Showing posts with label Still Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Still Life. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Saul Zaik: Integrated Indoor & Outdoor Spaces

Zipping with speed thru pics, this deck, below, stopped me.
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A hearty bravo to the brainwave.  Then, overdose-on-a-theme, the roof !
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Another bravo to whoever designed the interior of this home, from my favorite vantage point, the garden.  Landscaping along the windows is a bit odd, glass rectangle edged with ferns, creating a terrarium'ish style.  What to do instead?  (First, replace sofa with a pair of similar styled chairs, that turn 360.  Why the fortification of sofa only looking in?)  Remove ferns & existing path, replace with bluestone rectangles, sized in width from outer edge of deck, fully to the house, scaled in length to each window, spaced the same distance apart as the window frames.

Speaking to his original design, architect Saul Zaik says, “We were really just building boxes with a bunch of windows but experimenting with how you integrated indoor and outdoor spaces.” The house has seven different openings to the exterior, allowing different courtyard or patio settings for a range of outdoor activities, including seating for a gathering on the street-facing side. The Milfords hired Lilyvilla Gardens for the landscaping around the house, including variegated bluestone st...:
Pic, above, here.
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Color of patio chair, echoed inside with the bowl, and dark gray from chimney top to foundation.
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Next.  Axis looking into the home is marvelous.  What is its opposite axis?  Double axis.  If you have a focal point in one direction you must have another in the opposite.  Has me curious.
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Lawn & large shrub at corner are thriving, sculptural.
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Almost a Garden Design course in a single pic.
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Garden & Be Well,    XOT
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Notice the gutters at the roof line?  Great example of darkish color rising up into the roof.  Too often, gutters are painted much lighter than a roof, pulling the height of the roof lower.  Another counterintuitive Garden Design layer.

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Still Life: Put it in Your Mission Statement

Lecturing in Greensboro, NC many years ago, I had the privilege of touring a private garden.  In the audience, after the lecture, a woman chatted with me and I knew, I must see her garden.  Don't know if she invited me to her garden, or I invited myself.  With facts this bare, we know, I invited myself.
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High summer in Greensboro, NC is not for the faint of heart, heat/humidity rule.  Walking our small group into her home, she casually asked if we'd like lemonade.  You know we did, pure drama and story line, We- had- a- tart- glass- of- lemonade- before- walking- her- garden.
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Blessedly we wanted the drama of the lemonade.  After bringing out her pitcher/glasses, and pouring a round, she set the pitcher onto a small table in her kitchen.  
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Poof.  A new element to my personal Garden Mission Statement.  Can you guess what it is?  Alas, this garden visit was well before cell phones or even the desk top large computers.  No photo of this fateful moment.
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My life, inside my home, and in my garden, must look like a still life, not fake, but a life lived, and in the living, the calm of still life views, reign.
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A small moment, below.  Still life.

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Pic, above, here.

Vanishing threshold, below, with still life views.

 restored house & garden, london... what a beautiful view of the garden.:
Pic, above, here.

Antiquing with a friend in Florida last week during vacation, she surprised me with this wire egg holder, below.  She knows my chics aren't producing a lot, but this was home 2 days, and 2 eggs, snapped the pic and sent it to her.  Table/chairs ready still life props.
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Moving beyond the still life mission statement, is what I've learned, living this way.  My surroundings leverage my life.  Friends for lunch?  More than easy.  I can ask, Do you want to eat on the front porch, in the dining room or kitchen, maybe in the garden near the chicken coop?  Living here only 14 months, more destinations are on the list.  Not just for guests, but still life spaces for everyday, me alone.  Lunch arrives with the question, Where do I want to eat?  Seasons dictate, work dictates, many lunches in my office, and within my office there are several places to sit with still life views, and eat.
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Keeping boredom at bay with static still life views, I change the details, T R Boote , ca. 1880 'Summer Time' tureen on the table, below, will soon go into the china closet, a fall tureen replacing it.  The table topper changes at least 6x/year, so far.  Working at my first retail garden center, in the mid-80's, we changed displays seasonally, pure luxury with so many flowering plants plus the seasonal merchandise, and it made me aware, the seasonal displays, each, a gift of thanks.  Thank you for being alive another season, another Valentines, another Easter, another Memorial Day, Christmas.  Exactly how I feel in the garden when the akebia blooms, the oakleaf hydrangea, the azaleas, tea olive, thank you, alive another year, taking in the scent of daphne....
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Sure, all of this seems small, unimportant, but how can the days of anyone's life be unimportant?  After touring the Greensboro, NC garden we came inside to her 'garden room', 3 walls entirely windows, French doors to the garden, her library, desk, and seating area were here.  On the desk, a book, Living A Beautiful Life, by Alexandra Stoddard.  Thumbed thru it, and ordered it when I came home.  Have since given it as a gift many times.
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To this day, that Greensboro, NC garden is one of the best I've ever walked in.  I learned more of its story, later, from a friend of hers.  Diagnosed with severe Lupus, she had hired a garden designer, then, before her husband would leave for work, she had him carry her into the garden and set her down in a spot to work.  His office not far away he would come home to move her in the garden several times a day.  That was the start of her garden.
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I came into her story after she had worked for many years in her garden across good days and painful days.  The day we toured her garden, zero sign of Lupus.  What a victory for her, deep, soul satisfying.        


