Must be those years as a kid in Palm Springs that instilled my passion for succulent gardens that glow at dusk.

Whether opting for sun powered pathway lanterns or natural candles, you are cutting down on electricity while letting your prized garden bask in the limelight.

Combine them all for a low energy, highly-illuminated spot, where you and the mosquitoes can bite on juicy snacks and drink up the evening breeze.

Here are 10 that make a mark:

The color-changing Chalice solar path lights are said to last up to 30,000 hours (about 15 years) and automatically turn off and on to provide up to 8 hours of light at a time. $38.95 for a set at Target.

(shown at top)

Ideal for my friend Suzanne’s pad at the Four Seasons in Kona, these Solar pineapple lights up a garden path or patio with a warm welcome. They even make a fruity statement indoors! High-performance LED bulbs start to glow at dusk. They are a handpainted stone-resin composite. $27.95  each at Potpourri.

MIO solar path lights, also new to Target. They are green, retro and cheap at $40 per set.

Portfolio solar path lights from Lowes are a brass act with fluted glass lenses and a pretty copper finish. They come in a 12-pack and turn off and on automatically. $98.

I love the retro shell of these fun candle lanterns from Crate and Barrel. In yellow and orange, they burn 60 hours each for $6.95 (sale price). I love placing these on steps leading to a special sitting area in the yard.

Get groovy with these blown glass balls of light from Earth Tech.The gorgeous Firefly Solar Garden Art globes use solar energy to flow all night long, casting an art nouveau effect on these calla lilies. Enjoy the mystical ambience of  shadows and light over your prized garden blooms. $38.

Set the tone the minute the hybrids pull up to the party with these retro-colored driveway markers, powered by the sun and quite Mid-Century sensational. Se of 4 markers are $60 at Solar Goods.

I’m a sucker for anything shaped like a pagoda, including this lantern, also from Solar Goods. You can hang a few strategically in the garden or place on a few tables. They have a gorgeous weather-resistant finish and mix well with other exotic touches. $50 at Solar Goods (save on a pair).

Simple solar-charged spotlights, $50 for a pair at Green and More, are ideal for illuminating trees and bushes and creating that dramatic nighttime glow. Uses renewable solar panels with rechargeable friendly batteries included to stay lit for up to 10 hours at night.

Rock the garden – or the Casbah – with the Terra Spotlight, $113 at Eco Lights. Powered by two AA-size rechargeable NiCad batteries, the stones will provide 10 hours of light when fully charged. Available in two finishes, I think these are the most natural decor element I’ve seen for lighting the garden.

What do you picture when you think about summer barbeques? If visions of greasy burgers, CO2-emitting charcoal and trash bags filled with disposable plates, napkins and wasted food come to mind, here are some green tips to celebrate this seasonal milestone with respect for Mother Nature.

The centerpiece of any good BBQ is the grill, so invest in an eco-friendly one. What are your greenest options? Gas and charcoal versions both have their drawbacks: gas grills rely on non-renewable resources, while charcoal grills release carbon dioxide into the air. Although less conventional, a solar cooker is the greenest choice.

Keep the mosquitoes at bay naturally with citronella soy candles.

The arduous post-barbeque clean-up may tempt you to buy disposable plates and utensils, but that’s no excuse to be wasteful. Get your friends to help out with the mess and stick with reusable plates and utensils (if you must go the disposable route, try the eco-friendlier VerTerra).

Instead of tossing food scraps into the trash, compost them.

What’s the best solution for sticky BBQ fingers, besides licking them clean? A warm, moist cloth, of course. Besides the fact that they’re wasteful, disposable napkins aren’t quite up to the task at hand, anyways.

Recycle all bottles and cans.

Buy organic produce from your local farmers market.

Since the meat industry is responsible for nearly a fifth of greenhouse gas emissions, consider throwing a vegetarian barbeque. (Check out Sarah’s list of delicious meat alternatives.) If you can’t imagine a barbeque without burgers and chicken, make sure you’re grilling organic, local meat. (And wash down your grilled goodies with some organic beer.)

Decorate your table with placemats or a table runner made from organic, vintage or upcycled materials.

Don’t forget efficient, earth-friendly outdoor lighting.

Image: _dominic

If there were an Endangered Designs list running alongside its biological counterpart, it’s possible light fittings just got added to the bottom.

