The Best Time To Design

Design your garden for deep winter.

It will be pretty all year.
.
Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
.
Pic Belgian Pearls.
.
Rosemary Verey wrote the best garden design book, The Garden In Winter.

Blossom Boxes By Steve Eaton

She needed something at her gravel parking court.  (Tara Dillard's, Queen's Pot, of course.  A pot so fabulous it can remain empty.  Do all of your pots pass this test?)

Mostly, she has Steve Eaton of Blossom Boxes plant her urns.

 She wanted a gate leading into her woodland, fabulous.  But it needed another Queen's Pot, this time on a taller plinth, above.  And, it's on double axis.  More another time, (miss priss) forgot to get the other axis pic.

 No sun reaches her front door, Blossom Boxes keeps her pots always lush & green. 

Another pot, in her backyard, above.  Blossom Boxes stayed true to his name: pansies, violas & dwarf snapdragons.
.
Met Steve Eaton over 20 years ago.  Have seen him in gardens & flower shows ever since.  Had him in an episode on my TV show. 
.
I thought you should know such a man, Steve Eaton of Blossom Boxes, exists.  That there is a world where men plant flowers & girls design gardens for their daily bread.  A world, they know, is their own Camelot.
.
Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
.
Pics taken in a client garden last week.  Steve Eaton, Blossom Boxes,  770-337-8840, sceaton3@yahoo.com.  

Historicly Sighting Bulbs

 Planted last month, below, daffodils.  I hope you think they've been there a century.

They arise from Tara Turf, above, more history.

 Landscape Design is not hard, it is a lot of easy layers.  From a side window at the front door, above.
More than historical, I had to site the daffodils to be ENJOYED by a family.  Every member, a wide age range. 

From the music room, above.
.
Garden & Be Well,   Tara
.
Pics taken last Thursday.  Exciting times here, a son is to be married.   Have felt strongly throughout this project there would be babies/children.  First, of course, I will let them get married !  Better than babies they are grandbabies.  Have a strong bias toward grandbabies because of my own incredible grandparents.    It's odd having infertility, I don't miss having my own children but I ache for grandchildren.
.
New note, 3-12-12, about daffodil details, quoted from my client, above, " Those bulbs sat in the garden shed for months waiting to be
planted.  and it's been a mild winter.  never could have fit 2000 bulbs in refrigerator!  and they are Divison II Narcissus which do better in the south than Division I.
Carltons (but I don't want a "run" on Carltons!).  selfish of me, I guess.

it was an amazing work of planting them in groups like this.  and you really don't know how long they've been there.  we sit on front porch more often these days, both days and nights to enjoy them.  yellow blooms show up well in the evening, almost as well as the white blooms of flowers. 

daffodil season is influencing where we sit and talk.  I love it."

Flowers In Winter

Confidence, below, at the front end of winter.

 A few flowers to dress-up the teak patio furniture, bare of cushions.

A good wager with our mild winter.  But you never know what's ahead & it's good to see spunk.
.
Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
.
Pics taken last week in a client garden.  She's getting a potager with amended soil & a compost area.  Notice her flooring, above?  The swimming pool was filled in and the pool decking was kept.  The green grass you see had been water.
.
I haven't done annuals in winter for over a decade.  Instead, relying upon camellia, tea olive, daphne, helleborus, mahonia, kerria, rosmary to bloom, and bloom, and bloom......

Jane Austen

"but had I place to new fashion, I should not put myself into the hands of an improver.  I would rather have an inferior degree of beauty, of my own choice, and acquired progressively.  I would rather abide by my own blunders than by his."  (Obvious what Jane Austen thinks of this character!)

"YOU would know what you were about of course--but that would not suit ME.  I have no eye or ingenuity for such matters, but as they are before me; and had I a place of my own in the country, I should be most thankful to any Mr. Repton who would undertake it, and give me as much beauty as he could for my money; and I should never look at it, till it was complete."   (And we know what Jane Austen thinks of this character!)
.
From, Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen
.
Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
.
The flower?  In my winter garden.  Living history.  A camellia of course.

Landscape Design: What Era Will You Choose?

Whitlow House ca. 1830.  Keeping the views,

 and the house rustic are intentional.  Wanting places of repose,

outside of time.

.

Garden & Be Well,          XO Tara

.

Pics taken at a project last week.  Landscape Design is about designing elements of TIME & PLACE.  Received a delightful comment about my home/garden this month, "You've really created your own little world, haven't you?"

.

Fog & Rain Dreary?

A local garden center posted on their Facebook page today about the weather (fog, wet, gray) being dreary and we should come in to buy a houseplant.  Really?  Puppet Barbuda knows good Landscape Design has no dreary days.  Returned moments ago from her garden Puppet Barbuda saw:

 Laura, above, following from inside.  Not so cute when she hangs from the chandeliers.  (Notice the terra cotta sun?  It's a wall sundial hiding a faucet.)

 With Ivy 'Gold Heart', at the front door.  Puppet Barbuda is in earnest about no dreary days.  Fell in love with this Ivy while studying Landscape Design in England.

 Sasanqua's, above, still in heavy bloom.  Native honey bees gather pollen all year in my landscape.

 Hellebores, above, opening.

 Apples & peaking gold dwarf conifer.

Crazily, with a warm January, fall leaves still falling.
.
Dreary?
.
Plenty of color.
.
Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
.
Was in my robe/slippers getting these pics a few minutes ago.  Laura followed me, from inside, around the entire house while photographing.  Wish I had time for more pics....

Design For Winter Not Summer

Design for Summer & it's pretty in summer. Design for Winter & it's pretty all year.

.

A new thread to that thought, design a summer garden to look like winter. Hmmmmm. In the heat/humidity/mosquito summer seeing a cooling garden of winter. Interesting.
Summer, above, Lake Maggiore, Italy. This qualifies.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

How do I know it's a summer pic? I took it.

.

Epiphany came reading, "Ms. Malcolm's books have wintry atmospheres - both intellectual and aesthetic - that derive partly from the way she takes facts and attaches them, like someone hanging tea-light candles from high rafters, to mythology and classic literature, mostly Russian." "When a relative recalls, in the courtroom, the dead man eating a pomegranate, the Comp Lit student in Ms. Malcolm pounces. "Of course he was eating a pomegranate," she writes. "Characters in Russian literature are always eating (or offering) fruit at significant moments." Dwight Garner, New York Times, in his book review, Iphigenia in Forest Hills: Anatomy of a Murder Trial, by Janet Malcolm.

Landscape Design Zero Plants: Before & After

Landscapes take 3 + years to look good, on average. Most gardens get stuck in the '+'.

Unfinished, this garden is ready for showtime. Those pallets of stone, above, MAKE the garden, below. Ha, no plants, yet a garden is born. Why?

Landscape Design 'listens' to the site.
The biggest focal point in a garden? Your home. Vanishing Threshold.

.

Consider: paint colors, light fixtures, shutters, doors, views into windows, turning windows into doors, getting rid of disgusting foundation plantings, pathways to move the eye + foot thru your garden, land stewardship, how to be in the garden for pleasure (tea-wine-canapes-luncheon-reading ipad-etc.), historical concepts of landscape design, thriftiness, no watering once established, no chemicals ever, no fertilizing once organically stabilized, groundcovers instead of mulch, succession planting, something coming into bloom throughout the year, canopy trees, understory trees, evergreen walls, & more.

.

Consider all of the above & you won't wait 3 years, or 3 seconds, for a beautiful garden.

.

Proof is in the pics above.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

Look at the new frontdoor again. See what I did? Took out the transom, replaced with a taller door. Getting rid of that subdivisiony horrendous aspect, ca. 1970's, of windows/door at same height. Guess how we chose the color for the frontdoor? (Another post.)

.

Eco Gardening is a SMALL concept. Vanishing Threshold is how I create a garden.

.

(Puppet Barbuda has zero attitude, she's all PUPPET'ude !)

Vanishing Threshold: Lunch & Learn

Vanishing Threshold is an original concept, an epiphany while studying historic landscapes in Italy. Landscapes begin inside your home. Place focal points on axis with key views. It's that simple.

.

An inner voice impels me to take Vanishing Threshold out of the garden realm. Are you an Interior Decorator? Landscape Designer? Come hear me speak about creating beautiful landscapes in Vanishing Threshold with your home.

.

AmericasMart, Lunch & Learn: Looking for inspiration and education between Markets? Join Tara Dillard for a demonstration on successfully incorporating outdoor living spaces into your designs - March 24, noon-1pm, at AmericasMart. RSVP to 404-220-2055 or nlyle@americasmart.com.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

Pot on plinth, above, on axis from my living room. Centered on window. Interior decorators, are you looking out the windows of your clients home? Interiors are not finished unless the window views are part of a home's interior. My landscape designs are not complete unless views into windows are fabulous.

.

Designer? What is original to you? What is your horse/pony show? Willing to get out of your comfort zone & let the world know?

This Garden & Its Mistress

Carriage house, fescue, boxwoods, pair of elms, stone wall/stone terrace/steps, below, all new, perhaps 12 minutes old in the pic.
Client is successful, headstrong, bold, smart, athletic, spiritual, demanding, puckish.

.

Today she is in a hospital bed unable to move or speak.

.

Before surgery she directed her brother to finish her landscape with us.

.

My hope & prayer? In addition to complete recovery, I want to hear her ask: why those boxwoods are 6" off, why didn't you get bigger elms, why isn't the potager edged with dwarf boxwood, why aren't existing boxwoods-in-pots sited & etc.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

This story, this incredible woman, has dug itself in. She's in my prayers.

The Easiest Design Tool?

Contrasts. Contrast EVERYTHING in your landscape. Big leaves next to small leaves. Burgundy foliage next to green foliage. Spikey flowers next to round flowers. Square terrace with round urns at its entry.Contrasts on this new home are wicked good.
Curves, squares, arcs, circle, colors, wood, brick, glass, slopes, rectangles, peaks, valleys, flat, vertical.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

The next easy design tool? Repetition.

.

Yes, a good book: Landscape Design: Contrasts & Repetition. (Now, finding time to write it!) Just when you get your contrasts correct it's time to repeat, repeat, repeat......... No worries, it took me a long time to latch on to these tools.

Why You Shouldn't Decorate With 'Cute'

"On the outskirts of agony sits some observant fellow who points." Virginia Woolf
When I NEED her words I don't need a cute stupid sign or focal point (cheap resin is particularly offensive, ha, expensive resin too) in the garden as I gaze out my windows.
I need beauty, strength & wisdom.
Upon a winter's day Providence laughs. Slowing me. Taking me away, for a few moments, into a realm of grace.
Away from the 'outskirts of agony' .

.

Closer to seeing the 'fellow who points'.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

Pics taken at Pecan Orchard's garden this month. Ugh, straining to see the 'fellow who points'. Knowing I will when I let go.

Nassim Taleb: 3 Views

From, The Bed of Procrustes, a new book by Nassim Taleb."Education makes the wise slightly wiser, but it makes the fool vastly more dangerous."
"You are only secure if you can lose your fortune without the additional insult of having to become humble."
"You are rich if and only if money you refuse tastes better than money you accept."

.

Wesley Yang wrote about Taleb, "He made what he has called his "fuck you" money when his bets against the market made him millions on Black Monday in 1987." "...the content of his next book, Anti-Fragility, ...will be about how we can create systems that mimic the resiliency of nature."

.

Taleb also wrote, The Black Swan, and, Fooled by Randomness. Both bestsellers. Both about Wall Street.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

Pics taken this week, of my month old Conservatory, from my bedroom window. Poppets, you should see my VINTAGE 25 year old linoleum kitchen floor, with battle scars.

.

Conservatories are for the soul, kitchen floors a necessity. Younger, I would have done the 'right' thing, the floor. This age is exquisite, bringing me the Conservatory.

.

No doubt, fate will bring a new kitchen floor, including, of course, new countertops, backsplash, sink, faucet, stove, refrigerator. Last year in the kitchen was: ceiling reconfiguring, painting, 4 new chandeliers & cabinets. In the interim, I don't look down.

Do You Mentor?

On my tiny property, below, in a small working-class neighborhood I create myriad garden scenes in denial of time, budget, location. Along with a passion for Garden Design, Providence gave me mentors from the last of an era, the Stoics. Their mentoring comes with a hunger to pass it along. Barbara Allen mentored me. She died yesterday.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

Pic taken with our last snow (Feb.?) from my bathroom window. See the street of houses? Ha, this is what good Garden Design does. Barbara is in every Garden Design I've done, and will do.

Underused Plants

Now that you've seen, Edgeworthia, below, how can you not have it? Winter blooms on deciduous stems. Grown as a shrub or small tree depending upon your pruning. Part shade to edge of woodland in the south, full sun to part shade in the north, zones: 5-9. . Pic

Lonicera fragrantissima, below, visually a bore, but once you smell her, you will have her. A gangly shrub, zones: 1-9, with arching canes, sun or shade, plenty of winter blooms to bring inside.

Pic

Witch Hazel, below, a small understory tree for shade to part sun. Blooms in winter. Foliage persists through much of winter, beige, boring until you see it dripping with rain/dew backlit by the morning sun. Upon that morning you will know why the universe was invented.

Pic

.

Each are drought tolerant & essentially carefree. Oddly, I chose winter bloomers.

.

More Underused Plants at the Garden Designers Roundtable today.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

Discovered the pics via Garden Lust. Not entirely clear if they were from the New York Times or taken by Garden Lust.

.

The Garden Designers Roundtable posts will be up after 1pm central.

.

Wish everyone could have camellias and gardenias and tea olive & etc. Alas, narrow zones.

.

Fantasy plant? Dwarf eleagnus, 2'-3'.

The Queen's Pot

The best containers in your garden? So wonderful they can remain empty.
.
Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
.
Pic taken in the Bay Terrace, my front yard, from the living room. When I saw a particularly fine empty pot at Glamis Castle, one of the Queen's homes, epiphany ! Some of my pots are fabulously empty and some are planted. Please, get yourself at least one Queen's Pot.
.
Garden Designers Roundtable: Containers
More !! More !!! More !!!!

This month’s bloggers on the Gardeners Roundtable!

Christina Salwitz : Personal Garden Coach : Renton, WA

Debbie Roberts : A Garden of Possibilities : Stamford, CT

Jenny Petersen: J Petersen Garden Design : Austin TX

Jocelyn Chilvers : The Art Garden : Denver, CO

Laura Livengood Schaub : Interleafings : San Jose, CA

Rebecca Sweet : Gossip In the Garden : Los Altos, CA

Rochelle Greayer : Studio “G” : Boston, MA

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK

Scott Hokunson : Blue Heron Landscapes : Granby, CT

Shirley Bovshow : Eden Makers : Los Angeles, CA
.
Apologies, I can't get the links to go thru.....at the moment. All of the fabulous landscape designers, from many states & zones, above, are also writing about containers today at: Garden Designers Roundtable.

Stealing the View

View, below, from the Garden Room earlier this year. Same view, below, last week.

My tiny property lives large because I own the sky. How? Canopy & understory trees, walls of evergreens, floors of groundcovers/stone on axis from window views inside my home. Vanishing Threshold.

.

And, Dahlings, this is big, I stole the view, above. Those aren't my trees. La-Ti-Da.

.

Azalea 'George Tabor' is the pink flower you see. Soon blue mophead hydrangeas will be blooming. Later, rosy pink Sasanqua's will bloom.

.

By December I'll have the 4 Seasons view from this window.