Pic, above, in our kitchen last nite.

It's amazing the dichotomy of still life spaces.  Once filled with your life, alone or with friends, inside or in the garden, you'll long remember the voices, laughter, conversations, how they made you feel.  Rich.

Listen.
Pic, above, here.

Without knowing, adding still life spaces to my mission statement brought me to, below.

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Pic, above, here.

Receiving the 'more' is both material and metaphorical.  Significantly weighted, in deep grace, to metaphorical.
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Designing beautiful gardens for clients is a joy as their plantings mature, better, are the phone calls, notes, or texts, clients letting me know of the metaphorical riches, aka stories from their lives, their gardens are bringing them, their family/friends.  So, more than adding still life to my personal mission statement, it seamlessly slipped into my professional mission statement.
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT

Friday, November 21, 2014

Choosing Wallpaper

In the bay window, below, at the front of my home, facing the street, tiny front yard, and several houses.
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Landscape design begins inside your home.
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Your realm doesn't start outside.
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Winter's tilt of the Earth, light hurtling through space, wrapping wavelengths tenderly around my garden, shooting as particles through the window panes, returning to wavelengths of light & shadow, seen perhaps merely in walking past, better, when there is lunch here with a friend, light & shadow caressing all they touch.
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This is all about you.  Choices.  How do you want to live in your realm?
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Lighting from the garden & views into the garden are interior design choices along with paint colors & wallpaper.
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Sacred vs. profane.  If you aren't making active choices in either direction, the choice is still made.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic taken this week.   Set of chairs a great find at estate sale nearby years ago.  Tiger oak drop leaf gate leg table a  delightful find at local junk shop, now out of business.

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.
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NOTE to my gardening friends... look for changes to come. 
Knew before computers/cell phones, sitting in Atlanta traffic on way to a client, 'I must reach a larger audience with the same amount of effort.'   Soon after that epiphany I signed my CBS-TV, and, books contracts on the same day.
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Then I read an article in the NYTimes about something called 'blogging'.  Saved the article for a year before reading it.  Studied all the blogs they mentioned, hired a computer expert they quoted, and attended a blogging seminar.
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Blogging 2.0 has arrived, my knowledge is 1.0.  A believer in copying the best historic gardens across the globe it flows into every arena of life.  Watching Maria Killam grow her career/blog/life over the past 3 years made its impact.  Signed up  for a year's course with her blogging expert, Jon Morrow
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Changes will be slow, plodding is my adored method.  Pulling triggers here/there is spice in the mix.
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What do YOU want?
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Nothing is too small, too big, or too ego crushing to mention.
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Passion lies in sharing what has filled me to the depths of grace, joy & atonement, the best landscapes created over the last 2,000+ years.

Just so you know... 

 I  welcome your input.

Monday, August 11, 2014

How to Design Your Landscape --The Ultimate Guide

Lush in early summer, minimalist during winter.
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Views into the home considered, views from home into the garden considered.
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Canopy trees, walls of plantings, flooring with plantings - gravel.  Within this trinity are contrasting foliage textures, contrasting foliage sizes, contrasting foliage colors, a color theme, repetition, focal points, subsidiary focal points, pots so fabulous they can remain empty,  pots/focal points so fabulous they will be fought over at your estate sale, use of plinths for proper heights with urns, backdrop of the home included, color echoes of flowers to paint color on home, repetition of color on iron pieces fence-downspout-lighting-trellis-arms of bench,  seating with arms & back tall enough to rest the head/nap, transition zones from formal to wild wood, house/garden have a vanishing threshold, maximum pollinator habitat with its high density/low density,  ornamental plantings increasing potager yields up to 80%, sensory delights with visual-fragrance-sound of birds & wind thru foliage - foot upon gravel, historic-a template older than CE.


