With power cuts and load shedding along with dwindling water supplies a harsh reality in South Africa
being more self-sufficient on the home front is becoming an increasingly attractive option.
Jane Troughton is someone who has never looked back since opting to go this way.
So Jane your home feels just so beautiful as if you’re really in nature and one with the environment,
everything that you’ve got here just kind of links together. You’ve got natural pools is that correct?
That’s correct. We’ve got tilapia fish in here. They have a very important role to play,
they eat the mosquito larva firstly, and they provide the nutrition for my really incredible vertical garden.
So their waste is what feeds the wall and there’s a pipe underneath here which draws the water up
and for 4 minutes a day, 2 in the morning and 2 at lunchtime, we irrigate, and feed and that all it takes.
So it’s not a very thirsty process at all and we have this extraordinary, beautiful result.
And it just seems that there is so much life coming out of that wall.
This whole area, you know you could water the garden and instantly you have wildlife.
So it starts with the insects, you can see them all over the surface; little frogs,
the woolly necked storks are almost daily visitors, hammerkops. Kingfishers lover hunting around here
and little manikins this side and the other side you will see later it’s just bursting with life.
Well I’m very excited to see the rest of it. Shall we go in?
Your home is just so full of artwork and even in your bathroom here, the mosaics are stunning.
Where do they come from?
Eight years ago I went on mosaic course and I discovered my inner artist and ever since then I
have had a real passion for this form of art, I can’t paint or draw but I find this incredibly
therapeutic and my own personal meditation and I just get lost.
This one is just so incredible because you have actually incorporated, for me crystals is a gift from nature,
and so you've incorporated nature into your artwork.
Absolutely, and I’ve got one on the veranda which has got tiger’s eye and shells and different
mix media, I like to play with different materials in the process.
This is interesting. Yes. Because to have a window at floor level. Now what is the benefit of that?
When we started planning this house and we were remodeling an old forties house.
We knew the passive design needed to be part of our consideration in terms of being eco-friendly
and in Durban you don’t want to use air conditioners if you want to be green. So we had to think
really hard about how we would get cool air in; so the cool water gets drawn over the pond,
it goes straight up through this double story space and the whirlybirds draw the hot air out. The other thing
that we’ve done is all the bedrooms have windows on both sides to get cross ventilation and it works brilliantly.
Fantastic. So you have no air cons in this house. And we don’t intend to.And you’re cool?
Awesome. Let’s go upstairs.
I can see all your nice artwork as well – I mean it's just fantastic.
I’m getting like....just relaxation....just....it’s the space and it’s the nature.
It is we really wanted every aspect of the house to draw the nature in and I think we've achieved that
because where ever we sit or relax we look at green. We look at birds.
We look at butterflies, we can hear the wildlife. It’s noisy here, we love it.
This space is very indulgent, it’s very special. I think for a lot of people it's a dream bathroom
whether or not you're interested in green. And in fact that is one of the the things that
I'm hoping to share with people with writing my blog, and sharing this journey, is that green
is not an aesthetic, it’s not a building look. Your house can look any way you want it to.
This is a beautiful contemporary home that also happens to be green. This is a beautiful bathroom
that is very green but it is just a very beautiful bathroom. Sitting in this bath or using the outside shower
with the backdrop of the green and the front drop of the green is very, very special.
The way I'm feeling right now is I want to jump into this bath right now and just relax in here. This is fantastic!
Do you ever use the inside shower when you've got an outside shower?
Absolutely not. Even on the rainiest, windiest days we use the outside shower, it’s really fun.
While we’re here Kerry this screen that you see in the bathroom it’s not just a decorative thing,
with the new building regulations if you want a lot of glass in your home you have to jump through hurdles.
So there are lots of calculations that are done because people have to show that they're not
going to be using a lot of energy. First of all we have the solar energy, which gave us a big tick.
But this also provides additional screening because this is our north facing side.
So Jane as I’m exploring this garden of yours. I’m obviously having a look.....you’ve got a sky light here,
so that helps in the lounge area and then you’ve got your solar which is fantastic to
see on a home in a residential areas. How many panels do you have up there? And how does it work?
We’ve got 20 panels that with the battery system that we’ve got in place and the inverters,
which are in a special cupboard that lives outside, basically supplies all our needs.
