Nancy Lancaster: A Layer of Timelessness with Fragrant Plants at the Windows

Haseley Court, below, one of the homes Nancy Lancaster lived in.
.
Joy, a jolt of boxes, below, clothed to the ground in proper pruning, instead of meatballs with naked feet.
.
Closer to the house, Nancy had a favorite scented plant combination for placement at windows.
.

Pic, above, here.
.
"...Nancy's imagination was drawn to the details, the little medleys she or a guest might come across as they wandered the park.  As inside the house, every conceivable empty space was an opportunity.  More than in the grand parterre or the terrace, her taste for how a garden ought to be found in small compositions of delicious-smelling nicotiana, heliotrope, lavender, lemon verbena and sweet sultan underneath the windows of the house.  They gave Ditchley the personality she sought.  Spreading and drooping wisteria and jasmine on a wall or around a tree or a Gloire de Dijon rose climbing over a Portland stone pediment, were enlisted in taking a site that was somehow neither of today nor of yesterday and blessing it with an indescribable essence of passing time, time past and timelessness."  Robert Becker, Nancy Lancaster Her Life, Her World, Her Art.  (Yes, you want the book.)
.
Nancy's homes & gardens don't push me away, in the least, with their expensive maintenance, and too much stuff.
.
Fun is knowing how to take the best of Nancy Lancaster, keeping her garden drama, removing layers of maintenance, yet it's still pure Nancy Lancaster.  With nothing of '...today nor of yesterday and blessing it with an indescribable essence of passing time, time past and timelessness.'
.
How is it 'Nancy Lancaster' without all her garden layers?  She worked with the greats, and they never get lost in proper translations.  If they do, it's on us, not them.
.
Time.  Timelessness.
.
Timelessness is given by gardens, if we play our role correctly.
.
From a few quick notes, below, written last week, about a loving timelessness vs. someone else's horrid reality, on 2 small scraps of paper, from an article written by John Gray which included both Blaise Pascal and Marcel Proust, both men I've studied loosely thru the years.
.
  If you've made your garden a timelessness proscenium you can go where Proust does, without effort, "Proust's detachment from the haute bourgeois society that is coolly dissected....  The core of Jozef  Czapski's  talks is Proust's portrayal, through his narrator, of the indifference to death that comes when the mind is filled with memories that seem to come unbidden from outside of time."
.
"Devoured by a yearning for the absolute, Pascal considered all the ephemeral joys of the senses unacceptable.  For Proust, on the other hand, only the world of the senses existed and had value."
.
"...as Pascal turns from the world with disgust, Proust seeks salvation in its fugitive sensations."
.
"Czapski was not mistaken in finding in Proust's work a kind of religion not a story of redemption, but a struggle to defy time & disillusion, and eternalize the passing moment in memories of meaning & beauty."  Almost straight from an E.M. Forster novel, Howard's End.
.
Czapski, "Born in Prague in 1896, a scion of an old and distinguished family, he graduated in St Petersburg before moving to newly emancipated Poland to take up his studies in art. He spent eight years in cosmopolitan prewar Paris, exchanging ideas with French and Russian artists and writers, forming passionate attachments with both women and men (including one with Vladimir Nabokov’s younger brother Sergey, who would perish in a Nazi camp where gay men were subjected to hideous medical experiments) and devoting himself to realizing a vision of painting he found pursued in the work of Cézanne." 
.
Time.  Timelessness, a first choice in Garden Design.
.
Garden & Be Well,   XO T

How to Arrange Furniture in Large Garden Spaces

How to section a large terrace or deck into cozy areas? 
.
Learn from the best, below.  Why are they the best?  Their livelihood depends upon layers of good design, ease of maintenance, simplicity for staff to serve, and, enriching comfort for guests.
.

Pic, above, here.
.
Large pots, multiple seating areas, repetitious furniture, color theme flowing throughout & accouterments. 
.
Beautiful pots, furnishings not in the budget?  Field gather, junking/garbage day curb side/thrift stores/garage sales, paint all the furnishing the same color.  Paint all the pots the same color.
.
Become a fan of square and rectangular shaped tables.  Square/rectangular tables can be pulled together or set against walls, multi-use. 
.
How easy this terrace is to blow.  Few obstructions.  Simple pot plantings.  No major replanting needed at change of seasons.
.
At the end of an Open Garden a lone woman remained, sitting on my 6' Teak bench.  Tired, I went straight to her and sat down.  She began to cry.  Heaving breaths, big round tears.
.
Divorce finalizing, she was losing her large sacred landscape.  How could she live without it?  Looking around that garden room of mine, she said she had to, ".....HAVE THIS."  The beauty of a garden in its full context.  More tears.
.
So, we held hands, she cried a bit more, and I waited, knowing exactly what to say to her.
.
"You can have this, my garden is less than 1/4 acre, 8500 SF, and that includes house & driveway."
.
Not the first time bearing witness to a woman's life change.
.
Never think beautiful garden photographs merely represent what can be done in a garden with $$$, pic above.  Beautiful gardens are about beautiful relationships.  Gardener to Nature. 
.
Never saw that woman again.  Yet, I know she's thriving.
.
Garden & Be Well,    XO T 

Karl Lagerfeld Riffs on Henri Matisse: The HenriKarl Garden

Today I saw the Nature work of Karl Lagerfeld & Henri Matisse, below.
.
The HenriKarl Garden.
.
Karl, its inventor, got on with it as if merely another breath to take.  None of the baggage Picasso seemed to have with Matisse.



Decades working with show gardens, few know how rare it is to create a show garden, fresh, unique, makes a statement.  More importantly, displays as a garden.





Pics, above, here.
.
Why has no one manufactured these garden cutouts of Karl's?  Fake plants are sold, these are better than fake plants, they're Art.  A riff from Karl on Henri.  From their most sacred origins.
.

 
Pic, above, here.
.
I'll never forget the Matisse Cut-Outs Show at Atlanta's High Museum.  Seeing the first exhibit, and it takes every fiber of body/mind/spirit merely to remain standing and not fall-out.
.

Matisse, above, here.
.

 
Matisse Cut-Outs, above, here.

 
Pic, above, Karl Lagerfeld quote, here.
.





Trinity of Matisse quotes, above, from, here.
.
Seriously, why has no one manufactured and sold the HenriKarl Garden Cut-Outs?
.
Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

"I Want to Have a Relationship With You"

The physical of a garden is obvious.  House, meadow, hedge, porch with table/chair/vase, color, form, texture, flow, breeze, sound, temperature, scent,
implied actions. 
.
This garden, below, becomes interestingly intentional if there's a cluster mansion just the other side of the hedge.  Indicative of clear choices made with a firm hand.  And life.
.
Odd, the alchemy of hedge & meadow creating expansive space, physically & mentally.
.

Pic, above, here.
.
Nature takes the physical of a garden, metaphysical.  Psychologists proclaim a: 'Fertile Solitude = Basic Unit of a Full & Contented Life.'
.
About solitude in Nature, "...one's inner voices become audible (and) in consequence, one responds more clearly to other lives."  Wendell Berry.
.
Porch & garden, above, give layers of fertile solitude & the sound of our own inner voice, merely from a photograph.  This garden, above, is totally designed, though looks not designed in the least.  "Intelligence + Diligence + Wisdom  vs.  Letting It Be."  No one needs to be a garden expert to know what a letting-it-be attitude does to a landscape.
.
"We die.  That may be the meaning of life.  But we do language.  That may be the measure of our lives."  Toni Morrison.  Gardens were a language long before man arrived.
.
Deciding to have a Garden is 2nd order positive thinking.  "A real advantage is conferred on people who can do things that are 1st-order negative, 2nd-order positive.  Especially if these 1st order negatives are very visible costs with no immediate benefit in the short term and a non-linear benefit at some future time."  Shane Parrish. 
.
A previous client moved from their home/garden 2 years ago.  Recently, near that home, I did the stupid thing, a drive-by.  Foot went to brake, and I just stared.  Their garden, on the edge of out-of-control, had bushes screaming, "Come, prune us, you'll have a nice couple of hours, and that problem you're most worried about, it will be solved when the pruning is done, your house will be framed in love again, and your attitude lifted, nurtured."  More precisely, I kept thinking, Don't you see, don't you hear? Your Garden is shouting in joy to you, "I want to have a relationship with you."
.
Seriously, I saw their garden communicating with them, heard the exact words, "I want to have a relationship with you." 
.
"...clinging to what you already know and do well is the path to an unlived life."  Parker Palmer.  Gardens are 2nd-order positive thinking.  How odd to finally 'hear' a quote from a Garden, "I want to have a relationship with you.", yet it was someone else's garden, speaking to them, not me.  I got the metaphor. 
.
You may not hear the Garden speaking to you, 'I want to have a relationship with you'.  Be assured, it is. 
.
Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Truth: Where Your Garden Design Begins

"......the facial feathers fanned into a sonic satellite dish dispersing sound to unlevel ears, one positioned higher than the other to help the owl locate its prey in three dimensions."  Maria Popova.
.
Makes perfect sense.  Truth.

 
Pic, above, here. 
.
Too often, truth is not our starting point, instead, we settle for facts.  Facts comfortably turned into information.  Worse, information elevated to wisdom.     
.
I knew the garden, above, had a truth.  What?  I could not articulate it, nor create it.  Too busy using that American Horticulture degree, with its starting point a pure 180 from the truth, above.   Off to the historic gardens across Europe for 2 decades.  Truth was intuited in the first garden the first trip.  How could I not go back so often.  Now?  The imperative is to design gardens.

Garden Design is not a voodoo, let me make this up, oh I love plants x--y--z......, I must adhere to the HOA, these plants are on sale so they're perfect, let me do what my neighbors do and other such 'wisdom' without a base in truth.
.
Each layer of Garden Design flows from a truth.  Great news, it means you've got this.  Better, you're working with Providence and centuries of the greatest Garden Design minds Earth has known. 
.
In America, a Garden Design truth, above, most often not 'seen'.  How can you begin your Garden Design if you don't know the ears must be unlevel?   
.
Truth, above, Garden Design begins inside your home, looking out.
.
Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara