Showing posts with label Path. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Path. Show all posts

Monday, June 9, 2014

3 Reasons for a Checkerboard Path

 Checkerboard path, new.  Concrete squares, cheap.  Unskilled labor, mostly.  Easily traversed.  


With exceeding distance the drama disappears entirely.  (Go me, garden fact = people metaphor.)

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And, you can see more, above, of the porch from previous post.
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Checkerboard Path: Cheap, Easy to install, Easy to walk.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics by Tara Dillard last week.  Susanne Hudson's 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.

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Elements of a Garden: What do you see?


Formal with informal.
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Designed garden with controlled woodland.
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Garden rooms flow in contrast to each other.
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Color theme, green-brown-white.
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High density & low density for maximum pollinator habitat.
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Every garden room needs at least 1 cone shape.
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Cone shapes draw eyes to the sky.
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Cone shapes are hard to design, easy to do too many.
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Pair of cone shapes at an entry way expand the invitation.
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Contrasting shades of green,
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Contrasting sizes of foliage.

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Designed for structure 12 months of the year.
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Clipped hedging.
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Axis.  Double axis.
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Paths easy to walk.
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Fencing & gates chosen to flow with the house.  How do I know?  I just do.
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Stone in the paths matches stone elsewhere in the garden and on the home.  How do I know?  I just do.
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What did you see when you looked at this pic?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Lost provenance on the pic.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.
.
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.

Friday, October 18, 2013

Landscape Design Rule: Repetition

When space is limited use repetition to make it appear larger.


Seems so right, above, hard to believe it's a landscape design 'rule' in action.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pic Shaw Park Gardens & Waterfall.

Friday, September 13, 2013

How to Tame Trouble

Met a new client last nite with a no-mans-land of trees/ivy/invasives/drainage ditch/weeds.  Its ownership 'looks' like it could be their property or their neighbors.
What to do is quite easy.


An entry & path will instantly take ownership and tame the trouble.
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Clearing invasives, controlling ivy/weeds, planting desirable understory trees & etc... will take a bit more time.  Happily, now there is a road map.
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Garden & Be Well,             XO Tara
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Exciting times, their brown brick home with brown shutters will soon be WHITE !
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Pic Litchfield Hills, lost provenance of photographer.

Saturday, August 24, 2013

Before + After: Path & Hedges

Hedges + paths are designed, and installed, before the borders.  Hedges + paths are the backbone-skeleton-workhorses of the garden.


Hedges + paths, above, 2 years ago.


Yesterday, above/below, with borders filled-in.


Follow this garden design rule and you'll save labor-money-time.
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TIME, more important than labor-money.  No person can manufacture more time.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Bottom 2 pics taken at jobsite yesterday, top pic taken 2 years ago.

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Create Mystery

A path into my tiny back garden, below.


 A coop, conservatory, flagstone terraces & etc. are slipped with precision into their setting.


Who wants to see everything at once?  Discovery & delight are fundamentals of garden mystery.
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Plants are allowed to be themselves.  Mostly.  Camellias, azaleas, hydrangeas, tea olive, roses, boxwood, itea, aucuba, akebia, daphne.  Something is blooming every day, all year.  Now, it's hydrangeas & crape myrtles.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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pics taken last week in my garden.  The entire lot is a mere 8500sq. ft.  Paths are integral to creating mystery in my garden.  

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Covershot Garden Design

Gardens must have rooms which includes halls, foyers, parlors, and the roundabout, below.


Leaning left, below, at the roundabout.


Leaning right at the roundabout, below.


In the roundabout, below, turned & shooting back.  What is this called?  Double Axis.


Same hydrangea, above/below, a few days apart.


Same roundabout, below, different axis.


See your garden thru the camera.  More, see your garden in February thru the camera.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics this month in Susanne Hudson's garden.
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Where today, in your garden, can you take covershot pics?  No?   Why live that way?  
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Yesterday, late afternoon, fuse to my Conservatory blew.  Tried all the breakers, no go.  Immediate call to 'my guys'.  One will be here today.  It is not too much to ask that Conservatory chandelier & lamps light my days & nites on view from every angle I live. 

