Garden Jewelry: Windows

This kitchen was a 1980's time capsule at my first visit earlier this year.

With kitchen & house renovations complete I was back at the jobsite this month to fine tune garden plans.

The kitchen window is new too.

From the garden, below, the window is pure jewelry.

The bricks were saw cut to enlarge the opening, barely visible, and soon the bricks will be lime washed.
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Exciting times, I've never worked with a window so stunning.  Sure, we'll have cobblestone edging & a stone terrace but the window will still be the focal point.
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Have known for years exterior lighting is jewelry for the garden, now windows are added to the list of jewels.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken at jobsite this month.

French Planter: Color

I put these planters across the front of a home last Saturday, though a bit larger.  

However, zero temerity for foundation plantings, plenty of gracious #89 granite gravel.

Not this big, above, but did put in this size for a home needing to hide garbage cans.
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Taxus x media 'Hicksii', pruned similar to Great Dixter's, is the plant choice.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Top pic Old Long Island, bottom pic, Things That Inspire.  .
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Color.  Client house is gray, white trim, black shutters, apple green door.  Planters can be any of those but white.  A nice amount of space but not quite enough to handle the boldness of white.  Apple green is my choice but the gray or black are acceptable too.

2 Questions for Patios, Decks, Porches

Graduating with another degree, horticulture, I was fully aware creating the gardens of my soul had yet to be discovered.  

Luckily Penny McHenry came into my life.  She invited me to lunch the first evening we met.  A lecture meeting with packed audience we were in the 3rd row.  I plopped next to her & knew she wasn't amused.  We began talking, garnered a stern glance from the speaker then talked so long the security guard asked us to leave, the building was closing.

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In her garden, the next day, one of the biggest theatrical curtains of Garden Design opened when I saw her back deck.  From the first glance I knew.

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When looking at a patio there are 2 questions.  Is this space so wonderful I must see inside the house?  Is this space so wonderful I must see the garden?

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Ironic.  Patios, porches, decks, & their styling, were not mentioned during my degree program.  Nor any symposium I had ever attended.

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Penny did it from innate talent.

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Innately I knew, copy good ideas.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic Susanne Hudson's front porch last month.

Outdoor Kitchen

A friend gave Susanne Hudson this Hoosier cabinet a couple of years ago.

Until recently it sat gaining more rust behind her carriage house.
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She realized it fit perfectly with her color theme: green, brown, white.  Into the garden it arrived.
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Garden & Be Well, XO   Tara
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Perhap this should be done in aluminum for gardens.....  Metal Outdoor Hoosier Cabinet with gas grill, the sales slip should read.  Perfect for those not wanting the huge stone aka "I've tumbled from Mars out of the last surviving Apollo Soyuz rocket payload" outdoor kitchen.
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I was hired as the 2nd garden designer for a project because things weren't 'quite right'.  Their outdoor kitchen had been placed on perfect axis with the family room.  What a view,  stove-fridge-counter-cabinets.  Not!  It was moved to the side, which was much more convenient, and the garden became the focal point.
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Remember well when the Russians arrived for Apollo Soyuz, they clogged up the grocery store lines when  they did not want to pay USA taxes on their purchases.  Trinkety things, lots of lipstick etc....  Of course they used USA roads, police protection, & more provided with USA tax dollars.  Even as a young teen I knew something was 'wrong'.  Their clothes could have been in a period drama from the poverty 1930's.  They moved as a pod, or school of fish,  fearful of their surroundings.  Their skin was pasty white, their hair was flat, and all eyes were huge, darting quickly, never settling, no smiles.    Many of the engineers at NASA were against this mission.  Why hand over engineering know-how?  This is obviously a Cold War memory.  The worst part was their own security detail.  Wanting to prevent defections during their stay.    

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.

Curb Appeal Before Entering the Front Porch

Don't tell me 'welcome' with letters on a sign or doormat, show me.

The curb appeal of this tiny frontyard says, "Yes, you want to see the porch, inside the home, and the rest of the garden."

And you're experiencing the potency of the garden's color trinity, without being aware.

