Showing posts with label Color. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Color. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Beautiful Easy Landscape: Green, Brown, White


At her kitchen porch, below.  Her color theme is the beautiful landscape classic: green, brown, white.
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With 300+ acres everything must be simple.  No care.  More than pretty & easy, her landscape must leverage her life.  What does that mean?
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Your beautiful landscape must work for you.
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A large local nursery advertises it's- fun- to- play- in- the- dirt.  Really?  That is a landscape?
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Beautiful landscapes, in my realm, work for me.  How?  Increase property value, decrease HVAC, attractive to pollinators/guests/me, little time 'playing in the dirt'.  Instead, hours are spent in my garden reading or having meals in the Conservatory, cutting flowers to bring inside, having lunch in the potager on a sunny winter's day, awakening to the scent of tea olive, playing with my pets, or enjoying the harvest table on the patio as I've spread out materials and laptop to create a power point, and etc.
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Play in the dirt?  Sure, a part of my realm to enjoy, but merely a sliver of what beautiful landscapes provide.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic shot at a client's home yesterday.  Would love a flower show display of 12 landscapes all with the green-brown-white theme set on a small terrace with 2 chairs + table.  Same story, new each time.

For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.
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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon
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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.
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Construction by Award Winning
Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Monday, September 15, 2014

Garden Design: When is it Time to Change Bedlines?

I visit my childhood home often.  Instead of biking its few roads as tradition, I walk them.
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The house originally on this site, below, was my favorite in the neighborhood.
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A confluence of hurricane & money conspired for it to be torn down, another lot bought, and this home fills the new space.
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Behind this home is Clear Creek meeting Galveston Bay, salt water meeting fresh.
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Remember the time before these trees were planted.  Stunning to accept, trees grow, shade arrives, time passes.
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Approaching, the classic color trinity, green-brown-white, never fails to delight.
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Nor the evergreen groundcover, Asiatic jasmine.  Especially against St. Augustine lawn.


Proof of time's passage, below.  St. Augustine being shaded away.
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Time to reshape the beds.
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Instead of focusing merely on the present, reshape bedlines into the future, below.


 Now that you are an expert Bedline Garden Designer, you see your next project, below.


Curious, which visit will I walk by and they've reshaped their bedlines?
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A small garden design touch with huge results.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Beautiful landscape, above, ready for more than mow-blow-go.  Want my pruning expert to release the trees & shrubs from their prison of electric trimmers.  Take away the ca 1980's subdivision builder brain and enter into the myriad histories of le jardin rustique from across the globe, and centuries.  At this price range, more than a few dollars can be made in real estate value.
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Ca. 1980's subdivision builder brain?  Still in use at new construction.  And, like a new car, value drops the moment ownership is signed.
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Shot pics in Nassau Bay, Texas, my home town.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.
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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon
.
Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.
.
Construction by Award Winning
Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Garden Design: Enlarging Color Echoes, by Pamela Harper

My team finished a student housing project last week in Auburn, AL, below.  



After, above, before, below.


Pure pride in our work, the most common response, is widened eyes and a comment, "Student housing wasn't like this when I went."  Zero comments about our work !


As the project completed, the interior team color echoed the exterior team.  Without collaborating.  A sign the owner chose his teams wisely.  Everyone, on mission.  Team players.



Pamela Harper wrote of Color Echoes in the garden ca. 1994, and I heard her lecture about this during her book tour at the time.
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Of course my concept of color echoes is larger than Pamela Harper's,  Why?  Houses & gardens are equal in garden design in a vanishing threshold.
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Interior decorator, above, put me on her team for a house she designed both architecture/interior.  You know the house, it's in the previous 2 posts.
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Surveying our work, then seeing her interiors, this SMU grad sounded like a total Auburn Tiger.
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At the pool table, above, is exactly what you must do for your interiors/exteriors, vanishing threshold.  AKA, color echoes.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pics shot last week and earlier in the summer.  Loved the day palm trees arrived on the bed of an 18-wheeler.  Perhaps the day the pool filled was better?  Notice the pool decking?  It's travertine pavers set in gravel.  They are echoed at the entry to the formal lobby.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.
.
Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon
.
Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.
.
Construction by Award Winning
Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Monday, September 8, 2014

Why You Need to Know Dinky is Stinky


Aside from repetition- contrast- color- copied the window boxes are screaming one of my favorite Garden Design rules.
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Dinky is Stinky.


