Showing posts with label Axis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Axis. Show all posts

Saturday, August 24, 2013

Before + After: Path & Hedges

Hedges + paths are designed, and installed, before the borders.  Hedges + paths are the backbone-skeleton-workhorses of the garden.


Hedges + paths, above, 2 years ago.


Yesterday, above/below, with borders filled-in.


Follow this garden design rule and you'll save labor-money-time.
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TIME, more important than labor-money.  No person can manufacture more time.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Bottom 2 pics taken at jobsite yesterday, top pic taken 2 years ago.

Thursday, August 1, 2013

A Path

Looking into the street, below.  Without my garden 5-6 homes would be visible, 2 streets + stop sign.


Looking into the path, above, from the street, below.


Yesterday, someone said about my garden , "You cannot walk in it."
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Perhaps this day you aren't meant to walk in my garden.  Its narrative stepping from metaphor caressing the spirit.
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Going within, and to my garden, to do Jung's universal, "Our lives are about getting our outside to match our inside."
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How can you not see, my garden lets me fly to realms not meant to be walked.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics shot in my garden yesterday.



Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Is Your Garden 'Art' on the Wall?

Every garden view should be 'art' on the wall.


2+ decades ago I visited a garden in Greensboro, NC with every window view taken into consideration.  Every window.
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Again, something learned from an 'uncredentialed' gardener changing the direction, forever, of how I design landscapes.  Not once during college did any instructor mention being inside a client's home to design a garden correctly.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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pic via Castles, Crowns & Cottages.

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Front Porch: Long & Narrow

Placing table + chairs at the 'L' of a porch must be in the helix of our DNA.


The web has enough pictures to fill a seductive hardcover coffee table book.


 At the opposite end of the porch, above, more seduction, below.




Places to read, serve a meal, have conversation a basic trinity for your porch.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics shot last month on Susanne Hudson's porch.  A field gathered collection of furniture with a tight trinity of color: green, brown, white.  Comfort oozes in her still life's.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Covershot Garden Design

Gardens must have rooms which includes halls, foyers, parlors, and the roundabout, below.


Leaning left, below, at the roundabout.


Leaning right at the roundabout, below.


In the roundabout, below, turned & shooting back.  What is this called?  Double Axis.


Same hydrangea, above/below, a few days apart.


Same roundabout, below, different axis.


See your garden thru the camera.  More, see your garden in February thru the camera.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics this month in Susanne Hudson's garden.
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Where today, in your garden, can you take covershot pics?  No?   Why live that way?  
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Yesterday, late afternoon, fuse to my Conservatory blew.  Tried all the breakers, no go.  Immediate call to 'my guys'.  One will be here today.  It is not too much to ask that Conservatory chandelier & lamps light my days & nites on view from every angle I live. 

Monday, June 24, 2013

Double Axis & Before/After

With a view, below, you must be able to turn around


and have an equally fabulous view, below.  Double Axis.



Had the good fortune to visit Susanne Hudson's garden again a few days after this pic, below, was shot.


Without the roses peaking, below, the arbor resumed its status as Focal Point.


Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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All pics shot this month.  Created a garden this weekend and put in one of these arbors, above.  With pendant lite.  We'll use a historic fence template too but one with a bit more privacy.  We won't use white, they already have a delicious dark putty color on their home.

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Conservatory: Multiple Axis

Near the door of Susanne Hudson's conservatory, below.


And her great garden pun, below.  A plant in the conservatory!  As if.  What?  As if the Conservatory were for plants.  Ridiculous.


The same lamp, below, from a different axis.


Another axis, below.


Same hydrangea, below, different day.  Heavy rains in the interim.


The more axis a focal point has the more successful the Garden Design.
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One of the best arrows in your quiver.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken in Susanne Hudson's garden this month.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

What's the View from Your Porch Door?

Diffusing the view, Kimberly Queen, below.  Tolerates full baking sun or part shade, and she's not a shaggy mess unlike the Boston fern.


On perfect axis with the porch door, below, she diffuses the view in too.  Aka, double axis.


The lattice?  Regular, common, off the shelf, a disaster for any home but, in context, understandable here.  This home was rescued and is the Cultural Arts Center in Douglasville, Georgia.
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Back to the lattice.  For pennies more special order panels with thicker wood slats, they look custom.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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The fern stand is real, and almost a century old.  Been decades since it held a fern.  Pics taken earlier this month at the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival in Douglasville, GA.

Thursday, June 13, 2013

On the Porch with Drapes

Nothing was here, below, a few days ago.  


