Showing posts with label Intuitive. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Intuitive. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Following & Breaking Rules

Green-brown-white is the top historic exterior color trinity for gardens.  Who, ever, likes/wants rules?
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Late to the game, me, once I learned the trick to garden design rules.  I hadn't known or trusted garden rules deeply enough to wisely break them.  That's all there is too it.  Trust the rules, follow the rules, break the rules wisely.  Why the bother?
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Knowing the rules, breaking the rules, creates a garden & exterior more deeply 'you'.  Rules don't make every garden the same.  Rules make every garden potently different.
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Adored, seeing this garden, below.  In the pink.  I want to know this person.  Just from this pic, a tiny portion of their exterior.  More, I want to see the owner's interior.

Live Beautifully Outdoors:

Pic, above, here.
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Hope you realize that's what you're patio/deck must do, too.  Others must see it, and want to come inside.  Others must see it and 'know' who you are.  Those are garden design rules !
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Backyard: Lawn vs. Gravel

From the 1st time studying historic gardens in Europe over 20 years ago, gravel changed every thought about a 'lawn'.
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Perhaps it was coming from a region of USA with ubiquitous patchy backyard 'turf' lawns.
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Gravel, below, set with a top rate template of plantings too.  No worries what the plantings are, below, use the best plants in your zone fitting the appropriate sun/shade, size, foliage evergreen/deciduous.
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Best plants?  Don't know best plants for your zone, USA?  Go to your county/state/extension office online.  Typical mission statement for the Extension Service,        

"Mission

Our mission is to extend lifelong learning to Georgia citizens through unbiased, research-based education in agriculture, the environment, communities, youth and families.

UGA Extension offers educational programs, assistance, and materials to all people without regard to race, color, national origin, age, sex, or handicap status. "

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Your county Extension Service will have a listing of the best trees/shrubs/groundcovers/vines.  Motivation is for the proper plantings, not to sell you something.
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Knowing the best plants for your specific location gives you liberty to copy good gardens world wide.
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Don't feel comfortable choosing the best plants for your garden plan?  Take a picture of what you want, perhaps below, and ask your Extension Service agent, or their volunteer Master Gardener to choose for you.  This service is paid for thru your tax dollar.

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Pic, above, here.
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Choosing gravel, align with color that may already be used with your home's exterior, or interior.  If there is a predominate stone in your location, choose it.  Measure square footage you want to cover with gravel, 2.5" thick and place your order.  The stone source you order from will turn your square footage/depth into 'yards'.  Small gravel is best, more residential.  Large gravel is commercial for parking lots or building construction.
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If you're fighting a poor turf lawn in your backyard, consider gravel.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO
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My 1st phone call to Extension Service was ca. 1985.  Going to the mailbox I noticed a vile odor.  Exploring, discovered ooze at the base of a large oak.  Their diagnosis?  Slime flux.  Solution?  Poor a mix of clorox/water on it.  It worked, and I'm still friends with the Extension agent helping me.  Weirdly, he's retiring next year.  How is that possible?  He's also the 1st person ever asking me to speak.  He created a new layer in my career.  In return I've never said 'no' when he's called asking me to speak for Extension.  About 6-7 years ago he asked me to speak on pollinators.  A disaster I thought, but said 'yes'.  Pollinators?  Boring.  How was I to know it would become one of my most requested lecture titles?  He called earlier this month, one of our 'peeps' is moving back to Georgia.  A young woman we watched grow in her horticulture career and are both so proud of.  She took a lot of my seminars, always asked the best questions, a great can-do attitude.  She moved away for a huge huge huge job, but Georgia family/friends are pulling her home.  He asked if I would give her a reference.  As if !!      

Friday, August 1, 2014

5 Ways to Get Subsidiary Focal Points Right

Not a focal point, below, but a grand subsidiary focal point.
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Garden Design Rule: One Focal Point per Area.
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Not my rule, but agreed to.
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What to do?  Invent another rule.
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Focal Points are allowed subsidiary focal points nearby if they recede, touch foliage, don't draw attention.   Can be numerous if properly chosen & sited.
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Focal Points & Subsidiary Focal Points must both be so wonderful they will be fought over at your estate sale.


Pots must be so wonderful they can remain empty.  This young man, above, has dead plantings and he's fabulous.
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More, he flows with the style of the home's interior.
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Dogs, 3 young children, parents each own a business, they have farm property nearby, and a lake house.
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Get the picture?  Zero time for the garden.

