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SHE GETS THINGS STARTED – Evelyn Bassett has helped begin a variety of village traditions.

Candy will figure significantly in the reign of Evelyn Bassett as the Grand Marshal of the Barnstable-West Barnstable Fourth of July parade. Because she doesn’t want to ride alone, and because her grandchildren like to scramble for the treats that paraders toss onto the road, she’s found a way to entice her six young family members to keep her company in the lead car.

“I bribed my grandchildren to ride with me,” she said. “I’ll buy you candy, and you’ll get to throw candy” to other children, she reported of her deal with her progeny.

When Bassett, a native of Avon, married her husband Wayne, who was born and raised in Barnstable, “I had no choice in the matter” of where they would live. Their daughter Tara and son Dana (of Millway Marina) attended Barnstable-West Barnstable Elementary School, Barnstable High School, and Cape Cod Academy. Dana lives in the village, Tara in Sandwich, and each has three children.

Bassett, a hairdresser, is known for her many community activities. Town Councilor Ann Canedy calls her “the longest active member” of the village civic association

Bassett credits the late Greg Smith, with whom she got the Fourth of July parade started, as a role model. “It’s nothing political. You just get wrapped up in it,” she said of village activities such as the Christmas stroll, the village improvement association, the water district, polling place services, Friends of the Schoolhouse, and Tales of Cape Cod.

She has also volunteered at the CapeAbilities thrift shop and as a leader of a weight-training program for seniors. “I like people,” she said of her involvement in the community.

“Evelyn and I go way back,” village resident Marilyn Fuller said of work they did together on the civic association. “I said that you need to meet people.” Soon, Bassett became “absolutely indispensable” in local events.

Bassett loves to garden and has tended flowerbeds at the harbor, at the corner of 6A and Millway, at Cape Cod Lane with Carol DiVico, and at Braggs Lane. “But now,” she said playfully, “I’ve embarrassed three young men in landscaping to take over.”

Barnstable Village’s young people are “doing a great job” in assuming responsibility for leadership, she said.

“I am humbled’ to serve as parade marshal, Bassett said, because “so many people do so much” in the village. “There’s a very different experience living on Cape Cod. It doesn’t matter what walk of life you’re from – we all look out for each other,” she said of her 45 years here.

Barnstable Village’s Fourth of July parade still can use a lot of volunteers. They need people to sell T-shirts with a logo by local artist Kate Gruner to benefit Arts in the Village, as well as floats, bands, fife and drum corps, and volunteers for a dog parade.

“Just show up at 8 or 8:30 behind Probate Court” on the Fourth, said Canedy.

The event also needs volunteers for celebrations in the hollow behind the Unitarian Church, according to Canedy, who said that the person to contact for those jobs is Kara Beal, at
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Canedy also would like to recruit people to sell tee shirts.

There will be a meeting for Fourth of July volunteers on June 18 at 6:30 p.m. at the Cape Cod Art Association on Route 6A. Everyone is invited to come with ideas; the contact person at the association is Roberta Miller.

“This is a lovely, lovely village,” Bassett said. “We’re so lucky here.”

Part of that good fortune is having a neighbor like Evelyn Bassett.

A true sign of a town’s maturity is to have enough diversity to develop specific neighborhoods — not an easy task for one less than 10 years old. However, in the coastal town of Seabrook, Wash. (est. 2004), a very distinct and sustainable district is being planned with the help of Sunset magazine, which will help promote its development.

Called the “Idea Town,” the group of buildings is the latest iteration of Sunset’s annual “Idea House” project, which showcases various green technologies and designs in gorgeous homes around the country. In this instance, the magazine will focus on not just one but several homes that are nearing completion in Seabrook and should be completed by August.

An artist’s rendering of one Seabrook’s completed Idea Town homes on the Washington Coast. Image via Seabrook.

The Idea Town section of Seabrook, located just a few yards away from the beach access stairs, the 2013 Sunset Idea Town will include two new houses, a courtyard and some guest cottages that will be sited near Seabrook’s small but growing retail district, with a restaurant, a market and other shops. The homes will comply with Seabrook’s already existing sustainability protocols that apply to the rest of the town.

The Idea Town currently under construction, as seen from Seabrook’s retail district. Image via Seabrook.

The demonstration homes will include tight thermal envelopes to prevent heat loss, energy-efficient heating and cooling systems, Energy Star appliances and lighting, and the use of low-VOC-emitting materials to protect indoor air quality. In the courtyard, landscaping will be planted with native and drought-tolerant vegetation to reduce the need for irrigation.

Computer drawing of completed Idea Town house. Image via Seabrook.

The homes were designed by a group of architects, including Brian Paquette of Seattle’s BP Interiors, Peter Brachvogel of BCJ Architects and other contractors who are building the rest of Seabrook, such as  garden designer Stephen Poulakos.

