Create Enfilades

My childhood home was built around an open courtyard, many were during that decade on Galveston Bay.

When the courtyard is designed to be part of the interior an Enfilade, a view into a view, is created.
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Enfilades are the most common photograph of gardens to be chosen for hardcover books & magazines.
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A fact I noticed decades ago, and began then, creating as many enfilades as possible.
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Why should YOU create enfilades?  Copy what the best garden designers & photographers do.  Enfilades are historic for a reason.  Great impact with little input.
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Garden & Be Well,            XO Tara
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Pics  of Pablo Paniagua's work.

Checkerboard Square with Circle

Untrained, unschooled & perfect.

Viewed from deck & house the existing lower garden, above, leads to their wild wood.
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They hired me to design their landscape.  Of course I left this alone!  Tweaks could be made but out goes THEIR charm.
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And, they built this DIY !
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Alexander Pope......Men come to build sooner than to garden finely as if gardening were the greater art.  ca. 17th century
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pic via client's Facebook page

High, and Large, Foyer Window

A good solution for the multi-story foyer with tall window over the front door.

A ridiculous space, it still needs attention.  Doing nothing looks undone.  Doing something looks forced, and dusty.
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From the garden most views into these windows look 'vacant'.
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Yes, this urn is 'just right'.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic via Belgian Pearls

Historic Yet Modern

Close to being a 'foundation planting'.  But not in the least.

Seems simple.  It is not.  Historic with modern edge.  Holbrook & Associates  created this garden for the Princess Margaret Show House .
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Of course the house is fabulous too.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic via House & Home

A Bedroom View

From the chair, left, a view across the new deck into their Wild Wood.

This room, above, is an almost complete addition to their master bedroom.

A portion of the new deck, above, with a door from the master bedroom.
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She hired me for this view.  Should an arbor with swing be placed?  No.  It would stop the view from the bedroom.  Instead, a low round table with 4 adirondack chairs stained the color of her kitchen cabinets.  Views into the Wild Wood are the focal point on axis.
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Of course we've redone the entire garden.  Simply.
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Garden & Be Well,           XO Tara
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Pics taken last week.  Deck will be stained.  She was kind letting me take pics her house is a tornado of renovation.

What Is A Status Symbol?

Can you spot the status symbol?

In the land of freeways, subdivisions, strip malls, too many people?

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A meadow is status symbol.  A gravel/dirt drive with wildflowers & trees is status symbol.

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This is a CHOICE, above.  It is Landscape Design.  

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It's not a 'less than' drive because they couldn't afford to pave.  It's the intellect of knowing what's important in life.

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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara

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Pic via Habitually Chic. 

Front Porch

A disintegrating brick, too small, front stoop when I arrived.

Covered, lighting, doors, stone terrace, new paint colors, columns, iron rail, ceiling fans, furniture.

   The view, below, has been there, ignored, for over 3 decades.

Now it's honored, and lived in.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics taken this week at a past client.  Her house & garden the most perfect HORRENDOUS before.  Of course she's going to be a before/after story.  Best part is how it's changed their lives.  Literally.  House is amongst many in a subdivision near town, yet it lives like Piedmont forest. 

Speaking With Boxwoods & Paths

Pair of boxwood, below, say, "Come this way."

 There is more to the garden & a path continues the conversation begun by the boxwoods.

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Bluestone stepping stones with rough hewn edges, 18" square.  Placed on diamond, copying wood detailing in the kitchen.  Zoysia lawn, pine mulch soon to be unseen as the Southern indica azaleas fill in.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Perhaps one of the nerdiest things I like to do, 'speak' via paths & pairs of evergreens.  Pics taken this month in a client garden.

Interior Decorate From Garden Views Too

Views into your home

 from the

 garden

must be considered.
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Garden & Be Well,        XO Tara
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Same garden as previous post.  Back of picture frames, tv, couch?  Hmm, not in my realm of Landscape Design.

How To Increase The Drama

Subtle drama, ego in check.  Pair of stone columns, iron gate, half-round stone steps & on axis a Japanese maple.  Not a gaudy statue or etc.

 Do you see the opportunity to increase the subtle drama, below?

Remove the pinestraw bed & let the turf flow to the stone wall.
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Small tweek HUGE impact.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Pic taken last weekend at my lecture venue.

How To Create Exterior Simplicity

The hedge is brilliant.  Vine on the risers is more brilliant.

Topiaried green meatballs are fun.  Terra cotta on the table?  Perfection.
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Notice the lack of pattern on the textiles?  Be careful with exterior textile pattern.  Very careful.
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Many interior rooms look onto this view.  Without going inside I know it's an obvious Vanishing Threshold.  Without going inside I know the owners.
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How little can the landscape have and hold together?  Whoever 'tossed' out this much simplicity is good.  Very good.
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Low maintenance, weekly blow & trimming 2x/year. 
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Choose a color theme.  It should flow from the interiors. 
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic via Cote de Texas.  When I worked at a nursery one assistant manager was incredibly talented at displays.  BUT, we would always beg him to stop.  He would create the above, BUT keep going.  On his off day we would cleanse the abundance. 

Double Axis: House of Turquoise

Sandra Espinet, designed a perfect Double Axis.  From inside the living room, below, looking out to the pavilion.