Designing for women 80+, taught me how to truly design with tough love.  A huge honor, and weight.  They demand beauty, must have unskilled labor to maintain & little of it, something coming into bloom every 2 weeks, focal points on axis from inside views into the garden.  Nothing can go wrong with the garden.  Nothing.  Health issues arise, the house needs a new roof, a toilet floods.  If the garden has issues, they may decide to move.  It is my goal, their garden gives strength & joy to carry on in their home.  
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic this week in a client garden.
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 For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.
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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.
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Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon
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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.
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Construction by Award Winning
Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Friday, July 11, 2014

Three Best Mistakes to Make in Your Landscape

Choose to make garden mistakes on the side of too simple, too little, too plain.
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Better to want more later than dig-up, move plantings, replace a now-thought-cheap/tacky-bench, regret the shape-style-color-of.....
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Long term, cute in a garden grates.  Whimsy is better.
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Be wary of 'words' in a garden.  They hold thoughts hostage that should flow randomly, Cole Porter's, Don't Fence Me In.
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Of course there are exceptions to all of the above.  Indeed.


This morning, above/below, Tomato & Hydrangea.  Perfect name for a spiked tea & scones cafe.


Feeding cats & chickens, assessing what the night wrought & will it rain today.


Tomato still in its peat pot with cellophane wrap & tags.  Awaiting a much larger pot & bamboo cane trellis.  Perhaps this weekend?  Hydrangea blossoms hanging lower, petal margins crispier, will I cut to dry or leave to enjoy from the windows?


Calm.  Boring is good.  Idle chit-chat in the head.
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Something new to learn about Social Media.  Facebook cannot control pictures during war.  Images seen cannot be unseen, merely absorbed into a safe, prayerful, place.
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Again, my Garden working for me.
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Have you watched the award winning foreign film, Burnt by the Sun ?    "The film depicts the story of a senior Red Army officer and his family during the Great Purge of the late 1930s in the Stalinist Soviet Union. Like a tragedy bySophoclesBurnt by the Sun takes place over the course of one day."  Wikipedia
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Oddly, it's beautiful. 
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Glad it taught my heart to assimilate what I saw yesterday within mundane ubiquity of beauty in a tomato & hydrangea.  The gift of choices, health to act upon them, perhaps a dinner party in late summer honoring the last of the tomatoes.  With dried hydrangeas in a vase.
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This is freedom.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Pics taken in my garden this morning.
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 For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.
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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon
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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.
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Construction by Award Winning
Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Edna St. Vincent Millay: Burn Your Light

Light from the garden, below.


Interesting legs, garden light a few of my favorite things.
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Oh my the criticisms, for decades, for leaning inward, to seemingly insignificant small joys.
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Edna St. Vincent Millay, "My candle burns at both ends; / It will not last the night; / But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends — / It gives a lovely light!"
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I met Peter Pan yesterday, and he wasn't lost.  With a bigger life I doubt I would have known.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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My bedroom, above, renovation still needs yellow/white French check draperies a la Charles Faudree.   Walls, Benjamin Moore - Sundress.  Hence you won't see more till then!  Painting by, Christine Gholson.  Truly, the light in my home is enriched by the garden.
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A quote in NYTimes long ago, "The more you go inward the more you outwardly connect." Pure permission, be-who-you-are.
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If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.
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Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.
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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon
  

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Layers of Green are Best in Garden Design

Layers of green always work.

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Flowers.  Give-me-flowers-or-give-me-ugly seems to be the starter gardener mindset.
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Layers of green are pretty all year vs. a season.  Layers of green emit ion exchanges of serenity.
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I can assure you choosing layers of green vs. flowers is, "The spreading wide of narrow Hands To gather Paradise—", "I dwell in Possibility..." by Emily Dickinson.
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Odd how most of Garden Design is counterintuitive.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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How do I know these things?  Queen of the flower method of garden design 12-step program.  No, I will not enable you.  My goal is to help you get rid of those pink elephants in your landscape.
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pic via Pinterest.
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If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.
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Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.
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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon.

Monday, October 7, 2013

Charles Faudree: Creating Relationship with Opposites

"Establishing a relationship between unlike objects adds to the interest of a tablescape.
An antique French figurine is a three-dimensional companion to the painted figures
on the English foot tub."  Charles Faudree


Contrast.  The Arts cross-pollinate.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic from Details, by Charles Faudree & Francesanne Tucker.
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For inspiration in the garden I have been going to interior design writers for decades.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

The Creative's Office

 Don't you adore looking at the office's of creative women?  Seeing, somehow, a helpful narrative.



