Showing posts with label Cute Kills. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cute Kills. Show all posts

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Bathroom In The Barn, For The Help


Her jobsite is a bit far & I had to run for the powder room in her home every time I arrived.  Now, she's put a bathroom, below, into the Dairy Barn, for the help.
 Attentive in all she does I know the door was chosen & hung with care, below.
 Accouterments are perfecto, below.
 Incredible shower, below, and the right amount of whimsy with the milk can. 
 Good accident reflecting more lite, below.
 One entry to the Dairy Barn, a century old, below.  Made of
terra cotta blocks, painted its original white.
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Was on site yesterday placing flags & laying string for new plantings & drives.
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I must stop thanking her every time I come for this bathroom, for the help, in the Dairy Barn.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Who knew I would grow-up and WANT to be the help.  It means I'm doing another garden.  Doing what I love.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Richness In Simplicity

Simplicities in my house, below, intensify
 my garden view.
Landscapes & interiors are double axis.
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How does your landscape look from inside your home?  It is art on the wall at every window.  Whether you think so or not.
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How does your home look from your landscape?  It is the focal point of your landscape.  Whether you think so or not.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken yesterday, a gray day with rain.  No flash for the pics.  Light streaming in, indirectly, from the garden.  My floor, banister, stairs, and me, each bathed in garden light.

Monday, October 24, 2011

Cute: Curb Your Dog

About 7" tall, below.

Too cute.
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Remember, Cute Kills in a landscape design.
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There is an exception to every rule.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Flag Site

Landscape Design Rule: 1 focal point/area. Flags are focal points, frontdoors are focal points. Flags, sited at/near frontdoor diminish both.
Flags reeking of cute? Must I go there? A flag with the word 'Welcome'. Oh dear. Your home & garden say 'WELCOME'. Remember, CUTE KILLS.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken in my garden this month. The best gardens BREAK RULES.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Hobby Lobby ?

A greenhouse for table, wall, or to force bulbs indoors & the cats won't chew them up.
Did you know, Hobby Lobby sells a few garden things? Good size, weight & depth for this metal house, above/below.

Chinoiserie, below, what will it look like painted your color?

I don't have, below, this shape of cloche. Tempting, but it has plastic panes.

Prices comparable to a nursery. BUT, everything shown is 50% to 66% off. Oddly, most nurseries I go into don't have this merchandise.
Found my quarry, below, a small cloche.

In Italy I saw large urns filled with bronze plants used atop buildings as finials. Wish these metal flowers, below, came in more sizes.

Smallest tray, below, $5.

3 size terra cotta pots, cheapest I've seen anywhere recently.

Classic pieces. Each will be unique in your garden.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken over the weekend. Needed watercolors too for renderings of my Landscape Designs. A good shopping trip, found everything I needed. No, Hobby Lobby has no idea I'm doing this post.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

GARDEN DESIGNERS BLOGLINK: TARA'S TRINITY OF THE SOUTHERN GARDEN

With, Tara's Trinity of the Southern Garden: Azaleas, Camellias, Hydrangeas, you'll have blooms everyday in your garden. Oakleaf hydrangea bloom late spring, mophead hydrangea bloom early summer & summer, 'Anna Belle' hydrangea bloom summer, 'Tardiva' & 'Pee Gee' hydrangea bloom late summer to frost. Above, lacecap hydrangea.

Southern Indica Azaleas, 'George Tabor', above, bloom in spring. They stand up to drought, bugs, cold. Use Exbury azaleas too, they bloom before 'George Tabor'.

Camellia sasanqua, above, bloom in fall. Camellia japonica bloom in winter.

Landscapes designed with evergreen hedges & entries, cultivate the eye, songbirds, & increase property value. Chinese snowball, above. Pathways should flow around your entire property, no dead ends. 'Tardiva' hydrangea blooming, above.


Use wit & whimsy in your landscape, above. Beware, CUTE, it's treacherous.


Start your landscape design from inside your home, Vanishing Threshold. Patio, above, viewed from my kitchen sink.

Design your landscape for February. It will be gorgeous all year. View, above, from my living room.


