Thursday, July 2, 2015

Design: Creating Flow

How will you get from point A to point B ?
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Flow.
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Flow is at the front end of my Garden Design Equation.
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When I was in college, SMU, someone mentioned the sidewalks in front of Dallas Hall were poured, AFTER, they saw where students tread dirt paths thru low meadow.
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(Privately, off topic, in person, you may wish to ask me about the tunnels under those sidewalks.  That was a crazy fun date.)
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Architecture, interior design, color, materials, scale, below, are sublime.  In addition, flow is the unseen subliminal element.  So good it's taken for granted.



At our ca. 1900 American Farmhouse architecture home, below.  We haven't lived here a week, how can we possibly know where to put paths, parking courts, drives, terraces, pole barn, and links throughout all?
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Overflow parking, below, from my office view.  My little van, Tess, is in front of the house, and another truck with long open bed trailer are in the drive along the opposite side of the house.
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The golf cart has yet to be brought from the house we sold, nor 2 tractors and 2 more work trucks.
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None of the above traffic/parking issues includes guest vehicles.
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I adore this.
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Creating flow/parking in our own garden.


Foot traffic, below.  Tractor Supply had a single boot choice for my new home, below.  Work shoes from my former cottage garden, not sufficient in the least.
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Drive, front parking court, overflow parking, a path, hugging the house are speaking.  Good news.
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Further from the house, the flow has no voice.


At the back of the house, 2 out buildings, at left & at right, must be moved, due to flow.
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Building at left is impeding vehicles, and building at right is blocking the deck we're building around the back of the house.


Both buildings a century old, clad in metal more recently.  We'll reuse the wood in our new shed I want built in the orchard, to be planted.
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Hope you sense the best element in creating flow.  Anticipation.
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Every layer of a garden is exciting.  Never tiresome.
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More than anything I want several dump trucks arriving with our gravel.  Too soon, don't know exactly where to place it.  Patience.  This is where G*d taught me patience, in a garden.  We all get life lessons, yet they arrive in their own time and have different teachers.  If we don't 'get' the bigger life lessons, they keep arriving until we do.
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Patience.  Your impatience is why I have a career.  Every client, just like I was at the front end of gardening, thinking they can put in a garden, do, and it's horrendous.  After my first garden making, vile of course, it was off to years of Extension Service courses, symposiums, then another college degree, in horticulture, finally touring historic gardens across Europe for 2+ decades.  Now, I know a few things about gardening, and thrill at the new lessons still arriving, every day.
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Moving into this new home/garden it is clear, I am an experienced gardener but a new farmer.  Adoring a new learning curve.  And living Thomas Jefferson's, " but tho' an old man, I am but a young gardener.   ", backwards.  G*d has a sense of humor in this new lesson, which feels like a gift, not a lesson.  Great segue into Joseph Campbell's, "
When you follow your bliss... doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors; and where there wouldn't be a door for anyone else.
When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.
You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don't know what was in the newspapers that morning... a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be."
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Top pic, Wendy Posard, bottom pics taken yesterday in our new home/garden.

4 comments:

La Petite Gallery said...

Hi Tara, Thanks for the comment. At 79, I wish I still could smoke, I eat what ever, but can't have heave Meats at night. Losing weight is so hard, I won't give up my 3 half glasses of red wine. Every day I see something new and scary on TV.
Now it's fireworks and old people. Well, I have COPD and won't go this year.
You are such a talent. I had a carport built by a lunny. I did it for Renee
so she wouldn't have to shovel snow, well, she got Married. I have to put a drain
pipe for the water build up at the corner. Seems there's always some problem her. Happy 4th
yvonne

Lori Buff said...

This is such an exciting time for you. I’m enjoying seeing your ideas for this garden. Of course it’s all the same elements that you put into everyone’s garden. Flow, vanishing threshold, ease of maintenance, and maximum enjoyably all done with beauty and grace.

Dewena said...

I look forward to each new post of your ongoing story, watching it unfold step by step.

At breakfast this morning I told my daughter and son-in-law about your new (old) house, about your goal of building it and the gardens and outside spaces for your 80 year old selves. My son-in-law builds homes on Amelia Island and they are both planning to leave their large house within a year or two and build smaller, nearer the beach. After hearing about you, my daughter's eyes lit up and she said, "Bryan, we need to do that!" So your inspiration is spreading, Tara!

Anonymous said...

The last quotes...quitting self-preservation, doors opening that wouldn't for others, etc, so true true true.

Most people just do not get getting good work is the reverse of the bad work that finds us, then keeps us from having time / seeing better work. My life lesson is that and I'm improving. You or I do not hurt for work...

Flow sounds multi-faceted! Can't wait to see how your new place all comes together.