At the entry way to this hotel, above/below, are begonias.


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When I'm asked a question, and the answer is, 'Dinky is stinky", I know what comes next, widened eyes & complete epiphany.
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The best gardens know, Dinky is Stinky.  A treat to come across a commercial garden getting their garden right.
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Nothing dinky or stinky here, of course we stopped for a refreshing summer cocktail on a hot afternoon in the Great Smoky Mountains.
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 Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics shot last weekend.  Gin, elderberry, cucumber, lime, sublime.
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Those begonias !  Remember well, a tiny era during the 80's when interesting begonias were easy to find.  Those days, long gone.
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Collateral information, if you can count the number of flowers, you don't have enough.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.
.
Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon
.
Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.
.
Construction by Award Winning
Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Front Porch: Remove the Rails

No rails.


Shutters are full length door scale, adding 'height'.  Screen door with long top panel, and a plain bottom panel, again adding height.
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Gravel to the house.  Yes.  Downspout is piped away, and round, very nice.
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To enlarge the space further, add step across entire front & side.  More flow/movement.  Cole Porter's, Don't Fence Me In.
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Wonder how the shutter color is being used inside, curious about the color on the ceiling.
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Ironically, everything is done with a sure hand except the pots.  They seem like mere filler (or magazine staging at its pinnacle of pots/pillows) until the correct pots are chosen/planted.
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Historically designed, low maintenance.  Unskilled labor could easily keep this in shape.
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Maria Killam had this pic recently & nailed it on the color.  Made me laugh, all I could see was the 'entire' excellent garden design, color included.  Of course I'm always happy seeing a front porch rail liberation. Would like an architect to do a post on this pic next !
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.
.
Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon
.
Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.
.
Construction by Award Winning
Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

5 Important Covered Porch Design Elements

Hope the luxury of designing a porch is yours, not a previous owner.
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1.  Plenty of electrical outlets.  Every wall should have 1 or more electrical outlets.  Enough electrical outlets to disturb your electrician.  Never, in my experience, does an electrician understand this.  (Nor spouse.)


2.  Place can lights, below, away from fan blades.  Who wants haunted house strobe lights?


3.  Do not use off-the-shelf lattice.  Lattice, below, is special order, a bit thicker wood, looks custom, costs minimally more.


4.  Detail the walls & ceiling.

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5.  Choose colors that flow from your interiors inside the covered porch & colors that flow from your home's exterior to the outside of your covered porch.
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At jobsite yesterday we 'vision quested' furniture to source/buy/reuse/place, art to hang, tv, etc.
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Yes, it was fun.
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This porch has done something quite special.  It has given her a new house.  It began as a deck 1/2 the size of the new covered porch.  A never used deck.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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 For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.
.
Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon
.
Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.
.
Construction by Award Winning:
Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Friday, May 16, 2014

Screened Porch: Furniture Texture


Furniture textures are important.  In addition to color.



A new covered screened porch, above/below, with warmth & welcome.



Patio/deck/porch/garden furniture is too often in 'sets' with matchy-watchy pieces too.
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What is this hold garden furniture ads have over popular imagination?
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Of course they want you to buy sets.
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Most often, why would you do that?
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However, there are lovely exceptions.  
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Be sure you are one before embarking upon sets of matchy-watchy garden furniture.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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pics this week in a client garden.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.
.
Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon
.
Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.
.
Construction by Award Winning:
Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Friday, May 9, 2014

Design: Built In Seating Rarely a Good Idea

Harvest Table for 12, arbor, pendant lights, vines & hedges.  Done.


