Monday, February 6, 2017

Tara Template: Entry Ways

Once I decided to create a beautiful garden, age 22, living in a garage apartment, no suffering it had 3 bays backing up to 50 acres of woodland & pasture a little like the movie Sabrina, I bought a few things from the nursery, planted them, nothing.
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Nothing.
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Add a decade, books, more planting, Extension Service courses, moved into my starter home, and acquired a 2nd college degree, this time horticulture, and still the great, nothing.
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Insert 2 decades of studying historic gardens across Europe, thankfully, at the front end of those study tours, 'nothing' turned into the mother load.
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Garden Design, aside from being mostly counterintuitive, is palpably honest.  Garden Design hides nothing,  Its secrets freely given.  It was I, seeing 'nothing'.  One of the oddest things I 'saw', when my eyes opened, entry ways.
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And once you get it about entry ways you are well on your way to Garden Design of the ages.
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What is so important about entry ways?
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First layer, answering, is ineffable.  Much as an epiphany, moment of intuitive enlightenment, or a koan.  But there are several layers definitely not ineffable.
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Odd fact about entry ways in a garden.  And, important.  The more entry ways a garden has, the better a garden is.
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Odder fact about entry ways in a garden.  Entry ways are a focal point, and you cannot have too many.  Yet, the rule about focal points, One-Focal Point-per-Area, absorbs and enriches the rule about entry ways.
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Yep.  Told you, counterintuitive.
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More, entry ways in a garden never create an exit.  From both directions an entry way is an entry way.  There are no exits in a garden, only entry ways.

Image result for bunny williams garden
Pic, above, from Bunny Williams garden.
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Entry way into the wildwood, above.  One of my favorite Garden Design arrows to use.
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Without the drama, above, of the entry way, specifically the spheres on plinths, you are not beckoned, Come this way, walk here, you will be enchanted, there is more.  A bit of the Scheherazade layer of Garden Design.
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Gardens are stories.  Gardens are narrative.
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Whether you think so or not.  Don't put your story into your garden.  Fine.  Your garden is telling a story about you.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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Very nice, below.  Thought you would like it too.
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Friends of Old Bulbs Gazette
Old House Gardens, Ann Arbor, Michigan, (734) 995-1486

“If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?”

– G.K. Chesterton, 1874-1936, British writer, poet, and philosopher

2 comments:

Dewena said...

Tara, I hope this is not printed as it is just a private message to you to tell you that it is your blog that is the true mother load for me. Your posts have kept me company for hours and hours and I have a notebook full of notes and page after page that I just had to print out that now reside in a Tara Basket by my chair.

Will I ever at this stage of my life actually do 1/100 of the ideas you've given me? Maybe not but some things I will and I already have tried to adapt some of your principles in my home. And all while I was waiting for our move and in the weeks of unpacking I've kept one quote from a post in my mind:'

"Make a fairy tale and go live in it." That one gets me going every morning!

Thank you for the thoughts on life as well as gardens that you so willingly share here,
Dewena

Sandra @ Thistle Cove Farm said...

Bunny Williams garden entry is as beautiful as her homes. BTW, adore the GKC quote...pithy and true!