Modern technology is all about shrinking. Take the shift from the hefty, brick-like cellphones of the early 90s to the hands-free sets that make people question your sanity when you’re chatting into the air. For gadgets and appliances to be really cool, they should be unobtrusive to the brink of invisibility. For example, solar power. A garden covered in wire-strewn paneling? Not elegant (this is better). So technological advances like Nanosolar’s solar cell film will help solar panels truly disappear and blend seamlessly into your home aesthetic.

Now it’s the turn of LEDs to go stealthy. As Metaefficient reports, a new variety of organic LED (OLED) is promising an efficiency near the hallowed Energy Star standard.

Why is this big news?

Because OLEDs are rather different from the bulbs and spotlights to which we’ve grown accustomed. They’re flat and paper-thin. They’re comprised of a film of organic material that glows when a current runs through it, making OLEDs ideal for digital watches, dashboard displays and nightlights. Unfortunately, efficiency has been lagging – until now.

There are some interesting implications in the wind. If electroluminous lighting takes off and form truly follows function, lights are going to disappear as a distinct item of decor. It’s possible that our dream eco-house of the future won’t have such a thing as a “light fitting” – and one of the most common items of household furniture will blend into the walls, ceilings, floors and sides of our furniture (here’s an early example). Lamps would become retro (fun, quirky, but definitely last-century) and our living spaces would be transformed.

Is it lights out for lights?

Image: moriza

Over the last 12 months, we’ve seen some of the best, worst and most unusual that green architecture has to offer, from shipping container hotels to conference yurts. We’ve seen a host of exciting new ideas brought to the table – and here are a few that particularly won us over.

Bricks and mortar…on water?

It’s been hard to escape the Lilypad this year – thanks to a stunning design, jaw-dropping promotional images and an idea that seems way ahead of its time. A method of living on the two-thirds of our planet’s surface hitherto denied us – and doing so sustainably? Much more appetizing than growing gills, I’m sure we’re agreed.

Except – a nagging doubt. Look at the above picture. The word that springs to my mind isn’t “society” or “community” – it’s “elite”. Are sea-housing projects going to become something that local governments could afford to invest heavily in…or just a series of privately-financed, ultra-exclusive floating Dubais? If sea levels rise catastrophically, would the less wealthy be left stranded?

The Rise of the Truly Fab Prefab

Terraced houses. Entire streets that look exactly the same. Apartment blocks that look like a bureaucrat’s dream Lego set. And all because houses are built before they’re sold.

Let’s imagine something. Let’s say you buy the land first, then go shopping for a house to put on it. It’s a practice only just creeping into the mainstream housing market – and we couldn’t love it more (see here and here). Prefabs all look different, they’re custom built, and they’re testbeds for the cutting edge in new eco-friendly materials. I dream that one day, our children will buy their houses out of a catalogue.

Branching Out and Hanging Around

Tree hugger -”An environmentalist or one who believes trees and all living things should not be cut down or harmed.” In decades past, popularly equated with “nut”. But now, designers are waking up to the potential of living wood – whether it’s affixing human homes within the branches of trees, having trees growing (or “pleaching“) through houses or, most recently, the perfect tree hugger abode. We’re not going to see city-sized Lothloriens or streets looking like Patrick Dougherty sculptures anytime soon…but we’re thinking about it.

Scraping the Sky v2.0

It’s only recently in human history that we’ve starting building upwards on a skyscraping scale. Now these vast structures are becoming self-contained worlds, gathering energy, self-regulating and even growing their own food. So why do they have to be so boxy? They don’t. Take the Superstar (above): a model for a new kind of Chinatown.

Or the amazing pulled-spiderweb shape of the Crystal City, Moscow.

Or this Moon Shaped Skyscraper proposed for Baku, Azerbaijan.

On one level, genius at play – on another, mad as a hatstand. But the wider implication is that skyscraper designers are leaving behind the Giant’s Causeway urban template and borrowing a wider range of shapes from the natural world. More, please.

Buildings That Earn Their Keep

Everything we do around the home expends energy (unless you’re as lazy as I am). We ingest food, it turns into chemical energy, we expend it in mechanical effort. And then, that energy is wasted, usually as heat (friction). Could we divert some of it into powering our homes?