Idea Town should be available for tours starting in August and will continue through October. Sunset magazine will also feature the homes and designs in its October 2013 issue. Sunset editor-in-chief Kitty Morgan described Seabrook as “a charming seaside town built on big ideas that promote a true sense of community.”

Located about three hours west of Seattle on Washington state’s wild and scenic Pacific Coast, Seabrook itself can be seen as an ongoing green building experiment that’s being played out in real time. Town, the brainchild of local developer Casey Roloff, is part of the New Urbanist trend that focuses on efficient building methods, energy conservation, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods and close proximity between commercial and residential properties.

Carved out of an undeveloped and rarely visited forested property in 2004, Seabrook today has 200 houses built, with about 100 available for summer rentals, and continues expanding inland with a final goal of more than 300 single-family houses ad 450 total units.

The Southern Living Idea House spotlights Page|Duke Landscape Architects, Castle Homes, Historical Concepts and Phoebe Howard Interior Design.

— Michelle Morrow | Nashville Ledger

When local landscape architects partners Ben Page and Gavin Duke were tapped to design the gardens and courtyard at the soon-to-open Southern Living Idea House at Fontanel, they knew right away what they wanted to do.

Their mission was to show off some of the classic techniques, plantings and elements unique to the Nashville area, particularly drawing from the past for a “greatest hits’ in local landscaping.

“This is the new South,” says Page of Page|Duke Landscape Architects. “This new version encompasses this whole thing of farm-to-table, home-grown food and local, native plant communities. It is all going back to early 20th Century, late 19th Century ideas.’’

Southern Living Idea House

Fontanel Mansion

June 29–Dec. 29, Wed.–Sun., 9 a.m.–3 p.m.

Tickets: Adults $12, seniors 60 and up $10, children 6-15 $5, students and retired military $10, active military and children under 6 are free.

A portion of the profits will go to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Information: southernliving.com/ideahouse

“Regionalism has gotten to be a very exciting thing for everybody,’’ he adds. “It’s appropriate, and much more environmentally sensitive, and more cost-effective. It showcases our deep roots. There’s nothing wrong with having a plant that has done well for 200 years in this area and use it creatively and in a new way.”

Their traditional work was then overlaid with the latest Southern Living Plant Collection flowers to showcase the color trends of the season, with many of the plant varieties used just a few years old. The result is a perfectly curated space for consumers to glean dozens of ideas.

Landing the Southern Living Idea House puts a spotlight on Nashville, Fontanel Mansion and all of those involved, including Castle Homes, Historical Concepts and Phoebe Howard Interior Design.

It will be open to the public June 29-Dec. 29, Wednesdays through Sundays. Southern Living will publish a complete tour of the project in its August issue.

The magazine’s Idea House in 2012 was in Senoia, Ga., a historic farmhouse renovation. The idea house program has been ongoing for more than 20 years, building and renovating homes from “brownstones to beach houses,’’ according to the magazine’s website.

Page and Duke were given strict budget parameters, resulting in ideas that any number of homeowners could find room for in their budgets.

Not that Page doesn’t still think about elements that didn’t make the cut.

“We had a very wonderful rustic picket fence that was going to go across the front of the courtyard that got value engineered out, but I would say that about 80 percent of what our vision was got put in place,” Page says. “You’re going to see a lot of things that are appropriate for even modest scale budgets.”

They were, of course, awarded some luxuries most homeowners don’t have, unless they are building from the ground up, like being able to orient the house and gardens to best take advantage of sun exposure and wind patterns.

The house, which was built by Castle Homes and will be converted to a bed and breakfast when its stint as an inspirational structure is over, features five farmhouse-style buildings forming a compound with nearly 3,000 square feet of porches and patios – perfect for outdoor entertainment.

“Everything you see out there is predicated on double use with the big porches going to be used as gathering places for artists,” Page says.

And while the gardens look great now, Page says they will really hit their stride in a couple of years, just like any garden space they create for a client would.

“This is only 20 minutes old,” he says. “It takes about three years to get it all to settle down. The first year is a trial run of things, the second year things really start to settle down, and the third year you get a real garden out of something.”

Also on site are “Porter’s Pond” and “Beverly’s Waterfall,” which were dedicated on May 30. The waterfall, donated by Gary Yamamoto in honor of his wife Beverly, was mandated for water runoff.

The decision was then made by Gary Shiebler, key promoter of the annual Porter Wagoner Memorial Artists and Anglers Fishing Tournament, to turn the pond into a catch-and-release fishing pool.

“It is a really cool facility that we feel very fortunate to have worked on because the architecture is very keenly in the Southern vernacular,” Page says. “And our landscape imaging evolved into something that felt very regional in imprint.”