Showing posts with label Curb Appeal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Curb Appeal. Show all posts

Friday, July 8, 2016

Picture: Garden Design Course

Pulling the gate/columns forward, below, welcomes you from the wide world into their private world, elongates the entry, and adds a foyer to the front door.  Painting the columns same as the house adds them to the footprint of the home, enlarging the home's territory.
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Painting the columns a different color, or if they were stone, still adds good features, excepting they become part of the garden, not the house.
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Great wisdom leaving the tops of the columns empty.
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Front door & light fixtures chosen well, they make the house seem taller.
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Note the gutters, below.  Copper color, not the brick color.  Well done.
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Roof, below, is like jewelry for the house.
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Repetition of square shapes, below, highlights the fabulousity of the tall round urns at the windows.  Super contrast.
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This garden design has been done for centuries.  Have seen it on several continents, and at all price points.  Done it myself, more than once.  Looks fresh & new with each reincarnation.
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Even the front door handle was chosen with care.  Drapes vs. blinds, again, well done.

/\ /\ . D. Keeley:

Pic, above, here.
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Copy, enfilade, axis, cross-axis, color, contrast, repetition, flow, welcome, focal points, ceiling, walls, floor, simplicity, has all the right Garden Design rules checked.
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I have a weakness for Garden- Design- Course in a single picture.
Garden & Be Well,   XOT

Thursday, July 7, 2016

Design Solution: Deer & No time

Last week I completed a Garden Design for a local family.  Their home is new construction on 35 acres of beautiful farm land, open, wooded, pastures, broad slight slopes.
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The pool is near completion, the pole barn completed, the house has its exterior, now awaiting wall board and layers that follow.
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The home is huge.  They have young children.  Deer thrive on their acreage.
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Plantings, aside from deer proof, must be no care, they have no time for landscape maintenance.  None.
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What to do?  Farmesque is the theme I chose.  With pool at the back, the front yard is open, mostly flat, short meadow.  I sense the front yard will be THE play yard.  Still, what to do with the Garden Design?
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At the far side of their front yard meadow, I designed a small pecan orchard, 8 trees, 2 rows of 4, with harvest table and strands of lights, for trunks and canopy.  Trunks to be lit nightly.
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More than meals, a gathering spot for projects, or lounging with a book.
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Dinner in the backyard ...:

Pic, above, here.
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Whew, saved by an orchard.
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And, simplicity.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

How Color Choice Affects the Size of Your Home

Calm, rustique, classic, nestled, below.  What plays the major role in this Exterior Design?  Color.
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Imagine home, below, with white trim.  Pop.  The house just moved forward, got smaller, the roof lowered, the garden shrunk.  Merely, painting the trim white.  Ironically, this home previously had a teal blue trim.  Same effect, to lesser degree, than white.
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Everything is thriving, but we do need some rain - it's been very dry here in the Northeast. From my driveway, my house looks beautiful with the tan colored woodwork - it is such a change from the teal blue. Do you remember the old trim?:

Pic, above, Martha Stewart.

In an area that is small, or with disparate components, here's the color trick, below.  Did you already intuit the trick?  Everything should be the same color, or color family.

 My longtime housekeeper, Laura Acuna, set up some refreshments on the lower terrace parterre outside my kitchen. Some cool pomegranate iced-tea and some cheese wafers.:

Pic, above, Martha Stewart.
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Exterior color, if you haven't given it much thought, does potent work to every exterior.  Make sure your exterior colors are doing the right potent work.  Potent for good vs. potent for bad.  It's your choice.  Make every layer of narrative with color choices exterior/interior and you've just raised property value, and made every day in your home happier.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Connecting Garden Rooms: Concave/Convex Stone Steps.