Copy, it's the 1st rule of Garden Design.
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Fact, if a garden design was beautiful centuries ago.  It WILL be beautiful in your garden.
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Al fresco dining.  Across continents, cultures, eras, humans are hardwired for Al Fresco dining.
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Yesterday's Garden Design I completed includes 3 square teak tables.  They can be used individually or together as a harvest table.
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Fixed seating, as some decks have, remind me of George S. Patton speaking of war, "Fixed fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of man."
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Give yourself choices.
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Another good one from Georgie,  "If you tell people where to go, but not how to get there, you'll be amazed at the results."                    .
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Pic lost provenance.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.
.
Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon
.
Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.
.
Construction by Award Winning:
Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Monday, May 5, 2014

Design is in 2 Directions: Double Axis

Walking further into the back garden from the house, below, 


At the back of the garden, below, waking toward the house.


Same focal point, double axis.
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Gardens MUST be gorgeous in both directions.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken last week in the garden of Paul/Lisa Brown.  It will be on the Atlanta Botanical Garden Connoisseurs tour Mother's Day weekend, May 10-11, 2014.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.
.
Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon
.
Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.
.
Construction by Award Winning:
Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Bunny Williams Potager: Complex, Pretty & Easy Life Support

Have seen potagers, below, for decades.  Across Europe & USA.  
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Potager: flowers, vegetables, herbs, clipped edging.
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Recent epiphany about what a potager is.


Mixing flowers & herbs with vegetables increases yields up to 80%.  How?  Increasing pollinator habitat.
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Clipped hedging keeps chickens out.  Chickens destroy vegetables/herbs/flowers, but eat harmful bugs. 
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Plus, you get chicken shit.
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Instead of a merely sweet, pretty, easy, garden design style, the potager was
a life support system throughout much of history.  Terrible history, with subsistence living, wars, plagues, no anti-biotics.
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How did anyone, aka me, not know this about a potager?  My grandmother knew these things.  My mother falls within the scope of Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique.  The generation of women leaving farms/agrarian knowledge behind to live a modern life raising children, tending house with a maid's help, and no work outside the home.  Oh, the drudgery of it all and yes I'm one of those grown children crying throughout, The Help, every time I watch it.
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" Friedan says that this change in education arrested girls in their emotional development at a young age, because they never had to face the painful identity crisis and subsequent maturation that comes from dealing with many adult challenges.[9]"
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Sinful forgetting, a client named this loss of agrarian knowledge.
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Recently, because I now have chickens, mom has told stories about Grandma's chickens.  Grandma was an RN & head nurse at her hospital in Augusta, GA.  throughout those years she kept chickens and incubated many.  Mom was an only child and said how she hated the time her mother spent with the chickens.  From the stories I know Grandma raised significantly more chickens than her family needed or could feed easily with food scraps.  Why?  Grandma was giving away eggs and laying hens to every woman she met who needed a helping hand.   
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pic Bunny Williams
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.
.
Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon
.
Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.
.
Construction by Award Winning:
Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Monday, April 28, 2014

Paint Walls & Furniture same Color

Paint all your furniture the color of the walls
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 A lovely comment from previous blog post.


A Ralph Lauren version, above.
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Recently renovated my master closet and all the furniture was painted the color of the walls.  Not large, it needed the cohesion.  Calm.  Clothes are the focus, getting dressed more easily.  Bill Blass, "If a woman has a closet full of clothes but nothing to wear, she doesn't know herself very well."
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Every garden needs a color trinity.  Green-brown-white is the classic for impact, calm & etc.
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Adore Ralph's color duo above.  Blue/white classic for centuries, and here, the people/lunch/conversation are the focal point.  After the main focal point of the views.
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Studying for 3 decades across continents/countries of centuries old gardens it's obvious, the best views require a garden with the most simplicity.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.
.
Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon
.
Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.
.
Construction by Award Winning:
Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Penelope Bianchi: Quote


Studying historic gardens across France I learned about field-gathered furniture.


Need patio/terrace furniture?  And the budget is tite?  Dumpster diving on garbage pic-up days, garage sales, thrift stores, junk shops.
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Paint it all the same color.
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Done.
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Queen of interiors & gardens, Penelope Bianchi says, "I am a huge believer in what "looks great" IS GREAT!"
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Pic from Penelope Bianchi.  
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.
.
Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon
.
Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.
.
Construction by Award Winning:
Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.