Energy and Environment

If you are interested in a more sustainable home please talk to us about the Homestar programme. We think it is a great system and we are happy to help you engage with it. We respect that this may not be for everyone so we are not forcing it on people but we would love to talk to you about it. We feel that the Homestar programme fits well with the ethos of this development.

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We set out to create a green leafy development where residential housing is interspersed with regenerating native bush. Rather than concrete backyards and flat lawns there are areas of planting designed by an ecologist to recreate the bush that would once have been on the site.

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Before we started the development we chose to have an ecologist examine the site. The ecologist noted that the property was dominated by exotic and/or invasive plants that are not indigenous to the area. This meant that not only is the site appropriate to build on but there is a chance to create homes while improving the ecology around them. A planting plan was prepared by Wildlands consulting ecologists that will result in the future houses being surrounded by strips and pockets of the type of bush that would once have covered the site.

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To compliment this approach we chose to make the development a bit less dense than the district plan allows. The thirteen houses average around 28% site cover where the district plan allows 35%. In addition the entire development has been designed so that the houses are cut into the hill and oriented to retain sun and views while maximising the green aesthetics of the native planting. We had the vegetation growth modelled in CAD software to show the relationship between the houses and planting. This is shown in the images at the top of the page. One of the few covenants we have allows a homeowner to have their neighbours trees pruned (but not removed) to maintain sun and views; this is discussed in the FAQ.