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Garden Path: Before & After

Leading to our porch garden, below.  Iron gates roped to the trees.  
Yes, horrendous security gates reborn with grace.


After the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival, below.  Hard to imagine the gates were ever there.


Terra cotta pots, top pic, are Cinderella-after-the-ball, below.


In my garden, above, the pots are still where I unloaded them.
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"Scope for the imagination", as Anne of Green Gables would say.
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Garden & Be Well,        XO Tara
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More of the garden Susanne Hudson & I created for the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival.
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Taking down a display garden is quite depressing.  It feels like the killing of a soul.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Massee Lane: Millstone Collection in the Garden

Millstones collected for a lifetime & sited in David Strother's garden, now a public garden.





  Many were slave made.


Today, 1 millstone in a garden is special.  Hard to find, expensive, and getting it home & setting it in the garden, for most, requires men & equipment.





Concrete piers support these in the pond.


Doormat.


Only a handful are setting on the ground.  Showing off.


As time passed this pair, above, could have been sited where the evergreens are.  Their value, literally & historically, of incredible value.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken at Massee Lane Gardens, Fort Valley, GA, last weekend.  From their site, "The formal camellia garden at Massee Lane had its beginnings as the private garden of David C. Strother in the 1930's. He surrounded his farmhouse with camellias. Year by year, he moved out the garden borders to accommodate the camellias he wanted to plant. It is said he never included a camellia he didn't like, even if it were given to him! Mr. Strother donated this land to the American Camellia Society for its headquarters in 1966. 

Mr. Dave collected millstones and road markers - the millstones he brought into the garden have become a trademark. The old wire road mile markers, some with the mile number still visible, add another dimension to the garden. 

More than a thousand varieties of camellias are here, plus sasanquas, fragrant tea olives, Lady Banksia roses, and delightfully scented daphnes.

Enjoy a walk down Dave's Ville Walk - lined with his favorite camellia, 'Ville de Nantes', and admire his handiwork and smell the delicate aromas of tea olives. Always feel free to leave the pathways and walk among the camellias to find your own personal favorite."
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The daphnes & tea olives were blooming, and almost overwhelming.


Saturday, September 1, 2012

Shaping Groundcovers & Paths

Why did I EVER pay attention to gardens with mulch?  Mulch is brown, mulch is dead, mulch is expensive, mulch is labor intensive. 
Evergreen spreading groundcovers take care of ME.  I don't take care of them.
 (This is the mature attitude to take.)
 
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New groundcover planting, below.
 
Shaping gravel paths with  spraypaint, below.
 
 I could never put in groundcovers or gravel paths/terraces without shaping them 1st. 


A guest expert decided to help shape the new gravel paths, below.


Mr. Timber Rattler lost his head soon after this pic.
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Garden & Be Well,           XO Tara
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Pics taken last month in a client garden.  Once shaped I walk out of the garden to view then walk/meander in the garden from all angles.  Many times I need to go upstairs and look down at shaped beds.
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  I take my time to shape beds for groundcovers or gravel.  Bedlines are HUGE to what your eye sees in a garden.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Speaking With Boxwoods & Paths

Pair of boxwood, below, say, "Come this way."
 There is more to the garden & a path continues the conversation begun by the boxwoods.
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Bluestone stepping stones with rough hewn edges, 18" square.  Placed on diamond, copying wood detailing in the kitchen.  Zoysia lawn, pine mulch soon to be unseen as the Southern indica azaleas fill in.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Perhaps one of the nerdiest things I like to do, 'speak' via paths & pairs of evergreens.  Pics taken this month in a client garden.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

A Garden View From Her Kitchen

Inimitably her own style, in all she does.  A bit of her kitchen, below.


Before she bought her, ca. 1940, home it had a garden, obviously lovely at one point, but tired.  She hired me to tweak it several years ago.  Axis & entries were boldened, paths redefined, focal points placed, hedges tightened & etc.
She, & her Man, have had time to do their own tweaking.  Adding layers to their garden, listening to their muse within.
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This is their garden.  All theirs.
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We talked of this magic, the garden transitioning from my input and the previous owners.  Their tweaking.  Yet, somehow, it's the garden doing the magic.
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Lunch was served outside overlooking the garden.  Salmon salad over mixed greens, wine.  We would talk, but mostly were silent.  Looking at the garden.  Then ridiculously, like teenagers, laugh in joy. 
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara 
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Told her I was stopping by the thrift store on the way home.  Ha, she came with me and we went to the antique mall too.  Love a good Saturday !!  Her garden is on tour in May.