The way it works is that we are still grid tied and the reason we’ve decided to go that route
rather than be completely off the grid is because we’ve signed a power purchase agreement with eThekweni.
We’re in a pilot project which means when the systems are in place we will be re numerated for the excess.
And I see that little timer turning backwards a lot so I know that we are already feeding
an enormous amount back into the grid, and what’s going to be really exciting about that is that
it's going to motivate a lot more people to look at solar because it really mitigates the start up costs.
Owl house waiting for occupancy. We hear there are owls in the area so we are hoping
by the next breeding season they will move in. And we positioned that exactly
so we can lie in bed with binoculars and watch everything that is going on.
This little tiny pond is extraordinary. Every morning there is a series of birds that come to drink
and swim and entertain us we feel incredibly privileged, it’s an absolute joy.
So you’re waking up each morning in nature and that must be just a wonderful way to start your day.
The birds wake us up, you can see we’ve got no curtains and that’s intentional, so we like to wake up with the sun.
Jane we’re coming into this huge, lovely, open space of lovely family living and I can see your
kitchen has kept up with a lot of energy-saving products.
There's a lot of green aspects to this kitchen. But again Kerry just to emphasize that it is
still a beautiful contemporary kitchen. So those extras are my choice and people
don’t necessarily know that they don’t cost more. My counter surface is 60% recycled material.
As you mentioned all the appliances are energy efficient.
I cooked on gas for years because I love to cook but I’m converted to induction
this is really a pleasure to cook on and so easy to clean, so that’s an absolute pleasure.
I think it's a dream kitchen. It's the heart of the home.
I know it's a cliche, but truly when we've got friends and family around I'm prepping here
I'm in the space. I've got my beautiful garden right in my lounge.
As I’m cutting I’m scrapping my peelings into my worm container for the worm farms.
My recycling bins are all organised over here. We’ve got our recycling efficiently planned.
And the worm farms are just behind that screen outside the kitchen which is made
of recycled plastic too. It works really well. It’s got a nice flow.
It’s got a lovely flow and like you said you’re right here with the family all the time
which I think is really important. And bamboo, which is what the cabinets are made of,
is obviously a very sustainable product. I think it’s beautiful, very beautiful.
And now you have a fantastic veggie garden that we're going to go and visit, but before we get there,
what is under this paving? Okay, in terms of technology obviously solar is very important
but water is the next big thing on the agenda. You know globally we have a water crisis
and South Africans need to be thinking very carefully about water usage.
So we decided to go large. We’ve got a 20 000 litre tank under the grass here. And it’s a fantastic
system that's built with interlocking plastic blocks so that the water aerates,
and then we pump everything back into the house and then we recycle the water again, and they
go through gray water units for us to water the garden. So we're actually using our water twice.
So the water from the tank goes straight into the house first.....I see.
It comes off the roof from the roof garden, goes back into the house where it’s used everywhere.
So do you even use it for your showers? For our showers and for our drinking water we
just filter it a third time because this system filters the water twice so for drinking
we just filter it one more time which is all we need, and it's perfectly beautiful water.
Excellent, and then once it’s used in the home it goes back into the garden.
The shower water, the washing machine water goes to water the garden through little units
that are very inexpensive. So people are saying where can I start with green
I don’t have a lot of budget, but I am concerned about water.
I would suggest start with grey water recycling, easy to do and and not terribly expensive.
So now I’m dying to see your garden. So Jane we’re coming down to your vegetable patch
or your nursery.......this is your love, this is your passion.
Absolutely! In our previous home I had already started growing food and
realized how important it is and wanted to go larger. This space used to be the old out building
and I inherited this amazing lemon tree which just produces all year round.
We do live alongside vervet monkeys and as much as we love them they do tend to be
fairly destructive so we built this cage to keep them out and they can share the paw paws and the various
other things that are around the garden and obviously the fruit from the indigenous trees.
So I built these veggie boxers out of recycled plastic because they're going to last forever
and it just makes life a little easier on the gardening. My husband built those wonderful compost bays.
So Jane we are walking to another beautiful part of your garden. This is your indigenous space is it?
Indeed, yes. Kerry I did indigenous gardening for about 20 years. I started off because
I thought it was a nice lazy way of gardening and I had no idea what journey I was embarking on.