About 3 weeks ago I began working with amazing acreage.  The clients from out-of-state, could have afforded new fancy.  But it wasn't for 'her'.  She went beyond the patience of her family & realtor.  Why?  She had to have her home in the proper setting.  After renovating kitchen & other spaces, she's ready for the garden.  Their acres are stunning.  My job is to frame the views, and they are 360 !
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Lovely step detail:

Pic, above, here.
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Their home faces one of their lakes from a perfect distance, and, with a more perfect slope.
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At present there is no relationship between house & lake.  None.  How can this be?
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Oh my the delight, connecting house to lake with stone steps, concave & convex.
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Client's concave/convex stone steps won't be quite so formal, as above, more rustic, no mortar.
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Of course grading needed, and our stone mason to perfectly 'set' each stone.  Have worked with Javier for years, I think of him as a garden 'jeweler' !
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Alas, clients are building a carriage house, barn, paddock, pool, summer house, potager ahead of their concave/convex steps.  Excited about their other projects, but these steps make my heart sing.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Open, wooded, lakes, slight slopes, mature, oh my this acreage.  Poor Javier, he knows how excited I get about focal points of stone and what Muse sees.  Then, Javier makes my thoughts better.  His Muse speaks too.  

Friday, April 29, 2016

Color. Color ? Color !

Remember, designing your landscape, I must know you from the street.
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Parse the words.  To know you from the street, you must design your garden from interior views, and the same brain waves of style, color, flow, texture, individuality from inside to outside.
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A trinity of pics, below, you should all be able to shoot, of your home.  This trinity, below, is a Garden Design, of the ages, quiz question.  
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Today, now, your home/garden, mentally shoot these 3 pics.  Can you produce?
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Every garden needs a color trinity, green-brown-white, is the classic for centuries.  No worries if it's not your flavor, choose your own color trinity.  Produce these 3 pics.  Quiz question remains the same.  Shoot & produce.
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Color.  Color?  Color!  Which will it be?  This is your singular precious life.  Stretch your intelligence, comfort zone, think without your wallet.  Perhaps you need my personal question, epiphanized after too many decades people pleasing, "What would I do tomorrow if I were not afraid?"  When it comes to doing your garden, your best garden, I'm not the person you want to start a sentence, "I can't do that."  Those are 4 failure words.  Best 4 words I was ever told, "Be who you are."
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Studying historic gardens across Europe for 2 decades, this lesson about color, above, and within the pics, below, was intuitively learned.  This stuff, above/below, is not in garden design books.  It's merely in the best historic gardens across history.  Want to recreate the wheel?  Knock yourself out.  Everyone loves the outliers who do, with success.
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Since the start of designing gardens, color was easy to choose, I pull from interiors, what will work with the exteriors.
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Furlow Gatewood's home/garden is over the top with the color trinity.  He makes me see it fresh, as if he invented it.  Better, he owns it.
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Cuthbert House, on Furlow Gatewood's Compound, in Americus, Georgia, Photo by Max Kim-Bee~❥:

Pic, above, here.

rod-collins-furlow-gatewood:

Pic, above, here.
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Fern, viewed from the garden, pulls me in.  Then the brilliant audacity of double axis to the mirror with the fern.  Swoon.

 One Man's Folly: The Exceptional Houses of Furlow Gatewood: Julia Reed, Paul Costello, Rodney Collins, Bunny Williams: 9780847842520: Amazon...:

Pic, above, here.
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Nothing more to be said about your color trinity excepting, shoot it.  Picture worth 1,000 words.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Exterior Trim: Navajo White

I'm working at a project, craftsman bungalo, with good timing, exterior  paint was showing its last gasps.  Much better than paint with fresh new confidence, and the color is wrong.
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They like the soft blue lapboard siding, it will be used again.  Their white trim was so bright it owned the neighborhood.
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Of course they wanted white trim again.  Thankfully, they agreed, the existing white trim-columns-rails-step risers, much too white.
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Which white to choose?
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Navajo White, Benjamin Moore, below.
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Calm, receding, means business but doesn't shout new kid on the block.
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If Navajo White can 'sit back' with this much coverage, below, my client is safe, their Navajo White will let their home/garden speak, not the trim.