Monday, April 9, 2012

Somethings Gotta Give A Secret Garden Path

Can you see the flagstone path below?

 This type of path is also good at making small lawns appear larger
 This house is perfectly the movie house, Somethings Gotta Give, except, below.
Front entry step is too narrow & out of scale with the home.
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This is what I've been hired for.  Their house is perfection in all other details.
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Did you observe this house was a 1950's ranch?  IT WAS.  Architect blew it up & out.  Will ask permission to get interior pics next time I'm on site. 
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken last month.  Will change a few of the foundation plantings.  They were installed to help sell the house.  Over planted and need constant pruning otherwise they will mature bigger than the house.  Not a novel issue.   

Friday, October 7, 2011

Sir Roy Strong & Mirabel Osler

Sir Roy Strong & Mirabel Osler will be in conversation
October 19, 2011, Castle House Hotel.
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Both Strong & Osler are authors of  "life, gardens and travel."
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Please, go, if you can & put it all on YouTube for me/me/me.
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Look closely at the path, above.   Melts my heart.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pic & more information via Hereford Times.  A garden nerd I have Sir Roy Strong on google alerts.  Monty Don too.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Checkerboard In Tara Turf

Pair of conifers at the entry, a pencil shaped evergreen on axis, and a checkerboard path in Tara Turf leveraging the drama.

 Pink Crape Myrtle adding seasonal drama.
Mary is the queen, designing this garden room, it's adjacent to her parking court, and acquiring most of the contents FREE.  She did the work herself.
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 Since starting to post about Mary's garden, a few days ago, her age has gone up daily.  I said she was 60's.  Nope, she sent a note, she's 71.  Well, a day after that she sent an email saying she was embarrassed at her math skills, she's happily 73.
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Are you getting my point?
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Garden & Be Well,                  XO Tara

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Landscape Design: Subsidiary Focal Points

At woodland's edge, below, a tiny vegetable garden.  Perfect siting for her red leaf Japanese maple.
 Too pretty, rusted urn, to not use, below, but the garden already has a main focal point here, the roundabout (yesterday's pics), it's discreetly tucked into a 'shrub clump'.  A subsidiary focal point.
 Leaving yesterday's roundabout, below, a path.  Peaking thru the garden, above, notice her USA flag.
With its curve this path has my interest.  Eyes, mind & feet are pulled.
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Yes, I'm going to walk you thru more of Mary's garden next post.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Adore the concept, SHRUB CLUMP.  Of course it's from Gertrude Jekyll.  It's difficult to read her in bed at night.  She's always exciting.  Graham Stuart Thomas, same thing.
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Mary didn't know I was coming to her garden, she is at the beach with grandchildren.  Nothing is styled, and why historical landscape design concepts keep working.  Note arrived from Mary yesterday, she's 71.  Important for you to know this.  She is the gardener.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Faux Bois Bench: Well Sited

A lovely incident along the gravel path, below.
(Notice stone edged gravel, decrepit terra cotta, leaf litter mulch? Melts my heart.)
Same bench, same path, from opposite direction.
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Thus, a good garden. It could be 2 different paths, 2 different benches or 2 different gardens.
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How to create Double Axis. A class by itself.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken last week in Susanne Hudson's garden.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Landscape Design Perfection: Sir Hardy Amies

I took this pic in the Cotswolds in Sir Hardy Amies garden.A complete landscape design course, in one picture.
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Looks easy, can you do it?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Money is not a criteria. Rescued plants, rescued hardscape & etc..... Yes, you can do this.

Friday, February 4, 2011

How To Add Depth In A Narrow Space

The long brick walk was already installed before I designed this project. My design added to its length, literally & metaphorically.Instead of bringing the brick 'straight' to the curb I flared it slightly.
A common technique for painting on canvas; transition from wider to narrower for creating the illusion of greater depth.
Can you believe the timing of the shadow? Ugh!
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken at a recent project.