I travel miles & eras from the view in my office, creating new ideas from all-that-I-am.  Knowing, there are many layers of  'no'  getting to the layer of fabulous.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pic Daisy Garnett's office.
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
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Details about online design services.
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Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
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Details about lecture titles here.
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I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Real Gardens




Historically inspired gardens demand Pleasure Walks, lunch with friends, wine by the pond, naps in the Conservatory, reading on the terrace, mental traveling, hearing Providence, exaltation at the cadence of Nature, gazing at the views.....
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When has testosterone-on-wheels-mow-blow-go-commodify-all-I-touch ever inspired any of this?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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pic via Castles, Crowns & Cottages.

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Lawn


What is the fascination with lawns?


French parks have beauty, children playing, adults relaxing, Nature thriving, without lawns.  For centuries.
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Notice the choice to leave the tree trunks alone?  Brave.  Perfect.
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Garden & Be Well,          XO Tara
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pic Paris Through My Lens

Monday, October 22, 2012

Creating Layers

View into the garden, below.  Pic taken at jobsite last week.


 Not mature yet, above, but doing its job.  You don't know what that job was.  Means the job was done right.


My job?  Hide the view (pic taken 2 years ago) of the dependencies, above, create mystery, pull your feet to investigate, be a proscenium for all weathers, fill the spirit of any mood, provide entertainments for small groups, large gatherings & yet be easy to maintain while providing maximum pollinator habitat for potager, bees, & yet more.  Now we're in the realm of my Landscape Design classes.
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Every step in Landscape Design is counterintuitively simple.  
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Garden & Be Well,           XO Tara
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My basket is in yet another pic.  It was a 2 basket day.  Did you know I rate my days by how many baskets are needed?  The best days are 4 basket days.  Means I've been designing & lecturing & overseeing an installation.
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Last visit home my sister told me it was infantile and not appropriate for a woman my age to use baskets.  In fact, the little basket I was using embarrassed her.  We were having Sunday lunch at the club with mom.  It's a joy to irritate her without trying.  When the server was clearing away she told me how cute my basket was & what a great idea to use it.  Sensing the Cheshire smile my sister received from me?  Obvious I'm the younger sister.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Interior Decorating for Ornery Client

After his garden he asked for a guest bedroom.  He had parameters, "Use the furniture I own & leftover paint from the garage."  I told him what I would do, he wanted none of it.  


 Mixed Benjamin Moore Philadelphia Creme with York Harbor, resulting in a pale ocher/yellow.  The room has to be simple, its bed already a focal point.  Wow, was he verbal during set-up.  All negative.  He was asked to step away until called for.


Burlap draperies, cane chair, & thrift store lamps were my only additions.  From the hall, he didn't step far, I could hear his continuing demands.  (Whatever.  I knew what was to be done.)
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Finally, he was called into the room.  He stood there, silent.  Looking.  He teared up, and hugged me.  This is his beloved grandmother's furniture.  I got it right.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pics taken this month on site.  This is the type of 'interior decorating' I do.  When it's using furniture already owned and there is little money.  I know where this room is truly going, very Eleanor-Roosevelt-at-Val-Kill. The entire time Mr. Negative was talking to me I was smiling at him.  So glad I'm over 50!  Younger, I would have tried pleasing his lizard brain.  Instead, my work is done for the grace of the soul.
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By-the-way.  Same scenario in his garden.  He had a collection of hodge podge plants.  Didn't like a thing I said about placement.  Once done he said, "This is exactly what I was going to do."  Pics of that later, when plants are bigger.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

What Is A Status Symbol?


Can you spot the status symbol?