Site deciduous understory trees, crape myrtle, above, to shade your home from summer sun. Window, above, views stone terrace, below. Summer's blanket of rudbeckia gives way to smooth Tennessee gray flagstone the rest of the year.

If you're new to gardening in the South you'll adore, A Southern Garden by Elizabeth Lawrence, and, Hudson's Southern Gardening by Charles Hudson. Use your local Extension Service for specific advice to your county/state. The Garden In Winter, by Rosemary Verey is an incredible garden design book. My 5 books ( 3 on garden design, 2 on plants) are at the right, scroll down.
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Tara's Trinity Of The Southern Garden is gorgeous, low maintenance & a workhorse of your Southern garden design.
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Today is GARDEN DESIGNERS BLOGLINK across America. 12 garden designers sharing what's unique to their region. ENJOY !!!!!
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Jocelyn Chilvers (The Art Garden) – Wheat Ridge, CO
Susan Cohan (Miss Rumphius’ Rules) - Chatham, NJ
Michelle Derviss (Garden Porn) – Novato, CA
Dan Eskelson (Clearwater Landscapes Garden Journal) – Priest River, ID
Laura Livengood Schaub (Interleafings) – San Jose CA
Susan Morrison (Blue Planet Garden Blog) – East Bay, CA
Pam Penick (Digging) – Austin, TX
Susan Schlenger (Landscape Design Viewpoint) – Charlottesville, VA
Genevieve Schmidt (North Coast Gardening) – Arcata, CA
Ivette Soler (The Germinatrix) – Los Angeles, CA
Rebecca Sweet (Gossip in the Garden) – Los Altos, CA
Become a Fan of Blue Heron Landscape Design on Face book – http://bit.ly/yq1XT
Read the Blue Heron Landscapes Blog: http://www.bhld.wordpress.com/
Become a Fan of Blue Heron Landscape Design on Face book - www.bit.ly/yq1XT
Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ScottHokunson
Connect with me on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/scotthokunson
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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All pics my garden except hedge with window. Took that pic while writing one of my books.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

SO OBVIOUS

Can you name this? SLEIGH PORT !!!!!
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Carport, heliport, airport............
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Yes, another pic from Susanne Hudson's last week. She named her Sleigh Port. The antique sleigh? Americans are larger now. A pair of young teens would fit. Two adults? Barely.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

BROKEN HEADS

Working in the shed behind the greenhouse I had to be careful of spiders, snakes, rats & stacks of collapsing merchandise. I loved it!! The oddest rat scurried at my feet. I screamed. Thoughts in chaos. Why? The small black rat was in reality the BROKEN HEAD OF ST. FRANCIS, about 3" & black, rolling quickly by.
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Brain thought, RAT. Eyes saw a face.
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That began my BROKEN HEADS collection.
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Girlie, above, is about 4". She cost a $1 at some nursery. Another joy of my BROKEN HEAD collection? Cheap. One nursery tried to charge me $12 for a BROKEN HEAD, ha, I walked.
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Only the observant will discover my BROKEN HEADS collection in the garden.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Saturday, November 14, 2009

HEDGE FUND IN THE LANDSCAPE

Cute Kills in a landscape. Yes, another Tara Rule. Why?
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Often, cute, has lovely origins but in execution the effect is derivative, clumsy, pedantic. Cute hijacks thought processes. It's static. Not a dynamic statement. Nor timeless.
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What to do instead?
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WHIMSY.
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If hedges are the walls of garden rooms, shouldn't they have windows?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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I took this pic in Atlanta while Joel Tressler was shooting for my book.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

DINKY STINKY

Beautiful homes with dreadful mailboxes are a particular pet peeve. They have such a Pin-The-Tail-On-The-Donkey picaresque quality.
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Susanne Hudson says, Dinky-Is-Stinky.
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This gorgeous house will soon have a new mailbox & planting. Graceous lawn will envelope the new mailbox & a vine will grace its exterior.
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No more dancing the Dinky Stinky.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Friday, July 10, 2009

TRIP TO DOUGLASVILLE

Wed. & Thurs. were spent with Susanne Hudson, Le Jardin Blanc, Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival , & more, in Douglasville, GA. Her business & private garden have graced international TV & magazines.
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Her home was begun in 1875 with an addition in 1915. She began the garden when she moved in less than a decade ago. The woman moves fast. And wisely.
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I lived a happy month in those 2 days and will share with you sporadically thru the next many weeks.
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Before bed, late, we talked books-gardeners-gardens-interiors-ideas in her library, below. She pruned the climbing rose, below, in my room. It had grown inside the room to the canopy bed. Why? I would have loved the rose as bunting.
Sunlight on the original plaster ceiling yesterday morning, thru my iron canopy & chandelier.

