Green Postcards

A Stone Wall Inn: The greenest inn in Vermont, Part 2

See yesterday’s post for more on A Stone Wall Inn and its eco-efforts.

A Stone Wall Inn
578 Hitchcock Hill Road
Windham, VT 05359
Phone: 802-875-4238
E-mail: stonewall AT vermontel.net

Rooms at A Stone Wall Inn come with breakfast, afternoon snacks, and something to nibble on before bedtime. (The treats are often made from fruits and herbs grown on-site.) If you’re going it alone, take $10 off the room rate. Splurge alert: If you’re traveling to the inn during prime foliage season (September 15 – October 25), add $30 to the nightly rate.

The Hideaway: Full-sized bed with private bathroom. $125 per night for two.
The Grotto: Queen-sized bed with shared bathroom. The room overlooks the meditation room. $125 per night for two.
The Garden Room: Queen-sized bed with shared bathroom. Looks out to garden and the lawn. $125 per night for two. 
The Crow’s Nest: Queen-sized bed with private bathroom and deck. $145 per night for two.

Rent the entire “Corner House”: Includes all four rooms, breakfast, and run of the kitchen to create your other meals. $470 ($576 during foliage season) per day. Rate breaks for multiple days up to $2900 (or $3480 during foliage season) for seven days. (That’s $103 per room, per night.)

All profits from A Stonewall Inn are donated to The Fourth Corner Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to encouraging environmentally responsible design. Before you visit A Stone Wall Inn, check out the Fourth Corner website; it will give you insight into the thinking behind the inn’s unique (and sustainable!) architecture.

Owner Robert Shannon also suggests reading Cradle to Cradle, by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. I second his recommendation, with a warning: It might change your life! The book is a call for a new, more organic way of building and manufacturing things by considering the full life-cycle of each item. I promise you’ll never look at a man-made object the same way again.

Photo of The Grotto Room courtesy of www.astonewallinn.com.

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A Stone Wall Inn: The greenest inn in Vermont, Part 1

A Stone Wall Inn claims to be the greenest inn in Vermont. I'€™m not going to argue. In my (eco-)book, any inn that pours 100 percent of its profits into a nonprofit that encourages sustainable design and has a strict BYOTB (Bring Your Own Teddy Bear) policy can make any claims it wants to. Besides, it probably is the greenest inn in Vermont.

The inn was built with recycled materials and local wood and masonry.  Solar hot-air collecting systems provide 60 percent of the inn’s space-heating needs. The rest is supplied by efficient wood stoves and firewood grown on the inn’s property. The inn uses water-efficient toilets and shower heads. (“Although water is not the issue here,” says owner and architect Robert Shannon, “but the energy to pump it.”) Cleaning supplies are non-toxic (7th Generation and Ecover), and the inn grows its own fruits and herbs, used to make the breakfasts and snacks provided for guests.

Robert says he’s proud of how A Stone Wall Inn was designed to surpass LEED’s platinum sustainability standards. In the future, he wants to make the inn carbon neutral. An important step in that process is being about to generate renewable energy on-site – a challenge Robert is tackling currently by adding photovoltaic solar arrays.

Although the unique architecture has a function – moving solar-heated air throughout the buildings – it is also aesthetically sophisticated. Robert says guests should make time to enjoy the architecture, the inn’s extensive gardens, and the artwork found throughout the inn.

Come back tomorrow for details on the inn’s accommodations.

Photo courtesy of www.astonewallinn.com

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2008 Sierra Club Wilderness Calendar

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