I see an entire Landscape Design course in this picture.  What do you see?
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Name it to claim it.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic via Pinterest, here.
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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.

Monday, July 7, 2014

Most Wanted in the Garden

This is what I want, below, from my garden.  Every day, to look out from the windows of my home and think, "Oh WOW."


More, I want to walk in my garden, any day of the year, and take a roll of gorgeous 36.


View from the street, above, thru my tiny orchard to little cottage.


Oakleaf hydrangeas, above, drying in the garage next to my car.


Attention to detail, inside/outside.
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Everyday clients change the scope of their project, it may rain for 30 minutes delaying a dirt delivery 2 days, a supplier does not have what they promised,  mis-communication with a subcontractor,  an employee forgets a tool or gas/oil mix for equipment thus stopping the work totally.
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All expected, & normal, business.  
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And why I crave the beauty/solace of my garden & home.
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A realm of grace feeding the spirit.
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  What do you want from your garden?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics from my home/garden this year.
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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.

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Front Porch: Color, Shutters, Narrative

In a subdivision, below, without the trees you would see neighbor's houses from the front porch.


Whenever you see the gardener, dressed up/down, she's arrayed in black/white.  With a bit of bling too, but you knew that from her front porch.


The shutters are bi-fold doors from a closet.  Ick to fab !
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Color, seating, flow, layers, texture, invitation, relaxation, all ages, conversation, dining, narrative.
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Which shouts loudest?
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I adore the narrative, above.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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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.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Garden Design Course: Free in a Single Pic

Under a pecan tree not much grows.
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Tara Turf is best.
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Why?
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Increased pollinator habitat increases crop yield up to 80%.
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 Susanne Hudson found herself with 4 benches needing a home.  Exquisitely, they found a home.
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Please put this on one of your Pinterest boards.  It's a free Garden Design course !
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Garden Design: backdrop, canopy-understory-groundcover aka ceiling-walls-floor, color, texture, scale, flow, garden rooms, mystery, serene, poverty cycle, curb appeal, focal point, subsidiary focal point, vintage theme, simplicity, low maintenance, pollinator habitat, urban gardening, structure all year.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic snapped with my phone last week.
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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
.
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.

Monday, January 20, 2014

Simple Manipulations: How Many Do You See?

Do you see the manipulations, below?


Seating to create a gathering spot, figs for summer shade/winter sun over the benches, drystack stone wall cut into a slight slope forcing foot traffic into defined directions, formal boxwood framing pastoral views, tapering stone wall allowing only small machinery into the pasture from this direction, gravel terrace ready for men-trucks-heavy equipment, horses, or a catered soiree for 100.
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And, of course, it must all look a century old, be easy to maintain, and provide interest 24/7.
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When something appears simple, it rarely is.  Same is true of people.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Pic at a jobsite last week.
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Do you know the maximum pollinator habitat, above?  Seriously, can you verbalize what creates the best pollinator habitat above?  Answer at bottom.
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Being simple requires each of the decades I've been learning about gardens.  Better, being simple in a garden, takes me where Joseph Campbell says our eternity is.  Ironic, in this American life/era, to have found my bliss in work.
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  1. Joseph Campbell - Wikiquote

    en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell
    Where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own .... And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life.
  2. More, being simple connects me to the message/life work of Wendell Berry & E.M. Forster.  
  3. Wendell Berry Earns Highest Humanities Award, Lectures on ...

    sojo.net/.../wendell-berry-earns-highest-humanities-award-lectures-econo...
    Apr 24, 2012 - On Monday evening, Wendell Berry delivered the 41st annual ... The title hinges on E.M. Forster's 1910 novel Howards End, which Berry said, ...
  4. .
  5.  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.
                                                                                     .
    Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon.
  6. Answer to question, above,  High density/low density, open meadow/dense woodland.

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.

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Curb Appeal Before Entering the Front Porch


Don't tell me 'welcome' with letters on a sign or doormat, show me.


The curb appeal of this tiny frontyard says, "Yes, you want to see the porch, inside the home, and the rest of the garden."


And you're experiencing the potency of the garden's color trinity, without being aware.


Adore the smartness of cast stone urns filled with cast stone flowers & fruits.
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Get the color trinity?  Green, brown & white.  Trinity of the ages.  Low maintenance, serene, elegant.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics shot in Susanne Hudson's garden last month.  Girlfriend is serious!  Curb appeal + front porch fabulosity.  We are working on a book together and planning another spend-the-night this month.

