Ok, I’ll admit it: we’ve been shamelessly entering to win the 2009 HGTV Green Home on a daily basis lately. As much as we love our own house, the idea of living in a thoughtfully designed, eco-friendly home in sunny Florida is hard to resist — not to mention the appeal of the hybrid car that comes with it. And yes, we also imagine all the projects and posts we could write if our names were announced as the winners on June 28th.
With green homes on the brain, we detoured last week during a secret trip to Georgia to revisit a Green Home we’d seen before. Because of our Florida vacation last spring, we remembered that the 2008 HGTV Green Home was located just off I-95 in South Carolina. We hadn’t toured it when it was open (it carried a steep $25 admission fee), so this time we thought we’d swing through Tradition, SC and see whether last year’s winner was occupied and might invite a couple of curious travelers in for a quick look around. We imagined a friendly, southern-welcoming scene — a glass of organic lemonade on a recycled bamboo tray, perhaps. Instead, we found something else entirely.
At first glance, the house looked unoccupied. A key-box on the front door gave the impression that it was still being shown or was on the market. The neighborhood around it didn’t have the settled, lived-in feel we expected; instead, it felt like a development still finding its feet.
That impression deepened as we looked around. There weren’t many finished homes nearby — just a few under construction and wide open lots waiting for houses to arrive. From a distance the Green Home still looked lovely, but standing in the clearing it felt like an island of finished design in a sea of construction.
Tradition is a small golf-community-style development, and it’s clear that it needs more time to fill out. Given the current real estate climate, that’s not surprising. Still, the homes that were in progress matched the beachy cottage aesthetic of the Green Home, so the neighborhood should evolve into something consistent and attractive when finished. Even so, the visit tempered our utopian image of a perfectly realized community; the reality was more of a work-in-progress.
All that said, we still love the idea behind the Green Home program. The 2009 model looks beautiful and thoughtful in its design, and it’s inspiring to see eco-friendly features showcased on a larger scale. If you’re curious, HGTV offers virtual online tours of their Green Homes that provide a close look at what makes these houses greener and smarter. They’re full of good ideas for anyone interested in sustainable design, whether you’re shopping for a new house or planning updates for your current home.
So, the moral of our little detour: don’t let our amateur real-estate reconnaissance stop you from entering the 2009 Green Home sweepstakes — go ahead and enter. We’ll keep trying too, of course. And if nothing else, next time we visit a Green Home we’ll bring our own lemonade.
Update: check out the comments for some interesting revelations!