How did she have time to put roses by my bed? Again the original plaster walls. Delight.

Susanne's chandelier, below, was a bit larger than mine. Hmm.

A girl has to bathe during a work trip doesn't she?


Wish you could smell the soap, and feel the towels.


Oops, I slept late, 8am. Coffee was wafting up the stairs as I was turning the landing, below.


Can you believe the garden view from her landing?
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More of these 2 days will be sprinkled in the weeks ahead.
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Susanne's garden, ideas, and even pics of one of her client's house/garden. And, if I'm devious enough, some of the nitty gritty conversation.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Saturday, June 6, 2009

HYDRANGEAS AT MY TOES

At the end of the day Tuesday, quilt & pillow were placed on wicker swing, the arbor ceiling fan turned on and I reclined with magazines. I felt the freedom of floating in water. With beauty at my toes. Hydrangea 'Penny Mac' from Penny herself. These were Penny's Presbyterian hydrangeas. Given when she downsized her garden. Wickedly, she embarrassed my friend, BIG BILL, who helped dig/transplant that winter day. Penny, aged 76, leaned into BIG BILL's arm and said, I bet you've got lots of women. Quickly redder than a radish, BIG BILL, a wise man, kept digging. But with a smile.
I'm a woman with a gorgeous dirty cloche, I like that literally & metaphorically. Gray Gardens is quite appealing. The monkeys are dressed for Penny's blossoms. I dallied on the swing twice last year, once the year before. Ridiculous. Will try to do it once a week.

The Lutyen's bench here too. Needing stain, to match the other teak. Can't simply bask must eyeball something to do.
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And the magazines? What a bore compared to what was at my toes.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Sunday, May 31, 2009

COPYING & MAKING IT NEW IN THE LANDSCAPE

A century old, at least, I copied it in my landscape. Outside. (Thank you Pigtown*Design, it was your idea.) And I don't like to collect things nor stray from simplicity. So why am I enjoying this blue/white Chaos Display?
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Maybe I'll keep it for a month or years. Doesn't matter, I'm enjoying it now. 3 RULES FOR LANDSCAPES:

COPY + SIMPLICITY + REPETITION
No matter how many times it's been done before, if it's beautiful elsewhere it will be beautiful & unique in your landscape.

What is the saying? Non-fiction is a true story, myths are stories that happen over & over & over.... Landscapes are myths, at least mine is to me. How else to explain the grace my garden exudes? Using the 3 rules: copy, simplicity, repetition will give you mythical grace in your landscape.

Setting up the blue/white CHAOS DISPLAY, below.

Intentionally design your landscape to create impromptu Still Life, above.

Went to my favorite junk shop to complete the blue/white collection last Friday. I would tell you where but the friend who shared the shop with me did so with a demand, Do not tell anyone about this shop.

Pic, above, is not styled. The box was awkwardly heavy & I set it on my patio table to begin arranging the Chaos Display. Magazine shoots are fine but I delight, especially, in good pics not styled. The impromptu of life creating still life.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

LANDSCAPE INSPIRATION FROM AN INTERIOR DESIGN BLOG

Chaos of blue/white makes me smile. Seen at PIGTOWN DESIGN it was a blog header for AN AESTHETES LAMENT. Where does inspiration come from? I saw museum quality blue/white in a similar chaos display at Chatsworth in England. Oh my, is 'Chaos Display' a new design trick? Without inspiration.
It may take a few weeks but I'm field gathering blue/white china now. I'll place it on this patio table. It was originally a sofa table. My frogs will be on the move. Don't know where yet. But it will be fabulous, where ever they land.
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Is any of this important? YES. Why? It makes me smile.
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What makes you smile in your garden?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara