A Garden View

Upstairs, below, at the landing, an axis view to the garden cottage. Originally a 1-car garage plus tiny apartment. Did you notice, above, the charming angle of the rail at the landing?
Standing on the steps, above, and below, a closer look at the garden & garden cottage. Iron railing is original to the ca. 1920 home.
From the garden cottage, below, a view
into the upstairs window at the landing.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Woke up about 7:30am and got these pics; wearing gown & robe. No time to dress, couldn't afford to lose the perfect lite. A woman must have priorities. Yes, same home as yesterday's post.

Double Axis: House & Landscape

On the patio, below, looking into the backyard.
On the patio, without moving my feet, below, looking into the house. A room overlooking: frontyard, sideyard, backyard. 3 walls of windows & a fireplace wall with 2 doors. I doubt there is a smaller, more delicious room.
Incredibly exciting Double Axis. Do you have a Double Axis point like this? Get one. Then, get more!

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Tara Questions to answer about Double Axis at your home & garden. 2 pictures taken from 1 spot. Does this picture make me want to see the garden? Does this picture make me want to see inside the home?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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More pics from my jobsite in Macon, Ga last weekend.

Working With The Earth

An allee of trees with triple axis, below, do you see? The Wild Wood remains, but with several paths entering. (Alert Poppets: This is perfect pollinator habitat with low density-high density & canopy-understory-groundcover, plus multiple seasons of bloom/berry/seed.)But first, below, an oval of turf. What's left, red clay, will become meadow (clover, fescue, bulbs, English daisy, ageratum, rudbeckia fulgida x fulgida, what the wind blows in & etc.)
Broad dry stone steps, below, taming the slope. Meadow, mown at 3 heights
will carpet these steps.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Will keep you posted on this garden, it's phasing in over the next year. I adore each process of creating a beautiful landscape. Wish you could smell what it's like. Churning up the soil, laying sod, placing stone & etc. Love how the earth releases it's myriad aromas during this phase, exotic-musky-ancient-clean, accepts what we do then calms itself. Leaving only memories of its exciting scent.

Desert Dweller

At the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert are axis views of landscapes & gardens. Vanishing Threshold, seen-lived-designed-photographed by landscape architect, David Cristiani. Above & below, same line, 2 views, Double Axis.

Creating Double Axis, AND, the still life, below. David expands the world in each detail.

Walls, arbor, vine, sidewalks, neighbors, plant combinations, pots, colors, below, made me laugh in joy. Why? How often do you see SO much look so simple?

We know it's beyond simple. It's MAGIC.

From his laptop, above, another axis & more than magic. Grace.

A bedroom view, treated as a painting on the wall.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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All pics taken by David Cristiani.

David, I really do laugh out loud, & learn, seeing your landscapes & gardens. You are ANAL about Vanishing Threshold, Axis, Double Axis. Providence smiles in simplicity & grace within your work. Thank you for sharing your talents.

Shotgun Lot

Only a few feet from this window, below, are the neighbors, below.

From a front room view, below, see the brick chimney? It's where this antebellum home was 1st located. As family fortune increased they built a new antebellum home on the same site, moving this home to its current location.

In the same room, as above, another view, below, on a different wall.

With a smile & sparkle she proclaimed her home the "first mobile home in Athens, GA."

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Yes, poppets, this is the same home as in the previous post.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken last month in Athens, GA. Stay tuned for more interior shots. Beautiful views from shotgun lots are among the hardest achieved.

Same Spot: 2 Views

Shooting pic, below, in a tiny garden. Feet remain stationary, below,

& shooting a pic in the opposite direction.

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Double Axis never ceases to amaze. Being on the same line with night & day views.

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Can you do this in your garden?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken last month in the same antebellum garden as the previous post.

Sojourns From Italy

At the property line, below, a hedge & faux gate. Look close, it's mirrored. Hints of an English cottage garden, below.

Double axis with a potager, below, viewed from the frontyard.

Potager, below, viewed from the backyard.

Little details, oozing water ball, abound, below.

There are no wrong notes in this Italianate garden.

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Surprised to see sojourns from Italy in the same garden as the previous post?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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I knew, 20 minutes into the hour spent in this Italianate garden, it was a book. The owner, after my nonstop questions & pictures, finally relented to my rudeness and asked me into her home. Poppets, you know I had to see her Vanishing Threshold. ODG, garden views from inside her home are a day's worth of shooting.

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I would love, love, love to write & shoot the book of this garden.

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Beauty & something to learn on each page !!!!!!!

Double Axis

Looking along a path, below, in one direction. Looking along the same path, below, in its opposite direction.

DOUBLE AXIS. (Same garden as yesterday's post.)

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Double Axis, my landscape design invention (la-ti-da). I noticed the best gardens have beautiful axis, and when you turn around they are beautiful along the opposite axis, DOUBLE AXIS.

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So, dear poppets, it's not merely good enough to have a beautiful view. You must have a beautiful view in 2 directions along the same line.

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Of course you can throw a roundabout into your Double Axis and create a Double Double Axis. Life is good when these are your musings.

Subtle Focal Points

Walking into the garden room, below, (from yesterday's post) is the tennis player (have I mentioned winning the district tennis 4-A womens singles tennis championship 2 years in a row?). Opposite the tennis player, below, is St. Fiacre. Circa 1930's he is an inherited piece.

The tennis player & St. Fiacre book end the garden room, originally a tennis court.

Another doorway, above, in this garden room (apologies poppets, didn't ask its name).

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Dry stack stone wall & drystone steps. (Paying attention guys at the stone supply? Yes, you, who told my client last week it was 'impossible' to dry stack wall & steps as I drew in the plan. Please skip Scotland, Italy, my past clients in the states & etc.... you'll discover centuries worth of dry stack. By-the-way, I sent those clients to you, paying customers in a bad economy. They bought no stone from you & called me afterward confused. No worries, I got them going again & sent them to a different stone store!! 7 tons of fieldstone is your lost sale.)

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Tennis player & St. Fiacre are subtle focal points. Not subsidiary focal points & not main focal points. A delicious garden.

Create Seductive Doorways

Invite people thru your garden with doorways. Use a pair of pots, pair of vertical stones, pair of plinths, pair evergreen shrubs, arbor & etc. Drama of a step, narrowing to the path, above, less than 3' wide, lines of boxwood creating a hallway. Focal point on axis, creating a foyer and

beyond is another fabulous living room.

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Doorway, top pic, leads from the terrace in yesterday's post.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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It is this simple. Doorway, landing, hallway, foyer, living room. Gorgeous & low maintenance too.

Foyer, Hallway, Doorway

Welcome to the foyer, below. Beyond the terra cotta urn on a plinth is a hall leading to a frontdoor (iron gate). Ah, creation of mystery & privacy.
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MORE, poppets, if you can stand it !!! Gate & terra cotta urn are on axis with the bronze hatted girl in the previous post.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Landscape Design: Focal Point, Axis

Moments after seeing a subsidiary focal point (previous post) I see this charming bronze hat, below. DRAMA !! She's a terrace level below & gazing along a rill at yet another terrace level. (Counting? Yes, 3 terraces.) Down the steps, below, finally I see her. (She's backed with creeping fig.)

When she opens her eyes

she sees this, above.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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The rill reminded me of Helen Dillon's garden in Ireland, before she paved the lawn of course. I mentioned this to the owner & yes she had been to Helen's garden.

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Instead of buying a 2nd home the owners of this garden bought the house next door, demolished it, and created their dream garden.

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Bravo!!!

Doorway Repurposed

Charming courtyard, below, created when an addition was added to their home. An original doorway, top at left, no longer needed.

Repurposed as a staging area for annuals.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Alas, poppets, I was there the day the annuals were ripped out. With drought, heat & the gardener just returned from vacation it was still fabulous. What fun choosing new annuals, new colors-textures-heights.

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This was the 3rd repurposed doorway I've seen like this. Mrs. Whaley's garden in Charleston, SC. A private garden in Greensboro, NC. And now this Athens, GA garden.

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Did you notice the color themes?

* Black shutters, furniture, doormat, windowboxes, plinth

* Terra cotta pots

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Pics taken last week in the same garden as yesterdays post.

Art, Multiple Axis

From the lower garden, formerly a tennis court, I first saw this sculpture on a plinth, below. (Did you notice, below, the dry stack stone wall?) Up the stone steps, below, curiosity is satisfied.

Drawn to another garden room, below, I turn & see a better axis for the sculpture. (Did you notice the mature canopy/understory trees+sky view?)

Inside the new garden room, below, the axis keeps getting better.

Then I turn body, but not feet, to my left & see this, below,

and about fall over in delight/surprise. Vanishing Threshold.

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Inside the room, above, the first sculpture is on perfect axis with the door in the center of the wall.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics, from Athens, GA, taken last week. Same garden as previous post. Think this is easy? Good, poppets, do it in your garden too. Remember, this is a subdivision with homes encircling the garden. Always a tough constraint.

Kitchen View

Birdhouse condos, below. View from deck.

Still lifes are imperative for this landscape. Deck is viewed from the Garden Room & Kitchen. Is the deck used? As a destination for the eye, yes.

From inside the Kitchen (& Garden Room), below, EDUCATOR watched a pair of bluebirds build their nest & raise their young this spring.

This simple joy, a huge victory.

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Sometimes the hand of G-d takes control of our life. Sinking into a garden let's me trust that hand. Watching it in the life of a friend is humbling.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken yesterday in EDUCATOR's home/garden. Client, & now a friend of several years, she is able to maintain her garden with unskilled (aka: affordable) labor. More....

Privacy in the Open

Typical subdivision, below, seen from the street. Standing at the frontdoor, above, a view of the street, below.

Why do Americans give real estate to passing cars?

Vanishing Threshold landsape design starts inside your home. Not at the street.

Hints of the street, above. To the left of the bed, above, is the driveway.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken last week. A client from many years ago called me back for some tweeking. They are both self-employed, grandparents & have Show dogs. Crazy busy lives, yet wanting a beautiful, little care, landscape. They are do-it-yourself gardeners.
Good timing for the visit. They are repainting soon & we will choose a more faded shade of white & the gutters will become 'copper'. And they're in need of a good pruning. A fabulous landscape with zero styling for these pics. (Magazine landscapes styled for their moment of glory aren't my thing.)