Front Door Garden Design

One reason, below, I must see your home interior before being able to design its garden.
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Was it obvious, at first glance, below, the problem?
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A dark foyer.
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Many houses I've designed the 'matching' glass door.  We source the door to match the existing front door, and our carpenter cuts away the panels, replacing with glass.
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Have never tabulated a list, but so much about Garden Design does not involve plants.


Pic, above, here.
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Have had the opportunity to walk into several big box stores this fall, always going in via the Garden Center.  Vulgarians at the gate have won.  Literally.  Greetings via shelves, rows of shelves, dedicated to chemicals, and seemingly innocuous fertilizer.  Beware, n-p-k fertilizer is toxic to ground water, kills earthworms, kills mycorrhizal fungi on roots.
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Had a knowing laugh reading Schopenhauer yesterday, "When we read, another person thinks for us; we merely repeat his mental process.........read themselves stupid."  Yep.  Me.  At the front end of gardening I read myself stupid.  Realized popular garden writing wasn't for me, went back to college for horticulture degree, more stupid.  To the core of my DNA, knew it was stupid.  Thus began decades of studying historic gardens across Europe.  No more books, foot on Earth.
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Then to Machiavelli, "A wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men and to imitate those who have been supreme, so that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will savour of it."
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On to Seneca, "Men who have made these discoveries before us are not our masters but our guides."
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Further with Farnum Street, "We need to digest, synthesize & organize the thoughts of others if we are to understand....It's how we acquire wisdom.  How we acquire foundational knowledge.....Without this foundational knowledge we are unable to separate the signal from the noise."
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT