Front Door Pendant Light

Endangered object, below.

Sweetly scaled pendant light.
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A front door is always a focal point.  When architecture & materials are already good why compete?  Beware 'too large' exterior lighting at your front door.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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pic via DIY Home Staging Tips.  You'll love the link, it's the best tips of Home Staging for 2012.  Of course, too many decades of USA homes lack good materials/architecture, mine is one, so you want to consider the possibility of large exterior lighting.  Then, beware of lipstick-on-a-pig.
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
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Details about online design services.
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Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
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Details about lecture titles here.
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I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Color vs Light

 Pulled to color or light?  Both?  Yes, both.  I would love to see this room, below, when it's raining, at nite, in fall, winter, a storm.....

If you're fortunate a garden colors your light.

In your home, does garden light stop you in your tracks on occasion?

If your garden isn't doing this for your interiors it's time to rethink your garden.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Top pic via House Beautiful.  Bottom pics last week in my bay window.
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Overdose Your Color

Choose a color theme.

Overdose on your choice/s.  Works every time.
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Garden & Be Well,         XO Tara
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Of course the cat is white.
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Pic via Whimble

Exterior Color: White on White

A client's yellow house is going white-on-white.  Cannot wait to see the results.

Pay no mind to the landscaping, above.   Totally subdivision, 1960's brick ranch let's make green foundation meatballs a la testosterone-on-wheels-mow-blow-go-commodify-all-I-touch.  And those pots?  Lipstick on a pig.
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Garden & Be Well,        XO Tara & Puppet Barbuda
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I adore Veranda, and subscribe, but know, too well, gardening is a pitiful stepchild to most editors.  Great exception was House & Garden magazine during the 80's.  See any at the junk shops buy-buy-buy.
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Pic via Veranda.

Color in the Garden

Which part of this doesn't speak?

A full narrative.
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Great metaphor.  It's more important what we say 'no' to in the landscape.  And life.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic via Slim Paley - A Classic Combo

Curb Appeal: Color, Pots, Lights

Pair of pots, pair of lights, pair of sidelights, black front door.

                                                       Works in myriad situations.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pics taken at a client last week.  KISS.  Keep it simple sweetie.

                                    

Choosing Large Rugs

Cost, pattern, color & impact at 9'x12' are a concern.  Yellow/blue/white are the interior colors.  A pair of rugs were needed for his guest cottage.  He's stringing me along in the garden, it's a 2013 project.

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Price was unimportant once the outlet store was found.

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Allowances were made for pricing this good.  They did not have a matching pair of rugs.

Benjamin Moore- Philadelphia Creme, below, is on the walls.

Saw this rug, below, first.  Hanging on the wall, a splash of happiness.  Received a good eye roll from him for that comment.

Checking out I told him it was amazing to find a pair of happy rugs in his colors.  He wanted to be anywhere but in line with me.
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Unrolling the rugs later in the day his helper exclaimed, "These are such happy rugs."
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Garden & Be Well,        XO Tara
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Each rug under $200.  I saw Myrna Loy walking across his rugs.  Told him that too.  Now you know I'm fearless!  Pics taken last week.  His guest cottage is ca. 1945 & I've chosen matriarchal-lake-house-chic ca. 1949.  You now, decent cast offs from decades of life in the homestead.  
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If you can't find multiples of something stay in the same color family.  Bless the interior design woman who said that to me decades ago!

Garden Stairs

All new construction, below, constraints galore.  Never knew steps & under-the-steps could be this joyful.

Use lattice or ceiling boards under the step treads?  (1 of 87 questions about the steps!)

Across from the steps, below.

Repetition wins again.  Paint color too.
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Lattice is special order, Magic Man added a strip for more privacy.
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A new room & deck were added above creating wonky space below.  We should all be so lucky.
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The space is grand enough to be used as a Foyer in addition to the Outdoor Kitchen we created.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Hired a professional to shoot this project in January.  Leaving the Foyer yesterday I said something about keeping a green table because of the green urn blah-blah.  Beloved Burt wasn't there.  Apparently Burt said the exact words only hours earlier.  Finally, a Tara'ized Burt!!!!

The Secret of Black

New construction, established neighborhood, million+ dream home.

Tight property line, above.  I knew to use 4-board fencing with hogwire, stain it black & plant confederate jasmine.
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Their home, to the right of the fence is brick painted white & black shutters.  White was never a choice for the 4-board fencing.  Black recedes, makes the area 'feel' larger.
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Loved being able to have this bit of Chatsworth in the suburbs.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic taken at jobsite last week.

Chinoiserie Coop, Repurposed Materials

They wanted chickens, I suggested their small unused covered patio.

Old windows, door & lumber were reclaimed from a century old cabin at Lake Burton, GA.

Chicken wire, hinges, a few 2 x 4's were the only new materials.

Once the new wood is cured the entire Chinoiserie chicken coop will be stained BM-Alexandria Beige.
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Their garden is tiny Alexandria beige will make the coop recede.

Th girls fighting for grapes is greater drama than any football match.

Nesting boxes were repurposed from the same cabin.

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These 8 heirloom girls hatched 1st week of April & produce about 7 eggs/day. 