The brick is painted  Benjamin Moore Navajo White (as is the limestone), and the dark trim is a custom color, starting with a base of BM 161...:

Pic, above, here.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Major careers for this couple, 2 small children,  she loves to cook, and hired me because she wants the focus of her entire landscape, it's not large, to be potager, chicken coop, pollinators.  They're doing painting/repairs & tree work this spring, landscape this fall.  She had all the right cookbooks, several shelves, in her kitchen.  Quirky, but that's a realm of assessment, kitchens.  And, you know I don't mean the make/model of equipment.

Monday, April 4, 2016

Simplicity vs. Cliche

From forever I've learned best from completed problems, pictures & places.  Copy the best, copy what works, saves time/money.
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Simplicity, below, at top form.
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Easy, you think, they've got the money for 'simple'.
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Not so fast.  More than money, below, their landscape is rich in wisdom.  Garden Design of the ages.
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When you have a natural focal point, frame it don't compete.
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Had the good fortune of learning this while studying historic landscapes in northern Italy, Lake Maggiore, to be precise.


William Burgin:

Pic, above, here.

Garden design cliche, below, when there isn't as much money, space, nor existing natural focal point, as, above.
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Yet.  Life's riches are no less precious, below, than, above.
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Good garden design is not about money, it's about using your full intellect.
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How would you garden design a richer life, below?  Seriously, what would you do to the garden, below?

  Search results for: farmhouse - Fresh Farmhouse:

Pic, above, here.
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What would I do, above ?
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I would remove all porch railings, add a stone step between porch columns, take out foundation plantings, placing those foundation plantings along the sidewalk at front, and add more along the sides of the home, about same distance as those at the front.  For starters.
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As is, this home is already pulling me inside, imagine if the landscaping were good too.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

What is Special About this Garden?

What is special about the landscape, below?  Take away the lovely home, insert a 3 bedroom 1960's brick ranch with a carport, and still, every drip of special about the landscape remains.  Small input, huge output, in the garden, but specifically, why is it special?

French Facade:

Most USA homes are entered from the driveway.  Above, a garden entry leads you into the home.
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Normally, the garden entry, above, is lawn next to the driveway.  Perhaps you would like a pretty garden instead.  Welcome home.
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Note, too, layers of green.  Layers of green never fail, and succeed quickly.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic via Pinterest.

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Florist Shop Technique in Your Garden

I remember well going into the old tiny white clapboard house, engulfed with oleander, gardenias, and sago palms, on the way to League City, TX, with its front half turned into a florist shop, they lived at the back, with mom when she needed to send sympathy flowers.  In the 60's this was not a phone call or internet purchase.  The large glass front refrigerator stuffed with flowers awaiting, scents, vases, ribbons, cut stems in a pile, no, I was not waiting in the car.  Life was electric in that tiny shop & home.
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Saw that house, long abandoned, during my last trip home in December.
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No matter its current state it has sailed a thousand ships in my work.  I have a Pinterest board for Florist Shops.  Clients with acreage, and little time, I send to that board to inspire when they have an open garden or private function.  Temporary beauty easily arranged.
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Claus Dalby, below, from Denmark uses the Florist Shop Technique.  No matter your continent, style, budget, the Florist Shop technique is for you too.    



Pic, above, Claus Dalby.
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Florist Shop Technique.  My favorite type of gardening, see it do it.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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Thank you Janelle McCulloch for another great find.

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Focal Point: Design Both Ends

If you are looking at a beautiful focal point (bench, urn, front door, &tc), you must be able to be at that focal point, turn, look opposite, and have a beautiful view.
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This front porch, below, intriguing on its own, owns a great view in the opposite direction.
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Detail.

An allee, below, of conifers.  Pruned into an arching view.

6 The Firs, ca. 1900, Library of Congress

From the street view, below, the same conifers retain their full exterior silhouette, with no hint of the surprise allee within.