Adore the smartness of cast stone urns filled with cast stone flowers & fruits.
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Get the color trinity?  Green, brown & white.  Trinity of the ages.  Low maintenance, serene, elegant.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics shot in Susanne Hudson's garden last month.  Girlfriend is serious!  Curb appeal + front porch fabulosity.  We are working on a book together and planning another spend-the-night this month.

Big Garden Design Rule

One of the most important things to know in Landscape Design, below.

Know when to leave it alone.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic this month in Susanne Hudson's garden.

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.

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.

Child's Play

Children- need- a- lawn is default thinking.  Ask any realtor.

Children need magical play too.

Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Pics taken in the same garden as previous post.

Kitchen with Porch

In the kitchen.

Simple, pretty, functional, evocative.  And, my favorite, not styled for a photo.  You're seeing 'everyday'.
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You can see the porch in yesterday's post.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic taken last weekend, same home as previous post.

Covered Screened Porch

Garden view, daybed, lamps, table w/chairs, blue/white, cozy, stuffed with amenities.  Staycation is too small of an idea for this room.

Flowing from garden to kitchen with doors, & views from master bedroom and living room.

This couple is always doing something with their grown children & spouses with grands.

Tipping point for the TV is obviously the grands.

Daybed, slounging chairs + a table with chairs for projects/computer?  Perfect trinity.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Pics same house/garden as previous post.  It's obvious Susanne Hudson has put her skills here.   I have a strong weakness for grandparent/grandchild relationships.  Mine still fills me with incredible strengths.

Basement Door is now the Dowager's Porch

It's common to see a basement door with lawn.  And nothing else.

Mother-in-law Suite doesn't aptly describe this rendition.

Common furnishings, off the shelf shutters, a simple arbor, concrete pavers & voila !

Color theme was chosen and leveraged with punches of yellow.

Boxwoods, liriope, hollies prettier AND easier to maintain than ubiquitous lawn.  Notice, above, the garbage can?

Between driveway & Dowager's Porch is a tiny foyer, above.  Gravel, above, pure brilliance.
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Most basement doors are the throw-away-zone.  Worse, the criminal zone.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken last weekend at the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival.  This garden belongs to Jeri Farmer, co-founder of the PMHF with Susanne Hudson.  Susanne helps Jeri with her Garden Design.  

Keeping Plain, Plain

There is no 'architecture' at my home.  I've created my own.  The humble cottage.

Instead of lipstick-on-a-pig with the front door.  I've left it as modest as the day it was built.

With only a hint of character.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics taken last week in my garden.  Before the garden I can remember disliking my home so much I would cry coming back from any vacation.  This is my starter home, here 5 years then off to something 'better'.  That was almost 3 decades ago.  If away for a night I cannot wait to get back and see what has transpired in the garden.

The Well Placed Chair

Decrepit, sets the timeline at any spot across the last few decades. 

A narrative.  Timelessness.

The Well Placed Chair must suit the theme you've chosen & leverage it.
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You must have at least a pair of chairs for The Well Placed Chair rule !
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Paint them the color of your front door, trim or shutters or an accent color threading thru all your interior art works.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken last weekend in my garden.  Oakleaf hydrangeas are incredible this year.  The Well Placed Chair rule was an epiphany after touring Sir Walter Scott's garden.

Farmhouse Kitchen

A real farmhouse kitchen.  

The island, above, is an old dresser with detailing applied to  the back.

She removed a wall between table & kitchen.

The cafe curtains win a Garden Oscar.  Beyond those curtains, inches, is their driveway, Funeral Home parking lot, and, ta-da, a Funeral Home !
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Sky & tree canopy are all you see.
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Perhaps the solution to your garden eyesore is inside your house.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics at jobsite, same garden as previous post.  Yes, she made lunch, blueberry mini-muffins, pimiento cheese sandwiches, chicken salad, fresh fruit......iced tea mixed with lemonade.  And, I got the story from him of how he met her when they were teens.  They're grandparents now.  The story began when he was a bagboy at Piggly Wiggly.
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You did notice the rug under the island?
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They've asked for a Chicken Coop, Pole Barn, Pond & a few other delicacies.....
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Stairs

Did your eye already pick up the salient fact, below?

Risers & steps are not to code.  Now.
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Lovely to walk history, ca. 1900, feel the gait.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken this month, same home/garden as previous post.

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.