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Amazing how many clients have chickens.  Adore watching them walk, hear their noises, see cliches come true.

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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara

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Bidding a job last month My Guy suggested they repurpose the child's swing-set fort as a chicken coop.  Love it when my team shines past me with creativity.  

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Girls are safe in their coop & run from hawks, dogs, cats.

Choosing Flower Color

My sister LOVES pink.  Yet she would never be this bold, below.

Choosing garden flower colors I always pay attention to interiors & what my client is wearing.
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Just did another design with the client wanting all white flowers.  White always works.
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Garden & Be Well,           XO Tara
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White flowers show best from a woodland, blue or burgundy flowers show very little at a distance......
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pic via House Beautiful

Art & Flowers

Perhaps a year will arrive and there is The-Big-Event, I know

exactly who should plant annuals in the garden.  Simply Flowers, Jenny Hardgrave.  

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Selfishly I would like to see what Jenny would do based upon the art, above.

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In satisfaction I understand these shelves.  The house is still under renovation & there are pockets of sanity, this included.  When painting, floors, carpentry are done in my home, I do the same OCD thing with my shelves.  All is chaos, but a shelf here/there.

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Garden & Be Well,        XO Tara

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I quit designating annual flowers decades ago.  If a garden NEEDS annuals it is a Landscape Design failure.  Love self-seeding annuals.  Simply Flowers is the exception!  Jenny's work is NEEDED.  Like air.  Something about Jenny most people don't know.  She loves jewelry, appreciates its nuances.  Totally explains her talent with flowers.

Choosing Garden Colors

These shelves are a heavy contender

for the stain color on her Adirondack chairs.
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Interiors always tell me what colors to use in the garden.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic from same home as yesterday's post.

Practically Perfect

This would never happen 'new' in Atlanta, GA.  

And isn't that sad.
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Why does everything have to be so perfect?  Mary Poppins knew 'practically perfect' was better.
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This feels like a one sided conversation with Jane Austen.  Of course we know what type of character she would let live here!
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic via Pigtown Design.  Can't you smell the Tara Turf?

Vanishing Threshold with Color Theme

Modern addition with classic architecture, as if THAT is often successful.  More deeply sublime are the accouterments.  Garden focal points placed on perfect axis with interior doors, secondary focal points placed on angled axis.  A perfect square with the planters & a circle in stone.  

Layers of green, lean-green-serene.  Statuary & planters color themed to echo house.
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It's obvious this is a tight collaboration between owner & landscape designer.
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Vanishing threshold is magnificent here.
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Garden & Be Well,         XO Tara
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pic via Pinterest.  Which part of your vanishing threshold is 'magnificent'?

Wire Chairs & Color Echoes

Those chairs !

Echoing in titillation the color of the square planter, blue stone terrace & into the distance with the door.

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Even the gardener is color echoed with the landscape.

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Do not underestimate that last bit.  Monet had his gardeners wear blue shirts.

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Of course the white blossoms & silver foliage echo pop.

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Garden & Be Well,          XO Tara

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Found the pic last weekend via Dirt Simple.  Layers of green, canopy & understory trees, shrub walls, flooring & etc of perfection.  This garden has been loved into being with a sure hand.

Front Door Ideas

Puppet Barbuda's wicked eye.  

Boxwood disgracefully pruned into helmet hair, and wider at the top creating leggy hags with pockets of space at the bottom.
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Coiled hose lingering for pride of place.
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Blocks of wood anchoring exterior lights? Oh dear, at least stain them the color of the siding.

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The delight of the sweet round doormat.   A great touch.

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Charming vernacular baskets over the front door.

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Adore the shutters open in welcome.

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Why mulch when a groundcover is less maintenance & more lush?

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Elegantly shabby seeing money stretched.  The steps/rails are solidly good and tell a story.  Windows are at a crossroads of rotting but surviving with storm windows attached. 

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The window box & front door paint color tell Puppet Barbuda she wants inside this sweet cottage.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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A Cousin Cathy pic from Nantucket this summer.  This cottage reminds me of Aunt Tillie in her 80's, widowed & easily taking care of her brick cottage & garden.  Plenty of money but not one red cent to replace the furnace.  Smiling with a glint in her eye, "Let the next owner pay for it!"  Blessedly several of her antiques are now in my home & garden.  

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Who is Puppet Barbuda?  Landscape Design Critic of course.  

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. 

Door Knocker Story

Look thoroughly, below.

Can you figure out the door knocker at bottom?
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Their cat was destroying the door trying to get their attention.  Now, when he wants inside, he pulls on the door knocker.
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Yes, true story.
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Would you have been this intuitive, putting the door knocker down low?
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Garden & Be Well,            XO Tara
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Pic taken last month.
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Screened Porch

I let a butcher block go thinking, 'what would I ever do with it?'   Jeri knew exactly what to do, below, on her covered porch.

 Intuitively she knew, below, it's important to make flat walls 3-D.   

 Builders never complete a house properly with shutters, it's your job.

Her porch is mostly black, white, blue.  She wears a lot of man tailored white shirts with black leggings & a pop of pink lipstick. 
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I always look to what my clients wear for the secondary colors to their trinity.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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More pictures from Jeri's garden, she's Porch Porn.