3 The Firs, ca. 1900, Library of Congress

And, the gap in the hedge, above, is permission and invitation to enter.
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Big impact plantings, balancing scale to the house, and a welcome.  More importantly, low maintenance, drought tolerant and deer resistant.
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Ca. 1900, these pics, from Enclosure Take Refuge, who found them from,  *Photos by Detroit Publishing Co., via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, made me smile at recreating, their garden design.  My previous garden had the exact hedge, except it was cleyera punctuated with tea olive.  They were 'plant of the week' at $1.97 from my local family owned nursery.  My hunt was for evergreen, full sun, size.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Adore those front steps, adore.  Though totally not to code in our era.  And the darkly stained wood.

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

How to Copy a Large Landscape into Your Small Space

Great example of historic/classic garden design in modernist disguise, below.

nelson byrd woltz landscape architects / hudson highland cottage, new york:

Don't have a rural property?  Your home is a classic 60's ranch in a sea of other 60's ranches?  Yes, you can have this landscape in your front yard.
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How?  What exchanges to make?
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The meadow/woodland, above, are the street & neighbors homes, so, block that view, keeping the rest of this incredible landscape design.  Behind the stone/cement walls, plant an evergreen hedge.   Choose for zone, height, drought tolerance, resistance to insects/disease, and deer.
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This landscape, above, is pure jewelry for a 60's ranch house in comparison to their builder installed  ubiquitous foundation plantings long ago pruned into green meat balls & meat loafs.  
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More, depending on the size of your site, this design, above, has plenty of room for a golf cart to zip around.
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Most odd, copying this landscape design, above, into a 60's ranch front yard provides the same elements of space, calm, and beauty as in the larger setting, above.  Promise.  It's one of those odd things you learn after decades of designing gardens.  The sky provides different types of magic, and confers 'size' to small spaces.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic from Gardenista.

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

What Happens When 2 Queens Take on Pot

After Scotland, weeks of studying historic gardens, I came home the Queen of Pots.
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Years later, I encountered another Queen of Pots, Deborah Silver, below.
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She put me into a new chapter.

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Deborah's take on pots made me realize, "Perhaps I've been harming myself, by only doing 'my' Queens Pots."  Harm?  Embracing the seasons, in honor & thanks.  Enjoying hunting/gathering, assembling.

holiday-containers.jpg

winter-container-arrangement.jpg

red-bud-pussy-willow.jpg

straight-and-curly-copper-willow.jpg

copper-curly-willow.jpg


winter-container-arrangement.jpg






My Queen's Pot, above, so wonderful it can be empty. or planted.
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Deborah took my theme, and didn't 'plant' in the traditional sense.  She creates exterior floral arrangements withstanding 'weather', for months.  Seeing her pots, why-didn't-I-think-of-that?
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Bottom line?  Choose pots so wonderful they can remain empty all year, AND you have a choice of adding an exterior floral arrangement.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Bottom pic from my garden, top pics from Deborah's recent post.

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Creating the Perfect Front Door

Had a pair of platform cross strap sandals the same yellow, below, in high school, called them my 'school bus' shoes.
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Of course I clicked on the picture, for the yellow, then was delighted further.
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Length of the steps is gracious plenty, much too rare, and the real winner, placement of the urns.
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100% outside the door zone, no crowding, making the entry appear smaller.  The urns color, height & width, perfect.  More, they could be empty and still fabulous.  Better, notice the lack of foundation planting?  Swoon.
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Interior of this home, speaking from the curb.