The signs are good. Take the door of the Natuurcafé La Port in Driebergen in the Netherlands – similar to a project undertaken by Fluxxlab. Take the power-generating floors of the Tokyo railway station. It’s not otherworldly technology, although it’ll be years before we see domestic housing using such features as standard. We can’t wait.

Something Sustainable Afoot

Forget polyvinyl flooring – the kind you see poking out of landfills with depressing regularity. Forget synthetic carpets that only really tell you what they’re made of when you singe them, filling the air with a smell you’ll take to your grave. No – we’d rather see acres of cork and bamboo flooring lining the next generation of homes. Green, gorgeous, great potential.

Turfing your Turf

Covering the outside and inside of your house with grass might sound like the work of a deranged golfing fanatic – but it makes sense. Now we’re seeing the concept at work in the street, such as the above fashion store in Seoul, Korea.

Electricity as a Last Resort

As wonderful as the rise of alternate energy is, there’s something we like even more – a home that doesn’t need it. Take the role of sunpipes in casting natural light deep into our homes without the slightest sizzle of power – and how about us rethinking our need to set our homes ablaze in the evenings? Take passive housing. Will the dream house of tomorrow have a dream electricity bill?

Buildings That Make You Sweat

Here in the U.K., obesity has just been labeled “one of the greatest public health threats“. Part of the root cause is lack of exercise – and part of that is surely the rise in modern labor-saving devices. So we applaud designers like Bruce Fowle who want to turn buildings and cities into gentle gyms.

These are our favorites. What are yours? If you’ve found something relevant (or blogged about it), share the link in the comments.

Image credits: Vincent Callebaut Architectures, miniHome, Apartment Therapy, Inhabitat, MAD Ltd, Foster and Partners, Civil Engineering Portal, Globus, Ann Demeulemeester, seeks2dream and Dustin Diaz.

It’s not often that my design senses are stimulated. But there’s something about Amy Adams’ pottery at perch! that tickles my fancy. We first raved about her designs here and here, but there’s more.

Adams has a special skill when it comes to ceramics – her designs are modern, playful and charming. All perch! pieces are eco-friendly – made with low impact materials and processes, non-toxic finishes and byproducts. And they’re handmade entirely in the U.S.A – Brooklyn, to be precise.

My most recent find is the Frida desk lamp. It has an adorable ceramic base with a big white dot and a handle. At 18″ tall by 7″ diameter at the base, it’s available in an assortment of colors. Choose a brown or white burlap shade. Available for $300 at perch!.

It takes a lot of research (and a lot of time) to stay on top of the latest décor trends, but don’t worry about falling behind due to your busy schedule. We’re constantly searching to bring you up to speed on the hottest eco looks. This week, modern geometric lighting is turning up all over the place.

The team at David Trubridge Design applies innovation to this design craze with an array of unique styles made from sustainable hoop pine plywood.

Four words come to mind when I look at the Bendant Lamp: contemporary, funky and totally hip. Vivavi is a fabulous source to find lighting that defies convention (shown at top).

If you’re a fan of more traditional fixtures, you can still dabble in this trend with lampshades embellished by geometric patterns, such as the Mom Table lamp at Ruby Living.

If I’ve heard it from one client, I’ve heard it from 10. “We can’t spend any more money.” Well, that ain’t no fun. Woefully, my plans to do that Far East theme took a bad turn when the economy went south. Now what?

Here are a few tips from your resident EcoSalon designer on how to squeeze the remaining juice from your bruised budget.

Prioritize Adequate Lighting

Highlight the items you can’t live without and can still afford with your new budget constraints. If you can’t read without good lighting in the family room, purchase floor lights to flank that sofa you splurged on. There are many good green options, like the Brookfieldâ„¢Deluxe Full Spectrum Floor Lamp from Verilux, which has the profile of a turn-of-the-century design with 21st Century efficiency. For $150, you might as well buy a pair. We can’t go blind just because corporate greed messed up our investments.

Paint Works Wonders

Table your plans for new dining furniture for now and paint, instead, using natural milk paint. Most clients have decent breakfast room and dining room furniture but seek replacements as part of their stylish redux. Good dining furniture can be quite costly. Instead, why not paint existing kitchen wooden tables a mod or warm shade to color you happy until things pick up and you can splurge? Chairs can be great accent pieces with fun shades.

