Small white flowers, blue-black berries, golden-orange leaves, vivid red stalks—hearing Caitlin Black describe the seasons of a blueberry bush makes you want to go out and plant your whole yard with them. Black and her husband, Owen, are partners in Aloe Designs, a company that creates gardens for people who not only care about their own patch but about the planet at large.

Wood is good was the underlying theme at Interior Design Show West (IDSWEST), held March 19 to 22 at the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre.

Is this a truly filthy province, or is everyone in dire need of therapy? How else to explain the cascade of cleaning aids being hustled at last week’s BC Home and Garden Show. It began as soon as you got inside B.C. Place Stadium, where a lineup of “spring clean” vignettes from the Bay took attendees past the laundry rooms of four hypothetical households, presumably neighbours.

After you’ve walked through the secret garden, up the front steps, and past the wicker chairs on the porch, the first thing you see when you enter Nikki Renshaw’s Kits heritage house is a massive Union Jack rug on the floor. Not the conventional flag, the subversive Vivienne Westwood version.

Vancouver is split into those who do and those who don't–ski, that is. Those of us who don't welcome weekends on the slopes enjoy a cleared-out house in which to crank up the thermostat and turn on the lights. Well, maybe a couple of years ago we did, but not now that we know what we're doing to the planet. If environmental altruism doesn't get you, remember that electricity costs money.

That whoosh you just heard was summer going by. Wasn’t it only yesterday that you were idling around the garden centre, deciding between hot-pink and salmon geraniums, and taking home flats of small annuals that have now grown big and colourful (or, in the case of my usually reliable lobelia, not). What happened? Right now, most beds, borders, and balconies are at their peak of gorgeousness, but give them a few weeks and they’ll be a sorry sight.

NDP housing critic Diane Thorne has claimed that BC Housing officials told her last March that the redevelopment of the 224-unit Little Mountain social-housing complex would be a phased project. "That's what they told me," Thorne told the Straight . "It would be phased to try and minimize the dislocation for the tenants."

With a footprint measuring only 3.7 by 6.7 metres, the wood building with the huge windows overlooking the Fraser River is too small to fit the City's definition of a living space. But you don't really need much more, say Jake Fry and Aaron Rosensweet, who, through their company Smallworks, are trying to alter the way we think about housing by providing a commonsense solution to the Vancouver problems of high prices and tall buildings: laneway housing.

Seeing a person's workspace is like looking inside her head. Judson Beaumont of Straight Line Designs is talking about the insights people gain from visiting artists' studios during the annual East Side Culture Crawl. So what do you glean from his office? Consider the evidence.

These days you need money, not smarts, to hang up your shingle in Yaletown or on Main Street, but the tenderloin? Susan Schroeder explains why she and partner Derek McCluskey chose to be pioneers when they opened their store, Wanted–Lost Found Canadian, (436 Columbia Street, open 11:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily) last November in what may well be the city's next hot area. The low rent appealed, for a start; she also loved the historic buildings: "I like the area, it's vibrant.

Feathering your nest takes on new meaning at this year's DV (Design Vancouver) Interior Design & Urban Living Expo, taking place at the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre, where highlights include a giant bird's nest being built from Stanley Park debris by local designer Brent Comber. Take a look, too, at Smallworks' small-footprint "laneway house", and new uses for all that wood ravaged by mountain pine beetles. This is the place to hook up with innovative design and designers.

On the one hand, there's Birkenstocks, scratchy hemp cushions, and oat-heavy granola; on the other, the elegance of French fair-trade sneakers, the patina of century-old pine, and the sweet juiciness of just-picked peaches. That's one way to explain the difference between "dark green" and "bright green" environmentalism. "Dark green," as Toby Barratt describes it, "is what people are prejudiced against.

Ever wonder about the final destiny of all those empty Molson's, Merlot, and designer water bottles you return to the LDB or toss in your blue box? Try a bathroom wall. Remoulded, and imprinted with three-dimensional dragonflies and other designs, they morph into handsome accent pieces at Mellon Glass, in Gibsons on the Sunshine Coast. Some terminology first: this is postconsumer glass, culled from folks like you and me.

You might feel justifiably twitchy if a heart surgeon’s office was rife with KISS memorabilia or your accountant hung his walls with Pamela Anderson posters. And you don’t need to check the name on the door to spot which is the art director’s office and which is the account person’s in an ad agency (or, in industry terms, which is the “wrist” and which is the “suit”). Workspace should reflect the work that goes on in it.

Stories, needles litter the landscape of Ross Weber’s neighbourhood