Simple is hard.
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I spend a lot of time in my car going to jobsites, my little van is too noisy to hear when talking on the phone, so, it's the stereo.  Full spectrum, Mozart, Cole Porter, Edith Piaf, Willie Nelson, Bob Seger, The Cars, U2, you get the idea.  A lyric that goes deep, each time heard, Zac Brown's, "I've got everything I need, and nothing that I don't."
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Simple is hard, and that line should be the basis of a hymn.  A song of praise & thanks, sometimes a quest.
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It describes this front door, above, and garden.  Perhaps it should be a last question, designing your garden, "Does it have everything it needs, and nothing it doesn't?"  My last question, for years, designing a garden, when done, "What can I take away & it still holds together?"
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Pic via Content in a Cottage.
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I always pack lunch for the car, today, waiting to be grabbed when I leave, by the front door on the table, peanut butter sandwich, raisins, apple, banana.  Have you read, Pillars of the Earth?  They were always packing lunch, bread/cheese/ale.  Can you imagine a crusty sourdough homemade bread, cheese from your own cow, who only eats from the pasture, and local brew ale?  Don't want the ale for lunch but the comparison always draws a smirk from me when packing my own bland road trip work lunches.

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Vanishing Threshold: Looking into Roger Hazard's Windows




Junior high through high school I was on my bike after doing dinner dishes.  Stay at the house with both parents home?  On my bike, gone.  We lived in a beautiful neighborhood surrounded by Galveston Bay, marsh, a salt water lake, Clear Creek, and plenty of palm trees.
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Instead of getting out of my parent's house the rides became a choice for their joy of solitude, learning I do my best thinking exercising & sweating.  College was 4 more years of biking, those years in Dallas, TX, a several mile radius from campus, SMU.  Had my own car in college but it was most common I would turn down social invites, saying I had plans, and head off on my bike, alone.
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Now, I design views into homes from gardens.  This zone I have no name for but call, Vanishing Threshold.
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It's rare to come across Vanishing Threshold in any article, much less 3 Oscar worthy shots.  Roger Hazard is the winner, and it seems his dog, & partner too.
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Enjoy, but enjoy with a purpose.  What can you do to create beautiful, warm, inviting views into your home, from the garden?

window boxes filled with pink flowers


 Pink door and pink flowers in windowbox


dog Buck in window

Garden photographers, too often, overlook this zone, Vanishing Threshold.
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More about this house/garden, HERE.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics via Hooked on Houses from Roger's website.

Friday, August 28, 2015

2 Odd Facts About Designing Your Landscape

Two odd facts about designing your garden, begin with an odder fact.  At the start of your garden design, plants do not matter, don't think about plants.
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Studying the best historic gardens you'll discover pics like this, below, its Garden Design rule self evident.  Exterior walls of your home must have 3-D interest.  Don't live in a grand estate similar to below?  Lacking casement windows, stone & brick, equatorial sundial, bespoke clothing?
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Live in a starter home with vinyl siding, no shutters, & hundreds of exact replicas surrounding you?  The imperative for 3-D'ing your exterior walls, greater.  Begin with shutters, moving on to espalier woody shrubs.  They need no support on the house, no trellis, no wires.


Half Pudding Half Sauce


Yesterday I had a consultation with a new client.  About 2 acres, mostly wooded, strong slope scattered through out, home neofarmhouse ca. 1980.  Four young children plus mom/dad.  Soon, 6 cars, not counting friends/family visiting.

She hired another designer before me.  Their ideas all began with removing loads of plant materials.  Not where I started, in the least.  Turning into their long winding sloped drive, 1st time, I knew before crossing that threshold they needed a golf cart or Gator.  Four garbage cans were wheeled to the top of the drive for pick up day.

Stopping in the drive, after a few hundred feet, to gain scope for the imagination, pure Anne of Green Gables, seeing, their front porch must be extended to wrap the corner.

Then, after more such gleanings, I met my client.  She loves boxwoods, and any plant with hydrangea in its name.  Deer love her hydrangeas more.

But I've gone ahead of myself, just as my client has.

Her landscape, now, is zero about plants.  Zero.  Her landscape has no FLOW.  No manner of getting from point A to B.  Before designing the first planting, FLOW must be designed into the garden.  Flow for cars, family, pets, guests, Gator, delivery trucks, and most importantly for the eye to flow upon views of beauty to focal points on axis & cross axis.
   