In the land of freeways, subdivisions, strip malls, too many people?
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A meadow is status symbol.  A gravel/dirt drive with wildflowers & trees is status symbol.
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This is a CHOICE, above.  It is Landscape Design.  
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It's not a 'less than' drive because they couldn't afford to pave.  It's the intellect of knowing what's important in life.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pic via Habitually Chic

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Wickedly Neo-Unprepossessing

Across Europe the best gardens, with attenuated home of course, invite you thru a neo-unprepopressing entry.
 Arriving, above, I knew it was a carriage house or guest cottage.  How?  They told me I would lecture in the porte-cochere.  Executed to perfection, below right. 
 Whoever owned the estate HAD ME at the curb. 
 In the porte-cochere, above.
The bench is a metaphor for the house and garden.  Detailed, quality, elegant, enduring, comfortable, welcoming.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Did my 4 lectures in 2 days last weekend in the porte-cochere, at Sugarloaf Country Club Garden Tour & Boat Show.  This house & garden donated proceeds to Mothers & Daughters Against Cancer.  Of course I have more pics for you.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Gardening For Children

I don't believe in Gardening For Children.  A fully formed adult, gardening from their heart will attract children.  Children of all ages, from 1-100 years old.
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What child doesn't want to peek thru this garden gate?
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Yesterday, a neighbor child, about 6 was in my garden, he didn't know I saw him.  He found my Secret Garden gate.  Promptly, he hit it with a stick several times and said, "Cool, a gate to nowhere."  Then he poked that stick at many plants, carefully, deeply perusing.
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Shazam, he ran back to his own garden.
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 This type of garden also affects grown women.  I've never had an open garden/tour without a woman, manipulating a private moment with me and she cries.  Hard.  Tears ending with our arms around each other. 
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I know where those tears come from.
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She's recognized I've let my 8 year old self out to play, with permission.  And she has buried hers.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic taken in a client garden last week.  Another gate made by Magic Man.  Yes, you do want to go thru.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Creating, & Living, In Still Life

Decades old, below, the Camellia japonica doesn't require care.  Though it does take your energy.
 The energy of appreciating beauty, picking flowers, knowing whether it's native/non-native honey bees at the stamens, giving blossoms away, floating blossoms in water & etc.
People, and plants, are energy in or energy out.
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I choose people to keep in my life who are energy in.  Plants too.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Last week with a client, above.  She chose her trug well knowing it would create a Still Life and be functional.    Notice the leaf litter mulch and a few weeds?  Jane Austen wrote of this type garden, it has RUSTICITIES.  Ironic to write of Landscape Design as Still Life.  They change by the split second.

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.

Saturday, January 28, 2012

How Tiny Landscape Rooms Live BIG

Paley Park, New York City, NY, below, via.
A tiny landscape living BIG.
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I've pondered why some little landscapes, including  mine, live HUGE.
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Yes, seriously, I've pondered & mulled & considered & strained to figure it out.
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It's the sky.
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With little space you still have infinite ownership of the sky.
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Use it.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Have seen Paley Park, in pics, several times thru the years.  Takes my heart each time.  Perhaps I'll get there some day!  Thank you Janelle McCulloch Library Of Design for posting this garden haven.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Garden Designers Round Table: Lawns

