Borst goes green with near-zero energy home project.

While the color green is as close as you can get to a requisite in landscaping design, the concept "green" is far less common. Yet Borst Landscape and Design of Allendale, N.J., recently participated in BASF Corporation's "Better Home, Better Planet" home-building project in Paterson, N.J., where having minimal environmental impact was the foremost objective--indoors and out.

BASF constructed the Near-Zero Energy Home in Paterson featuring the best available building practices, materials and technologies. According to BASF's web site, the finished house shows how BASF products can be used to create healthy, more efficient and more affordable homes.

"The purpose of the project was to create a home built from efficient products that would run on self-contained systems and generate very little waste," said Mark Borst, president of Borst Landscape and Design. "BASF also wanted this theme to expand to the home's landscaping, and we were thrilled to be selected to participate."

Borst's main contribution was the design and installation of a pervious driveway.

The company installed pavers that are set apart from one another to allow storm water to percolate down between the brick to the gravel beneath it, dissipating by itself rather than entering the city's storm drain system. According to Borst, this method is becoming more widely used in the commercial sector but is still a new concept for residential construction.

Elsewhere in the yard, Borst built an interlocking retaining wall and used recycled rubber mulch in all of the planted beds.

The BASF Near-Zero Energy Home-Paterson is now completed, and this summer the residence is serving as the site for seminars and tours for members of the real estate and building trades, government officials, and other interested parties. By the end of this year, it will be donated to St. Michael's Housing Corporation, which will then give it to a local family to occupy.