Half Pudding Half Sauce

Once FLOW is designed, deer issue addressed, her beloved boxwoods & hydrangeas can be designed into their perfect locations.

Before I left I gave her an assignment, "Do not think about plants."

Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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pics via Half Pudding Half Sauce.

Sunday, August 2, 2015

Moved In: ca. 1900 Farmstead

Last week, below, feeding the chickens, an audience arrived.  How do animals this large appear at the fence within seconds, no sound?
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Our views of neighbor's dairy farm.  Soon, when more invasives are removed we'll have views of their lake and rolling Piedmont hills, the last, before the coastal plain.


Still moving in, over 3 days almost 50 boxes unpacked.  5 boxes refilled, heavily, and another Goodwill trip taken.
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How did I ever live without a front porch?  Boxes went to the dump each night.  Fear, not tidiness.  Did not want boxes sitting, and possibly finding a timber rattler in one.  


From the boxes, below.  Over 90% of china/ironstone unpacked.  Dining room has 2 built-in closets, this one, below, was for glass jars of fruit/vegetables.  At least that's what markings on the wood shelves report.
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The door, blessedly was not painted inside.  Made of pine, it has been faux painted, over a century ago, like an expensive wood.  Rest of the doors in the house were painted white.  Will never know if they had all been faux too.
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Shelves, below, go to 11' ceiling/wrap each side, and filled to overflow.
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This is solely colored china/ironstone.  Agreed, Houston we've got a problem.
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On the other side of the fireplace, below, blue/white china cabinet.
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White ironstone still in boxes.  Painting to be done before unpacking those.  Hardly near the top of our action list.


We've done nothing, below, to the garden, other than take what I brought from my last garden, a cottage garden, to Goodwill, or place on 8 pallets under a century old water oak.
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Driveway, below, a compacted meadow, and narrow.  Perfect for us, not our trucks.  Drama ahead.
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Soon, all foundation plantings, below, will be removed with the Caterpillar.  Excepting the camellias, at the end of the front porch, and 2 oleander at my office windows.
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Beloved & I wanted to get it done today, but finishing the pantry renovation beckons more loudly.


 A month living here, I braved my first nail.  House is ample, closet space not.  Basket on wheels is one of my longest & best employees when I lecture.  Files, shredder, printer etc in this closet too.


Mentioned above, drama, below.
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County permit department came, and we were approved to add another driveway.
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No trees will be cut.
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In a perfect world this would not be the new drive entry, it affects axis views, cross axis views, & enfilades of placing the new orchard, rose arbor, potager, smoke house.  For starters.
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What I know, for sure, after 3 decades of studying historic gardens, and designing them, issues in reality always make a garden better.
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Form & function.
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Beloved needs his driveway, and a barn at its end.
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Our new drive will curve, below, it has to, you read the list, above, for this new garden room.
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How long before our new curving drive looks like this, below ?
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More than a bit impatient.
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Life is good.

Hillside
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Top pics mine, bottom pic, Pinterest

Friday, July 17, 2015

Front Porch Furniture Placement

Temps & humidity are at their extremes.
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Yesterday, after lunching with a friend in town, I had the good fortune of riding shotgun while my friend had to stop, below, for a few minutes.


Without words, tone poem, this front porch is a full class, How to Design Your Front Porch.


No incorrect note is played here.  Of course the Kimberly Queen ferns were showing off, but even the Christmas cactus was thriving.
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I don't know the owners, yet, but you know I will.  Their front porch looks/feels like a fine spring day.
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Will get the white they used for home/furniture, and sparkling gray on the floor.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Front Porch: Open Wide

Rich in sublime detail I'm curious about the front porch, at the drive way side.

Residential | Martin & Malkemus

Perhaps more shutters between arches?  A ceiling fan suggests moments of leisure.  Foundation hedge is a barrier between home & garden.  Forcing foot traffic to the front door.