The porch, below, when we began.



The corner 'before', above, and 'after', below.


Lamp, above, seen from the garden, below.


Porch 'before', below, viewed from the garden.


 Of course you want to look in the window, above.


 Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics of Porch Garden I created with Susanne Hudson at the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival earlier this month.

Monday, May 20, 2013

Hiding Ugly Views

Pleased as the Cheshire Cat.  One of my chief accomplishments.  Do you see why?


A few feet away from my house, above, is a neighbor's house.
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Yet the view is a Woodland Garden: contorted filbert, hydrangea, camellia, azalea, hosta, fern, helleborus, bulbs, meandering path edged with tree limbs.  And the air-conditioner.
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It's a lifestyle choice.  Anything else, for me, is subsistence living.
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I travel farthest in my garden.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken yesterday, lovely rains all day.  The Woodland Walk is morning sun, with Tara's Trinity of the Southern Garden, azalea-camellia-hydrangea, there are blooms EVERYDAY all year.

Friday, May 17, 2013

Chandelier with a Tin Roof

Reflected lite, even during the day, of chandelier on a tin roof.


In my conservatory.


Doors, windows, tongue/groove all a century old.  Field gathered for over a decade & all free.


Conservatories must be at least 12' x 18' and have doors on 2 walls.  Minimum.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken this month in my garden.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

How to Use Heads in Design

Got heads?



They're for


exterior, and


interior.
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Have you noticed a formula for your favorite interiors & exteriors?  Not into formulas?  No worries, formulas are nothing more than Shopping Lists!  Now, I have your attention.
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I've always been drawn to interiors with heads & ......
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In my garden is a decades old collection of broken heads.  Most were a $1.
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Top pic from same home/garden as previous post.  Bottom pics Nicky Haslam, via Cote de Texas article.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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More than heads, bodies too.  And urns with plinths.

Monday, May 13, 2013

Dining Room with Antebellum 'Feel'


The bones of this house 'feel' antebellum.  


Though it's ca. 1900.  


                                               Architect & owner knew what they were doing.


                        Doors, molding, ceiling height, scale & flow redolent of an earlier era.


Dining room, above, flows into the front parlour, and also the central hall and kitchen.
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It's great drama between these rooms with function, paint color, and natural light.  A treat to see a tapestry of color instead of the ubiquitous mono-color shown in most magazines and catalogs.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics from same home/garden as previous post.  They've only lived in this home since last August.  It's obvious I'm running all cylinders to balance the interiors with an equally detailed rich-in-history garden.

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Central Hall: Front & Back Foyers

Built in 1900, they're the 3rd owners of this home.
Beautiful & tough hardware, below, on the door is original.


Aside from the scope of the land, an acre, a few large camellias & trees the grounds/garden do not exist.  A  30 acre Pecan Orchard in a state of Chekhov-meadow-reverie flows from the back garden .  Did I mention the entire length of the driveway abuts the Funeral Home parking lot?
Central hall, below.

She adores, and showed me a pic of  P. Allen Smith's front garden at his cottage.  Indeed, perfect, but I'll add heavy doses of Loutrell Briggs at Mrs. Whaley's Charleston, SC garden too.


We walked the grounds, had lunch on the front porch, walked the grounds again.  Her husband was able to come for the 2nd round of walking the grounds, and lunch too.  He loved my idea of Bahama shutters at the pavilion, and asked if they could be 3/4 vs. full length.  Fabulous.  Yes.  Love teamwork, makes me better.  A lawyer, he likes doing carpentry.  As I left he was already heading to Craigslist to begin the shutter search.
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Back door foyer, above.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken yesterday on the job.  I helped with their Macon, GA garden a couple of years ago, it's in Southern Living this year.  Who knew a move to Jackson, GA was in their future?  You will be seeing more of this home.  She did every ounce of the interior decorating from colors to furniture to art to rugs to knocking out walls.....

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Proscenium Design is Your Desire


Porch, turkeys, garden, a new trinity.  This is my job, below.  Do you see what I've done?  


Designed the garden as a proscenium to life.  


What does that mean?
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Garden is fabulous, marvelous, incredible 24/7 with little effort and a stage set for what life tosses.
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Look at the top pic again.
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It's taken from inside the house.  A snapshot that looks like a photo shoot.
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Not an accident.
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This garden is ready for Garden & Gun.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics sent from client last week.  She KNEW the turkey pic would THRILL me !!!!!!  Don't know Garden & Gun magazine?  You want to.