Painting Retirement Green

Bucolic NewBridge on the Charles in Dedham, Mass., also isn’t a traditional continuing care community. For one thing, it shares its campus with an elementary school; and rather than a clear-cut, paved and intensely landscaped setting, NewBridge’s facilities consume just 62 acres of its 162-acre riverfront property, leaving the rest as intact forest and meadowland. Of the land that has been developed, most is landscaped with native plants; only 13 acres require irrigation. And those 13 irrigated acres will draw their water not from the adjacent Charles River but from rainwater collected in cisterns that can hold 170,000 gallons.

Lorraine Greenfield has driven a Prius hybrid for five years, recycles as much as she can and tries to conserve energy at her Milton, Mass., home. In June, she’ll move into a cottage at NewBridge. If you have a choice of where to live, she says, “why not help the environment?”

Siobhan Roth is a writer based in Washington, D.C.