No Beddy Buy

   
New headboards and beds may be a luxury right now. If you have one on your to-get list, save it for when you’re feeling flush and focus on the bedding for now. I cannot live without nice sheets and duvets and there are super chic organic choices that won’t set you back too much. You might as well be swathed in soft cotton to shelter the storm. See Purists Give a Sheet for a glimpse of what’s out there.

Pricey Art Not Smart. Do Photos, instead

I’d have art over furniture any day, but I began acquiring pieces years ago as an art writer. Now isn’t the time to invest in large, expensive works. Sure, you can always pick up great finds at various sales and auctions, but for now, why not do a photo wall to cover that wonderful space? I do photo walls all of the time for families. You can have vintage shots enlarged at Kinko’s or other office supply stores, and pick up frames at discount frame stores or even good thrift shops. I often shop at Photograph, a new source that offers affordable, high-quality, do-it-yourself frames and matting.

Opt for Xeriscape Landscaping

Usually, the landscaping comes last in a home remodel or redesign and can sap whatever cash you have left. Bids for large jobs can come in at $50,000 to $100,000 for elaborate lawns, plantings, fountains, swimming pools and trees. Go for the green option, choosing low water use grasses and herbs. You can plant a veggie garden with your kids or neighbors to cover a healthy plot. I also love cactus and other desert blooms as design elements in the creative garden. You can pot great shrubs to maximize volume outdoors. You’ll be saving water and helping the planet stay more beautiful at the same time. Check out ideas at for low water use plants at Laspilitas.

"Write about night lights", a reader requested – and instantly I remembered being transfixed by the circling goo in lava-lamps. Nowadays my preferences are less gooey and more eco-friendly (that goo? Globules of mineral oil and, um, paraffin).

A successful night light is all about subtlety and artful unobtrusiveness. A light useful and clear, yet gentle enough to be stopped by your eyelids. Moonlight springs to mind, so applause to these guys for patenting the name – and then cheers, for creating such an energy efficient light (run it all year for less than a dollar!).

For something that won’t be mistaken for an iPod during waking hours, however, check out VivaTerra’s Leaf Night Light. Delicate filigree of a real leaf casts soft patterns of light, setting any corner of choice aglow. Or perhaps the Agate Night Light – a sheaf of translucent rock in a soothing color. Both easily stand the test of daylight.

But for cuteness, there’s no beating the Sun Jar. Leave it on a sunny windowsill, and it’ll soak up solar energy that it releases at night in a steady golden glow, as if Tinkerbell’s in there, counting sheep.

Moonlight – around $18 from The Carbon Neutral Company
Leaf Night Light – $39 from VivaTerra
Horizon Night Light – $39 from VivaTerra
Sun Jar - around $40 from Nigel’s Eco Store

What does a 21st century home look like? We recently gave a rundown of some of the features we can expect in the next wave of amazing, green houses (in 21 Ways To Build A 21st Century Home). But since we’re already in the 21st Century, you’d expect to see some of these innovations put into practice already. And you’d be right. Here are 15 amazing futuristic innovations that you can see at work right now:

Modular Manufacture. Prefab houses come in all sorts of weird and wonderful shapes – but let’s get rid of one preconception. Cramped? Tell that to someone living in a Dwell home.

Green Building Materials. And to think we used the phrase “house of straw” to mean impermanent. I can’t see this strawbale-packed house from Earthflow Design Works (complete with pervious concrete driveway) going anywhere in a hurry.

Keeping It Together. We’ve featured them before, but the Loq-Kit house never gets old.

Living Walls… or even better, a living roof, as with Tom Ground’s Gimingham Eco House by Quadlock building solutions. But why stop with grass? Why not grow trees on the outside of your house?

Sonic Cloaking. Not yet! The sonic cloak is still in development, and it’ll be years before we see (or hear) it manifesting in our homes. But for now, think on this: noise is vibration, and noise is transmitted into the home via vibrations in windows – so if they’re  vibrating already (powered sustainably, of course), that would make them soundproof. Clever!