 From the garden, below, looking into the pavilion.

 In the pavilion, below,

looking into the living room.
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Sandra owns the interior & exterior.  A rare interior decorator knowing her work ends at the property line not the walls of the house.
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Double Axis is an easy concept.  Quit reading this and figure yours out !
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Garden & Be Well,               XO Tara
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Penelope Bianchi is the rarest.  Interior Decorator doing Vanishing Threshold, Double Axis & la-ti-da multiple axis to a single focal point & etc....
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When you realize these concepts are easy, historically correct, necessary to happiness/joy/grace, & affordable you will stop thinking in terms of what Garden Centers & Testosterone-On-Wheels-Mow-Blow-Go want to SELL you.  Foundation plantings & lawn & seasonal annuals?  OMG, worse than boring.  Stupid, environmentally harmful, terrible for property value, & worst of all devastating to your inner muse.  No, don't ask me what I really think, because I can go there too.  And there waits the fabulous Puppet Barbuda.
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Pics via House of Turquoise with more about Sandra Espinet, here.

A Garden View From Her Kitchen

Inimitably her own style, in all she does.  A bit of her kitchen, below.

Before she bought her, ca. 1940, home it had a garden, obviously lovely at one point, but tired.  She hired me to tweak it several years ago.  Axis & entries were boldened, paths redefined, focal points placed, hedges tightened & etc.

She, & her Man, have had time to do their own tweaking.  Adding layers to their garden, listening to their muse within.
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This is their garden.  All theirs.
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We talked of this magic, the garden transitioning from my input and the previous owners.  Their tweaking.  Yet, somehow, it's the garden doing the magic.
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Lunch was served outside overlooking the garden.  Salmon salad over mixed greens, wine.  We would talk, but mostly were silent.  Looking at the garden.  Then ridiculously, like teenagers, laugh in joy. 
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara 
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Told her I was stopping by the thrift store on the way home.  Ha, she came with me and we went to the antique mall too.  Love a good Saturday !!  Her garden is on tour in May.

A New Carriage House

Her color theme was chosen long ago.

 Finally, her carriage house is being built. 

 Her dream is a garden seen throughout the years in magazines.

 Love that, easy for me to copy, below.

First day of digging they found a spring.  The elevation changed a bit.  Had to come back and tweak a short & low stone wall. 
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Using evergreens, tea olive & wax leaf ligustrum, to block the neighbor's house, 2nd pic. 
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Sent her an email every 6-8 months asking, "Started your carriage house yet?"  Honestly, you should have seen the Sanford & Son shed she was living with.  Past its prime, rotting, stuffed & with stuff sitting all around it. 
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Their home is historic & it was important to site the new carriage house 'as if' it had always been there.  I lined it exactly parallel with the house.  As they did centuries ago.  And, not too far or too close to her home.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pics take earlier this month.  Her other color is black. 

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.
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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. 
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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.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pics taken in a client garden last week.  Steve Eaton, Blossom Boxes,  770-337-8840, sceaton3@yahoo.com.  

Small Lives Large With Axis + Focal Point

On axis with the doors, below, this tiny space lives large.  It has the potential for 3 more potent axis.

Purring at the formal lines + rusticity of plantings.
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At first I looked too quickly, thinking it was metal chairs.  No.  It's a bike & chair. 
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Don't you want to go inside? 
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That is Vanishing Threshold!
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Don't forget the Landscape Design rule: COPY
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Pics via Modern Country, taken by Shootfactory

Kitchen Lighting

Leaving at dusk last month I could see, from beyond the Ancient Orhcard, these lights, below, on.

 Retro fitted lighting ca. 1880.  The light bulbs mimic gas.

I'm a Landscape Designer & demand every view into your home be fabulous.
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Lighting, window treatments, furniture, art & etc.
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If I can see it from the garden it is within my domain.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic taken at a jobsite last month.  The primitive piece next to the marble island is called a biscuit board.  Never seen one till here.  Wish I had the type of camera to have shot from the garden, past the Ancient Orchard, across the Lawn & into her windows.  Susanne Hudson is helping with interiors.

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.
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Garden & Be Well,   Tara
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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.
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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."

Hammock Humor

Perusing last night, above.  Laughter, amusement, delighted arrogance Puppet Barbuda style.  In reality the hammocks I see are hanging from rusted metal frames, in landscapes devoid of charm, a bare patch of earth below with weeds spreading from the muck, no fringe, a mildew factory, on view from windows inside the home, with not a table in sight for a book & glass of wine, and every mosquito from miles around just waiting for you to alight to gorge on your blood and give you the disease of the day.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic from Janelle McCulloch, & thank you for picturing the answer, "What were they thinking?"

Richness In Simplicity

Simplicities in my house, below, intensify

 my garden view.

Landscapes & interiors are double axis.
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How does your landscape look from inside your home?  It is art on the wall at every window.  Whether you think so or not.
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How does your home look from your landscape?  It is the focal point of your landscape.  Whether you think so or not.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken yesterday, a gray day with rain.  No flash for the pics.  Light streaming in, indirectly, from the garden.  My floor, banister, stairs, and me, each bathed in garden light.