Correctly positioned shade trees can reduce indoor home temperatures by up to 20 degrees and summer cooling costs by up to 40%. Also, tree-shaded neighborhoods stay up to 3 to 6 degrees cooler than tree-less neighborhoods.

Texas Campaign for the Environment -- A non-partisan, non-profit citizens' organization that focuses on local and state issues

Texas Water Solutions -- Focuses on shaping Texas' water policies

Environment Texas -- A statewide, citizen-based environmental advocacy organization

The Interfaith Environmental Network

Sustainable Food Center

Solar Energy Society

From Green Right Now Reports

As we get ready for the spring garden, there’s plenty to do. We need to weed, compost and ready the beds. Inside, we’ve got seedlings we’re nursing along.

Yesterday, we began casting about for containers both for the larger seedlings and for herbs we may grow outside, which reminded me that we’ve seen a lot of cool re-purposing of containers for plants.

Here an old wash basin has been appropriated. We saw this outside an antique shop in the Midwest while on vacation last summer.

Its companion piece (below) gave us a start and almost qualifies as up-cycling. Wouldn’t have thought of this myself, but it could be kitschy in a bathroom. Maybe, kind of.

On another outing, this time in Central Texas, we found this quaint collection of old wash bins. Personally, I’d leave the enamel finish alone, letting the character of the thing show through. But I like the color of painted one.

At the famous Round Top, Texas antique and collectible market, I found these shoes. They’re perfect for an indoor plant, though I’d line them with plastic first, because they’re quite valuable — valuable enough that my budget didn’t go there. Nice idea though. Better than using old Uggs.

Another idea for an indoor planting box would be to use — a box. You could set a couple large clay pots, properly protected underneath, inside any one of these crates (below) to create a plant corner. I’d demonstrate, but these too were out of my price range, though $80 to $150 is probably a fair price for these increasingly hard-to-find original containers. (By the way, are you thinking what I am, that these wooden boxes weren’t so green? Better to use cardboard and recycle it.)

‘Course that last idea doesn’t help us outdoors. We’ll have to think on this topic some more. We found a lot of folks at Round Top trying to do the same. We captured them at work, below.

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