.

(Tara's Trinity of the Southern Garden: Azalea, Hydrangea, Camellia. Plant my trinity and you won't go a day in the year without blooms. Included are oakleaf-Anna Belle-mophead-PG-Tardiva hydangeas & C. Japonica.)

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

23 years in my home & these are the first pics from this view. Why? Since January interiors have been painted, kitchen & master bath remodeled, furnishings redecorated. Odd, new interiors creating new views of the garden. Susanne Hudson was hired to choose colors. Ha, that flowed into other changes. Love everything she's done. Salient fact, I gave her free reign. Total control. A blessing to get out of my own way and let Susanne create magic.

A NEW GARDEN ROOM: ROSE TERRACE

ROSE TERRACE, unfinished & already a dowager, hosted me Saturday. Shirt sleeves, wine, book.

Incomplete, ha, the charms of ROSE TERRACE are prodigeous.

ROSE TERRACE is under the crape myrtles, below, and my office window.

ROSE TERRACE, below, last month. Delightful, the potency of shirt sleeves Saturday.

Of course, below, I was in the chaise, circa 1930, taking pic of the teak adirondack with fallen camellia blossoms, C. 'White By The Gate'.

Antique roses weave into crape myrtles shading house & ROSE TERRACE. That idea came in Claude Monet's garden, circa 1990. Couldn't get home fast enough to order the roses. Today's era? Order via cell phone from Claude's garden. "Claude', one of the dead men I have a THING for.

.

Prior to being the ROSE TERRACE this was a hydrangea patch.

.

Prior to being a hydrangea patch this was an herbaceous border.

.

Prior to being an herbaceous border this was ---can't believe I'm admitting to this --- otto luyken laurels I planted before I knew a thing about gardening.

Hydrangeas repurposed, below, at the border of ROSE TERRACE. Shot pea gravel, 3" deep -- no landscape fabric, with stone & brick for edging.

.

New Camellias, Tea Olives & Gardenias are espaliered against the wall of ROSE TERRACE.

.

Lanterns + Candles await to be hung from the Crape Myrtles.

.

Terra cotta pots await my luncheon appointment with a topiary wholesale nursery next week. Honestly, it would be impossible to make this stuff up. AND it's work. My career.

.

(Of course no one wants my job when it's hot/humid & blood is trickling down my neck from mosquito bites or I'm picking up dog s---t in a client's garden so they'll only see my contractor's beautiful installation of my design. Oh, lest I forget, falling off the second story of my home before a winter open garden & getting up and working more while it's still dark outside so the 10am start time is EFFORTLESS. Ha!!!!!!!!!)

Dowager? Incomplete, ROSE TERRACE is already gorgeous & functioning.
.

NOTE: Adirondack on flagstones, prevents irratic sinking. For proper photography & when guests are present hide flagstones under shot pea gravel.

.

Inspiration? Enjoying wine/canapes at a girlfriend's, realizing I didn't have a similar spot.

.

Can't wait for warmer days ahead, girlfriends & ROSE TERRACE.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

TAKE JOY

Rosemary Verey wrote of removing foliage off winter blooming Lenten Rose. I copied, below. In Sir Walter Scott's garden I saw a 'well placed chair'. I copied, below.

Pamela Harper wrote of every garden needing a tall cone shape taking the eyes to the sky. I copied, below.

Joy is always present. Always.

.

Take.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

"Take joy" was a favorite of Tasha Tudor, from the book, Tasha Tudor's Garden, pics by Richard W. Brown & text by Tovah Martin. Don't have this book yet? Take joy, buy it.

.

Stephen Holden recently reviewed, "Gershwin...Here to Stay", performing at the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel, for the NYTimes. In it he wrote, "When Gershwin's friend Kay Swift observed him playing "dark, doom-laden chords" and asked him what he was composing, he said: "Oh, nothing. I was just working off some of the dreary music that lies near the top of a composer's mind. Then I"ll dig down to the happiness stuff, with any luck."