House”, is Jane’s brainchild.
Jane actively punts renewables like solar and whoops with delight at the mention of wind turbines. The ecological activist is using her home to illustrate the benefits of going green.
While Jane has been eco-conscious for the past 20 years, the idea for the green house began only in 2007, “[It was] when we had that first round of blackouts that I started thinking that this country is really missing the plot.” Jane decided she wasn’t going to sit around, waiting for Eskom to flick a switch.
She wanted to create an eco-friendly, contemporary green space in which her family could live comfortably and which would be kinder to the environment.
Eight years later, Jane sits in her home office sharing her journey while buzzing cicadas and chirping crickets provide a background score.
The office, situated right next to the storey-high front door, is small, bright and hosts a wall of windows looking out on the vertical garden. Green leaves reach out and brush at every window. Its one of Jane’s favourite things about her home; wherever someone stands in the house, nature is never far away.
From the beginning, Jane knew she wanted to create a modern eco-home. The house sits on a double plot of land. The original structure was built in the 1940s. Jane and Greg bought the plot, demolished the house and salvaged as much of the old material that they could to incorporate it into the new building.
The contemporary design is hugely different from the traditional style of the original building. Aesthetically, the green house does not fit in with the stereotypical idea of a ‘green house’. Jane has heard all of the typical green house tropes that she sums up simply as “a hobbit house in the side of a hill.” Natural colours, high ceilings, open plan rooms, warm tones, and clean yet organic lines dominate this house, and both the house and the gardens feel refreshingly light and modern.
Anyone driving past the Gorgeous Green House would not guess that it’s filled with green technology: floor tiles made of 60% recycled material, carpets made from recycled plastic bottles, ceiling insulated with polystyrene, solar panels on the roof, batteries for storage, rainwater-harvesting tanks, and an eco-pool brimming with reeds and tadpoles. There is also a natural ventilation system created using strategically-placed windows to cut out the need for air-conditioners which are characteristically pumped during Durban’s humid summers.
Leaning back in an orange, re-upholstered wingback chair with one leg tucked under her, Jane explains how she has not always been as ecologically conscious as she is now, “People always used to ask [where the passion started] and I would give them the obvious ‘oh I care about the environment’ answer and I could see their faces fall with boredom so I thought about it a bit more and thought of actually why have I got this crazy passion?”
Her two children are a major contributor to Jane’s consideration of the environment. “Every parent starts thinking ‘what am I leaving behind? What future are we giving our children?’” she shares, “I originally didn’t want to have kids so when we eventually did, it was like oh f- what the hell are we actually doing here?"
“Water-wise indigenous gardening sounded like a cool, easy way to garden. So my first foray into indigenous gardening wasn’t out of eco-concern. It was laziness and being quite career-orientated,” Jane chuckles.As she became more conscious of the environment she met environmental activists and started to become involved in conservation projects and small-scale food growing, “I began thinking about living differently,” says Jane.
The Gorgeous Green House started as a dream pinned to the vision board the family tacked to the fridge in the kitchen of their old house.
Jane now sits contently in the manifestation of her work but this was not without challenges.“First I had to lobby the most important actors; the family,” says Jane, “I started bugging everyone. Of course it fell on stony ground initially and it took years and years of lobbying the three of them.”
After the family were convinced, Jane and Greg had the onerous task of lobbying the Ethekwini municipality which does not often receive plans for houses making use of green technology on this scale. “It was a lot of back and forth,” she explains. The plans for the house had to be adjusted several times. The biggest issue for the municipality was water.
As Jane states, there is a water crisis looming. Therefore, to reduce its ecological impact, the house makes use of filtered rainwater and grey water (water used in the house and then recycled and used in the garden). Ethekwini was worried that the house would feed water polluted with bacteria back into the main system. Jane and the civil planning team eventually convinced them of her solid system, “The main issue is that [city planners] don’t have tick boxes for grey water and the like. And the bureaucrats don’t know what to do with it.”
A further challenge was budgeting the project. A green house of this scale does not come cheap, an aspect that Jane believes puts many off going green. However, with the cost of electricity, renewable technology like solar panelling, although expensive, can save users money in the long run. Plans were approved, budgeting sorted, building began in 2012 and now three years later, Jane’s dream of a modern eco house has come to realisation.
Recycled water flows from taps in the kitchen and 24 solar panels lining the part of the roof not covered in foliage keep the house humming with electricity even when Eskom decides to shed some loads.
One of Jane’s goals in creating the Gorgeous Green House is to share her journey.
Through a successful blog, and newspaper and television coverage, Jane is happy to be getting their story to the public, which she hopes will encourage eco-consciousness in more people.While the reception has mostly been positive, there are some people who are dubious.
A friend of hers recently shared the clip of the Top Billing Gorgeous Green House feature on Facebook and most of the comments were negative:“Things like: That woman is not green, you can see she’s wearing make up, has anyone seen the contents of her fridge? The house is sterile. It was five or six people having a good old rant,” she explains. She leans forward, with her chin resting in her left hand. “Top billing is quick, its little visual bites and fast segments of the house with the white floors. You don’t get the vibe. You can’t really hear the frogs croaking, you cant see that fact that every window shows the garden,” she says.
The buzzing outside grows sharper; the insects seem as irritated with the naysayers as Jane is, “I know these types of people and they want to be suffering all the time; the planets suffering so we should be suffering alongside her. That’s not going to save anything. We have to be enthusiastic and positive about the future! We have to believe that we can turn things around.” Jane leans back in her chair, casting a quick glance towards the wall of windows.
“Shit if I’m not green because I wear make up then sorry for you, seriously. How far do you have to go, must I start shaving my armpits? Am I not authentic?” Jane asks bemused.
“I think that’s quite a stereotypical idea of what green is. We really need to transcend the hippy stereotype and think about contemporary green issues. We have to situate ourselves and think what does it really mean save this fucking planet? There are much bigger issues than hairy armpits.”