The joy that gardening in this way brings. You start with the plants, you get the insects,
you get the birds, you get the reptiles, you are living alongside nature.
So it was really important for me to work within the space by creating as much diversity as possible.
You know our wildlife, the areas for them to live in, their habitats are shrinking at a massive rate.
And I think if every urban garden could provide some food or a place to nest or rest
we could do our part. I can't tell you the joy that we get from from the wildlife in this garden.
We're about to go down what we call the chameleon path because we have dwarf chameleons
in this garden which is an incredible, exciting thing and really very much a sign of the health
of a good ecosystem because they are incredibly vulnerable, terribly threatened.
Can you hear the hawks? This goes on all day long.
There’s a constant fight between the harrier hawks and the sparrow hawks.
We’ve got a hadeda nest up in this huge fig and they keep, sadly, stealing the babies out of it.
But that this is life and this is all going on everyday despite the survival, the foraging, feeding and breeding.
And this is also a perfect spot for our beehive.
Fantastic. You’ve thought of everything. I actually can’t think of anything that you haven’t thought of.
You’ve got your chameleons, like you said, and reptiles, you’ve got your bees.....you’ve thought of everything.
Kerry you know bees globally are terribly threatened. They are collapsing in alarming numbers.
Some people are even saying that when the bees in the rural areas have gone because of over farming,
they will be coming to the urban bee keepers to help them populate the planet.
eThekweni have said they are there giving permits and permission, we can have bees in our gardens
and they are such fun and obviously the honey is a wonderful harvest.
This part of the garden is very wild and it’s for the sparrows and we don’t go there, we just leave it be.
Just so many little places that you can actually get so much joy out of.
I wanted to have little rooms or little meandering walks. I’ve taken my inspiration
in the planting from what's on our doorstep. So I’ve gone into the Virginia bush and Burning bush.
And I know what grows naturally and locally and I've kind of just maybe enhanced a little bit.
There's no weeds in here, and I really tried to pump up the diversity.
So there’s a lot of different food to draw different species.
Certain butterflies will only breed on particular plants so I’ve been learning that as well.
So Jane we are coming to your incredible, natural pool.
Can you explain how it all works. I would love to Kerry.
Because there are so many misconceptions about how complicated a natural pool is.
My research has shown me that there are really just a few things that you need to bear in mind.
The first thing is that you need your planting area, the planting surface area, to be minimum 50%
the size of your swimming area. Now this can be integrated, or next to alongside
your swimming area like I’ve done if you want, but it doesn't have to be it could be around the corner.
The planted area is simply your filtration system, so that’s number one.
Make sure that you obviously plant locally indigenous plants because they're going to thrive the best.
Second of all you need aeration. So you can do it any way you want to. I've chosen to do these
little cascading waterfalls which are brilliant because what we didn’t know was that the birds use them
as bird baths. So the manikins are in here in their dozens everyday having lots of fun and we enjoy them.
Your plants are really important; there are three types of plants you need to be looking at.
We have what we call your floaters, so you need things that are under the water that float in amongst.
and then you need your surface floaters like your water lilies, and then you need lots of these reed type things,
and they are all providing different types of cleaning and filtration to your pool.
Bear in mind also all these plants need sun so don’t stick your reed bed in the shade.
So it’s really not rocket science otherwise it’s a normal filter system and we have a creepy-crawly that
cleans the bottom of the swimming area, it’s separate. We haven’t been in the house in summer yet.
The kids have had swims already.
Is that a different colour marbelite at the bottom? It’ black. So once again it’s natural, it’s going to be warmer.
But absolutely no chemicals?
Not a single chemical. We've got fish in here. We've got crabs. We've got shrimps.
In this section?
The birds are absolutely in love with this area of the garden.
That’s fantastic. Just one thing I’ve noticed you’ve got big windows and no burglar bars anywhere.
We have little see through burglar bars. But the sliding doors – no.
Because I’m thinking you’re living in a big city as well but you don’t have electric fences?
We’ve boundary planted with spiky thorny things which we think are a better barrier than a hard wall.
We do have beams in the garden, we don’t live in cloud cuckoo land,
we have beams in the garden and we do have a decent system in the house,
and we feel very comfortable and safe here.
It’s just open living so you feel free.