Lawn should have sections, arriving at, and touching, your home.
 Lawn around your home should be cut lower-tidier, above, than lawn further away, below.
 The best lawns are not monoculture, perhaps they are great for sports, they are Tara Turf.  A mix of grasses, bulbs, herbs, and what the wind  blows in.
 Tara Turf, above, in the cracks of a formal flagstone terrace.  Well, formal when the Tara Turf is 'dormant'.
 Low Tara Turf, above, enhancing the view and a place to play, sit, picnic.
 Spotty Tara Turf, above, a century old home with owners over 70 years old.  Easy to take care of, no fertilizer, no chemicals.
 What began as a design statement, above, enhances pollinator habitat.  And greater change thru the seasons.
 Lawn, above, a harbinger of spring.  And the owners.
 Lawn, above, until I realized the maintenance required.  Now, flowering shrubs.
 Lawn to the house, and it feels good.  Zero foundation plantings.  Lush planting in pots.
 Charming vignette, above?  Yes, AND, helping to pollinate fruit trees, vegetables.  Did you know 80% of pollination is from wild sources?
 At Sissinghurst, above, formal lines are mown into Tara Turf.  Tall lawn under fruit trees?  Increases yields 80%.
Tara Turf doesn't need watering, it enhances landscape design.  A detail within simplicity.
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One of my clients has a large potager, flowers/herbs/vegetables, her potager caretaker tried to talk her out of hiring my services.  She didn't need ornamental flowering plants coming into bloom every 2 weeks all year, she needed only plants feeding wildlife or people.
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We all learned something, BIG.  Her potager is outproducing any that he has created in his career.  Instead of getting 1-2 bloom cycles on her vegetables she's getting 3-4 bloom cycles.  Her yields are 100% higher, in many instances, than what he is familiar with.
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Why?  She created a landscape with something new coming into bloom every 2 weeks.  Birds, insects are in great activity everyday.  She has a mix of hi-density plantings with shrubberies/flowering trees and low-density areas with Tara Turf.
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Tara Turf is part of the equation for maximum pollinator habitat.  Beauty, low-maintenance, no expense for water, chemicals, fertilizer.
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Garden & Be Well,             XO Tara
.This month on Garden Designers Roundtable, We’re talking ‘Lawn Alternatives’, and we’re very excited to have the Lawn Reform Coalition joining us for a blogging extravaganza! The Lawn Reform Coalition is Thirteen gardening and environmental advocates from across the U.S. promoting change in the American lawn, a loose coalition of writers and activists (including lawn-haters and lawn-improvers) pooling knowledge of up-to-date solutions to the many problems caused by a lawn culture that demands perfection, conformity, and the overuse of water, fertilizer and pesticides. To learn more about the Coalition, and to join in the revolution, visit www.LawnReform.org.
We’ll be joined this month by the following Lawn Reform Coalition members:
Susan Harris
Susan Harris – Coalition instigator and head wrangler, Susan is a garden writer and blogger who promotes lawn alternatives and organic lawn care.  Online she blogs for independent garden centers, publishes a website about Sustainable-Gardening, and co-founded the national team blog GardenRant.com. Susan also co-founded the DC Urban Gardeners and Green the Grounds.org, a campaign encouraging First Families to landscape their official residences sustainably. Her individual blog Gardener Susan’s Boomer Blog, goes radically off-topic to answer the question: What Turns Boomers On?  Susan gardens and teaches gardening in the Washington, D.C. area.
Billy Goodnick
Billy Goodnick – Billy is a landscape architect based in Santa Barbara, CA, specializing in designing public and residential landscapes. His freelance writing and his Cool Green Gardens blog at Fine Gardening Magazine instruct and encourage readers to adopt a more sustainable approach in their landscapes. Billy also co-hosts an educational and humorous regional television show,Garden Wise Guys, that emphasizes water conservation and lawn alternatives.
Evelyn Hadden
Evelyn Hadden – Evelyn has been writing about nature-friendly, chemical-free, do-it-yourself, low-maintenance landscaping since 2001, when she founded the informational website LessLawn.com.  She gardens in Minnesota and travels across the country speaking to other gardeners about ecological gardening, lawn alternatives, and ideas for shrinking your lawn.  Her most recent book, Shrink Your Lawn: Design ideas for any landscape, won a silver medal in the Independent Publisher’s 2009 Living Now Book Awards for promoting a healthy and balanced lifestyle. Evelyn works with the Permaculture Research Institute Cold Climate to find and share ways to build a restorative human culture.
Saxon Holt
Saxon Holt – Saxon is a professional garden photographer whose images are well recognized in hundreds of magazine and book credits. In his work he seeks to change the aesthetic of what we expect to see in a garden photograph so that the media portrays authentic and sustainable gardens. ”The American Meadow Garden” and his two most previous books, Hardy Succulents, and Plants and Landscapes for Summer-Dry Climates, were all awarded prizes by the Garden Writers of America as “outstanding books”. He owns the stock photography library PhotoBotanic and blogs regularly atGardening Gone Wild.
Ginny Stibolt
Ginny Stibolt - Ginny is the “Transplanted Gardener” from Maryland, where she received her MS degree in botany, to NE Florida.  Her column for Jacksonville’s Florida Times Union is posted on her website and onFloridata.com, Many of her columns have been republished in Master Gardener newsletters and elsewhere, and she also writes for Vero Beach Magazine.  She’s the author of Sustainable Gardening for Florida, published by the University Press of Florida.
Of note, two of our own members here at Garden Designers Roundtable are also Lawn Reform Coalition Members. Susan Morrison and Shirley Bovshow will also be posting today.
Garden Designers Roundtable is also very excited to announce in conjunction with this month’s topic, that one of our own, Pam Penick, has a new book coming out in February of 2013 entitled “The Alternative Lawn”, to be published by Ten Speed Press. Look for more information here and on Pam’s blog Diggingas we get closer to the publishing date. Congratulations Pam!
Now without further ado, may we present to you our readers, ‘Lawn Alternatives’! Just click on the links below and Enjoy!
(and no, you’re not seeing double, Susan Harris has contributed two posts!)
Several pics I took, some I've lost the resource, some are from Paul Gervais.