Showing posts with label Fence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fence. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Visual Real Estate

Do you give away bits of your landscape? You bought it, you perform (or pay someone to perform) the upkeep, you pay the taxes & you have freedom to create YOUR aesthetic.Which house owns this fence?
Really?
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Sure?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken at a client's last month. She's already told her painter what color to paint the fence. He said he just painted it. She said, "Tara is upset and it has to be painted this ______ color."

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Simple

A few weeks ago when the roses began blooming, below. #89 granite gravel drive, picket fence copied from historic template, carport (at right) with "columns" made from 2" x 6" boards, green-brown-white color theme. Pure Simplicity.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Can you hear the gravel as you drive into Susanne Hudson's garden?

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Don't Overbuild

Solving a slight drainage issue easily, affordably, without pooling water, without breeding mosquitoes & will last over a century, below. Path was terraced, #89 granite gravel poured, slope dug into with stone laid (dug in about 1"-2" at each base) angled into the slope.
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Unskilled labor required at each phase, above. Easily woman powered, or man.
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Water, now, follows the path. As does the eye & foot.
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Too often I am at a new client's landscape and discover French drains already installed. And already NOT WORKING. Excepting mosquito production. And They Are UGLY & Expensive.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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New path, above, in Jeri Farmer's garden. Not all areas, obviously, can be solved with the method above. Some areas, alas, do need a French drain. Dahlings, I don't want you oversold by a contractor wanting your money instead of the right thing for your landscape. Studying gardens in Europe I saw this same method used countless times in many countries. Built one in my garden 2 decades ago. Will find pic and post it soon. It's fabulous!!!

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Checkerboard Flooring

Checkerboard flooring, below, in shade. Grass won't grow.
12" X 12" concrete squares.


Gorgeous all year. Affordable, low-maintenance, unskilled labor, rain water only. Add crocus, scilla, blue grape hyacinths.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Yesterday's client's office has a black/white checkerboard floor. Soon the garden outside her windows will have checkerboard flooring too.
Pic taken last week in Susanne Hudson's garden. She installed the checkerboard flooring herself. 18" X 18" concrete squares? Too heavy. Unskilled labor & woman powered.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

CHOOSING A WHITE LANDSCAPE DESIGN

Last Friday I was in Douglasville, GA, below, at Le Jardin Blanc.Completed by a doctor, as his private home, just after the Civil War it's close to town & the railroad tracks.
Friends Susanne Hudson & Jeri Farmer bought & operate this manse as a wedding, events &

tea house. Suzanne designed a white themed landscape. Their budget of nothing but creativity & resourcefulness produced a white garden beautiful & easy to maintain. (NOTE: Jeri & Suzanne are women-of-a certain age with only pennies to put into this landscape yet its fabulousity helps sell their venue. Indeed, their landscape is woven into their business plan. Moral? YOU CAN DO IT TOO.)


Doublefile Viburnum, above.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Other pics of the Doublefile Viburnum include dogwood & #89 granite gravel. Don't you love their white picket fence?
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Suzanne & Jeri also created the annual Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival. It's June 4-6 this year. A garden tour, vendors: plants-fine arts-antiques-jewelry-food-more, a standard flower show, shuttles available. Flower show & Main Street Market are Free, Garden Tours $25/person.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

ENTRIES

Landscapes cannot have too many entries.Not always gates or doors. Use pair of: trees, bushes, urns, stones, wattles, columns & etc.
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Entries in gardens are PROOF of garden magic. No matter the direction, they are always entries. Something I try to remember about life. It may feel like an exit but it's always an entry.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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pic via It's About Time. From door, bricks, edging, vine, vista, colors, lichens, meadow, season, I can feel the coolness of the bricks on the palm of my hand, the push & sound of the door trying to open it further & smell the air.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

PURE ROMANCE

Deepest winter, camellias in bloom, a pierced brick wall, a boxwood sentinal,

perennials peeking through, the dormant vine enticing me to come back.
This bit of garden, last week in Charlotte, NC, displays many desires.
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I want to know how to make cast stone urns, a pierced brick wall, forge an iron gate, paint a watercolor of this scene, write a poem about nature's delight & of course garden here.
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Perhaps this is why my contractor told me, "You are a gay man in a womans body." Ha, most of my girlfriends want to do these things too.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken last month at Wing Haven.






Sunday, February 7, 2010

MAKING CHOICES

Design is the oldest profession. If everything began in a garden someone had to plan it. Did you know 'garden' is derived from 'paradise'?


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Several times a year I refer to THE HOUSE OF BOUGHS, by E. Wilkinson & M. Henderson, to make a choice.

This week I had to make a choice about fencing for a home approaching its century mark.

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There are 2 books I like to gift. This is one.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Top pic taken from House Of Boughs, bottom pic, from Amazon.