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Old Tool Bouquet a la Toile

Start collecting now.


You've seen dozens of old tool bouquets on toiles across the span of your life.


Old tools in my garage are ladies-in-waiting.


Think this bit of garden is serendipitous?  Unplanned?  Needs weeding?  A trinity of wrong.  This garden room is rustic balance with its formal companions nearby.
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Garden Design is all about contrasts.  And finding a way to hang lovely old tools.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics shot in Susanne Hudson's garden last month.  Seems old tools, old terra cotta & old tin are a new trinity.

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Desk in the Garden

Don't you adore hearing a new strange fact, and know it's true immediately?


Every garden needs a desk.


First shared with me by Susanne Hudson.
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Have adored sharing it for years.  Zero dissent.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics in Susanne Hudson's garden last month.

Friday, June 21, 2013

Accessorize

Accessorize.


Focal points are macro garden design.


Accessories are subsidiary focal points.


The micro garden design.
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Perhaps the strongest tool in Garden Design, micro garden design, making your garden MORE you.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Susanne Hudson's garden, pics taken earlier this month.  I laughed out loud when I saw this pair, had been in the garden days earlier and did not see them.
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Remember this garden design rule at the antique shops, art shows, garage sales, junk stores, it's your permission to buy!

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Mass Market Annuals?

Mass market annuals are one of the least sustainable-eco-green things produced.


Insecticides, fungicides, weed-killers, water, electricity, heating, plastic, gasoline, trucks, soil, labor.
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Compare to a packet of self-seeding annuals or the vignette, above.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic same garden as previous post.  I was a professional grower for years.  We grew from plugs, seeds, cuttings.  Mostly plugs.  Adored doing the hydrangea cuttings late each summer.
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Mass market annuals do have their place & when needed I always put Jenny Hardgrave's company, Simply Flowers on the plan.

Friday, March 22, 2013

Japanese

Invitation.  




 "...eternals as applicable in the smallest of spaces as in the vast acres of a country house garden." Sir Roy Strong.  Above, vast as a mountain range.


Water Mirror, miroir d'eau, above.




Water breaks the footprint of the Tea House, above.  Small touch, huge impact.


Looking outward, above, from the bamboo window seen coming in the entry, top pic.


Framing the view, above, for centuries this has been done.  Is a brick ca. 1960 ranch less worthy?


Hidden, then meandering, above, then spilling into the pond, below.


Why, above, do we like walking on water?

 At the minimum, 2 stones.  Male & female.  Earth & sky.  Ying & yang.  Even the shadows are benevolent.


Leaving the Japanese garden from its other side, above, into a pecan orchard.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics taken Massee Lane Garden last weekend.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Poverty Cycle Into the Music Room


The library across the hall, previous post, is moody with northeastern light.  The music room, below, hums in southeastern light.


Eastern light, below, in the mirror, southern light, window above.


The garden view, below, is one of my proudest achievements.


I took the garden, a century old, to its Southern roots in time & place.  Using the Poverty Cycle.  Looking in the window, below, seen, above.


Tara Turf to the foundation, granite curbstone step instead of green-meatball-foundation-plantings, drifts of daffodils as-if-they-were-always-there.
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Plenty of areas to play & show off in this garden, and I have, but without using the Poverty Cycle the garden would lack soul, character, integrity, & have too-much-uneducated-ego.  Of course you've deduced, this is my ego, above.  This is a portion of the front porch, hence, double ego!
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pics taken last week at jobsite.  Same garden as previous several posts.
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Ego for doing-the-right-thing makes me unemployable to the largest design/install companies across USA.  Why?  It's all about sales.  Are you beginning to understand the prevalence of green meatballs & foundation plantings and, and, and?
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Oh my, a little Puppet Barbuda this morning.  Uneducated ego?  Testosterone-on-wheels-mow-blow-go-commodify-all-I-touch-get in fast-get out fast-sign my contract-pay me every month.  Sad, you'll pay later in lower house value, higher HVAC, increase maintenance expenses, poison  ground water with fertilizer, destroy pollinator habitat, and worse, harm your spirit with ugliness.  

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Design Interiors From Outside

Front porch, below.


 Lamp seen from the front porch, above, and from inside, below.


Further to the left of the lamp, below.


You do know this already?  Interiors must be gorgeous from every garden view.
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Your home is the focal point of the garden.
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Walking with new clients, around their garden, seeing an ugly interior view I will turn my head, look into their eyes and my right eyebrow goes up.  Enough said.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pics taken at jobsite last week.  Same home as previous several posts.