“Traditional” Alternative Energy. Solar panels are currently a fairly obtrusive design feature – but with technological breakthroughs (such as this one) solar panels will disappear into designs, leaving them as clean-looking as this eco-house proposed for the outskirts of Nicosia, Cyprus. Even though it’s solar powered – nary a panel in sight.

Recycled Water. In the Florence Lofts, Sebastopol (California), all gray water from washing, bathing and laundry is fed into landscape irrigation, helped along with freshly-scrubbed rain water. Read the full story at Inhabitat.

Ground Heat. A good example is the Orchid House in Britain’s Cotswolds region – some of this unique looking eco-house’s power supply is geothermal energy. Price? $6,000 per square foot. Ouch.

Passive Heating. These passive houses from Swedish architects Kjellgren Kaminsky rely on top-quality insulation to keep heating energy requirements down to a minimum. The tree erupting from the central atrium is a nice touch. (via cubeme).

Electronic Regulation. Looking like it’s about to lurch into the sky, the Zero House is a model of tailored energy efficiency – all run through a fully customized “house brain” computer-system.

Electrical Lights. With the advent of LED lighting, we’re rediscovering color again. Take the roof of the Evergreen State College, using the Color Kinetics lighting system. Not only is it the green way forward (LEDs are now more efficient than CFLs), it’s the fun way forward.

Natural Light. Sunpipes are cropping up everywhere, and no wonder – they’re a brilliant idea (excuse the pun). But they’re just the start. For example, look at what Parans is doing with fiberoptics, feeding natural light all around the home (see more over at Treehugger).

Rain Harvesting. A rainwater-collection system is compulsory in the next generation of eco-housing – but it’s far from a new idea. As greenUPGRADER notes, Japanese rain chains are a traditional and stylish way of diverting rainwater down the side of the house and into a collection tank.

Ventilation.  How do you keep your eco-house cool and aerated? Along with advances in electronically controlled temperature and airflow, why not get higher into the breeze? You’re looking at Joel L. Sherman’s Steel Tree House – one of many treehouses featured in a series of posts over at Inhabitat.

Gardens. On one example springs to mind, dominating the landscape in every sense. Not only a symbol but a living, breathing example of sustainable green living, the Eden Project is astonishing. Fretting that you have to come all the way to the UK to see it? Then you’ll be happy to learn more about  the upcoming US version, Earthpark.

The week’s most interesting from out and about:

New Word of the Week: when consumers descend en masse upon an ethically-admirable business and reward it with their custom – in other words, the opposite of boycotting – it’s called "carrotmobbing". Hippyshopper has more details.

Ah, Fall (or Autumn, to us Brits). Leaves to kick your way through, the first chill in the air bringing goosebumps – and end of summer sales. What’s not to love? Greenopia can help.

We’ve mentioned it before, but let’s do so again – Eco Mountain Resort Getaway Competition. We’re into the last few days before the competition closes on September 30th, so get your skates on. (BeThree reminded us to remind you).

Apartment Therapy Re-Nest has a few ideas for a greener kitchen – 7, to be specific – and there’s a few that are new to us (like the fruit fly death trap – goodbye to clouds of spray drifting through the house).  Be sure to click the headline under each photo for the lowdown on each tip.

David Edwards has the greenest house in California. Build It Green voted it the "best new large custom house" in 2006, and the list of eco-improvements Edwards has made is exhaustive – have a read of them over at Lookiloos.

Our regular readers might recognise some of Eco Delight’s 20 Ways to Lighten the World, such as the Nautilus (here’s Kim’s post) and Propeller Design’s work (here’s my post)…but there’s a lot of new eco-candy here. The Phillips LED lamp – wow.

I’m the last person on the planet who doesn’t have an iPhone. But there’s no pressure – even when Treehugger makes it clear the ways in which this gadget can save you gas, energy, time and money. Nope, I’m not interested. Um. How much are they again?

Too many fashion blogs to keep track of. Someone needs to list them all on one page, including all our favourites. Aha!

A tote bag is an implied statement about your principles. Why not make it a literal statement, by having your principles written on the side of it?

We throw food away too much for our own good. And it’s a double tragedy: not only are we missing out on good edible food right now, we’re throwing away food that hasn’t yet grown. Look what happened when Wandering Chopsticks put sprouted potatoes in the ground instead of in the trash or compost. A lesson for us all.

See you next week, everyone!

Image: rachelvoorhees