Plantation style home...

Choices are good, this 'landscape' is good, adding choices makes it a good garden.
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Between the open arches, above, add choices.  How?  Take away foundation planting & add more brick steps across the front.  Then, you've made house & garden a vanishing threshold.  Significantly changing the use of the porch, and its 'feel'.  More, you've made a narrow'ish front porch entry luxuriant in scale, and tied the history of the home's architecture to the garden.
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I think of these gardens, above, as pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey gardens, one size fits all.  And this home is worthy of a garden matching its patina.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pics here.
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Humorous how curious this home/garden make me.  And, perhaps reasons for the 'landscaping' would put me in agreement.  Without knowing more, it's all Cole Porter, don't-fence-me-in.

Monday, June 22, 2015

Creating Flow: Garden Design Equation

With an engineering degree, and horticulture, you know I've invented a Garden Design Equation, moons ago.  Yes, good gardens are math.
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Will do a long post about the Garden Design Equation, but not today.  Promise, you will love the Garden Design Equation, and totally 'get' it.  Have taught it in my college classes and seminars losing no one yet.
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Living in our new American Farmhouse Architecture home, ca. 1900, for a total of 3 nites, the Garden Design Equation beckons.
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Blessedly no gardening has been done here for decades, Poverty is a Great Preserver, indeed.  Why is this good?  Not a lot to 'undo'.
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Focal point on axis, below.  Vanishing Threshold.

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Focal points must be sited as focal points from more than a single direction.  This type of focal point, urn above, is one of the best.  Do you know why?  Needs no planting.  Low maintenance.  Let your garden leverage your life.  Your garden works for you, not the reverse.
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From the outside, below, first impression, your garden must tell me who you are, this garden does.
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But my narrative, above, has skipped some of the 1st elements of the Garden Design Formula.
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Focal point siting is often 'obvious' but must wait until 'flow' around the property is managed.  Flow for cars, and walking, maintenance, and larger spaces, a gator/golf cart.
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Do you see what else is obvious when creating flow?  Turf is included in 'flow' equal to a gravel path-drive-terrace.
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This garden, below, is designed for low maintenance too.  Did you already spot that?  The tractor can easily do its job, and the evergreens need once/year attention, no irrigation needed, no chemicals, no fertilizers.
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Had to laugh when I saw this pic, it's exactly where my Garden Design Equation is percolating at our new home.  Flow.
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Drive & Parking Court, below.
 
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Had already told Beloved I will design a gravel drive, gravel parking court, gravel paths, with boxwoods and Tara Turf.
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The Garden Design Equation formula at work.  Historic too.  In the greatest of ironies, I studied historic gardens across Europe for 2+ decades learning how to design a garden with 'plants'.   What was truly learned is flow, repetition, rooms, axis, max pollinator habitat......etc.

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Oddly, too, I've had this idea, below, in mind for the area with my above ground propane tank.  Cannot wait for the before/after shots of my propane tank.  Who knew such delights could be had?  Adore taking the worst a garden offers and turning it into use and beauty.

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Big effect, below, little input.  Been done thousands of times across the centuries, and will be done again at our new home.  Copy.  NEVER worry about copying.  Each site is unique, making each iteration new/fresh.  Again, the Garden Design Equation, and why it works.  Your garden is unique, and the brain cells you apply enhance every effect.

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Gratuitous, below, if you know anything about Historic Garden Design.
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And, of course, I will copy it too.  Daffodils
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Notice something else about all these pics?  Deer proof.

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Luckily my new bathroom needs a 'tweak'.  And, there is a window overlooking the new orchard/rose arbor.  This is exactly how my tub will site, at its window.

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Single story, our American Farmhouse, is quite long.  3 days here, I know for sure, both front/back doors will have their own set of work shoes/shovels/pruners/wheelbarrow/hats.
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A garden must leverage your time.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics via Cote De Texas, from Elle Decor