Building Your Garden Room: 10 Steps

Think, cha-ching, this isn't for you? Poppets, PUPPET BARBUDA will not let you off easy. That measly excuse of no money? HOW TO build your new GARDEN ROOM:

1. Make decision to build a GARDEN ROOM. (Odd, this is the most important step)

2. Get envelope, label it, GARDEN ROOM. (Leftover paper money 2-3/week goes here.)

3. Tell all your friends, "I'm building a GARDEN ROOM."

4. Look at everything in your path with RESCUE eyes.

5. Bring it home. Old fencing, stone, brick, concrete, wood, house parts.

6. Get paint from the rejects at hardware store.

7. Accessorize from thrift store & sale items: TJMAXX, Marshall's, Ross.

8. Pots/urns from garage sales, big box store sales.

9. Put the right man in your project. (Alas, difficult.)

10. Hire man, & the same day, invite girlfriends to your Garden Tea Party.

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Take step #1 and your GARDEN ROOM will appear.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Charlotte Moss, pic, above. OMG, wonderful, & doable! This pic has come across my path at least a zillion times.

Best Conservatory Dimensions

Front: French doors 5'-6' wide with old windows on each side of

about 30"-32" each. Creating a total average 11'-12' wide.

Side: Old windows connected to each other with 2x4's. Creating

a total average length of 23' long.

Roof: 4-12 pitch with metal roofing.

Interior: Entering thru French doors each side is best dimension, at minimum, 36"-32" for furniture.

"L": Adding an "L" at right angle is most desirable. Not enough space, have another doorway, single door, along the side with a culvert cover for door awning.

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Average best dimension range using old/found materials for conservatory: 11' wide by 23' long.

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Poppets, above notes are copied directly from a email sent to my Macon, GA clients. You've seen their home & garden, & happy dogs, the past few days.

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The last pic, above, is Susanne Hudson's 1st conservatory. Too small, she enlarged it, seen in the top pics. Susanne & I built the conservatory, in my blog header pic, for the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival, in Douglasville, GA this spring.

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Building a conservatory in my garden, using rescued materials, beginning next week.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Susanne Hudson's conservatory was a feature article in Southern Living magazine. Took these pics in her garden earlier this year. Following my passion, they are not styled.

Details of a Garden Room

Rescued sink, "champagne is on ice in the conservatory", & stand made from leftover structural pieces, century old rescued pine. Rescued culvert, above, has a new life, & the rescued chest, windows, shutter.

How calm the shutter looks, above, hiding the sink. Carpet, #89 granite gravel.

Nap, above, on the daybed in the Garden Room? Notice its pot feet? Having a chandelier & lamps is of utter importance.

Chandelier, for sale, alas borrowed from Le Jardin Blanc, hanging from the tin roof. Ugh, we had to buy the roof. Curtains? Jute erosion control fabric. Bedding borrowed from Susanne Hudson's home, & mine.

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Hydrangea welcome, above. After all it's the garden Susanne Hudson & I created for the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival on the grounds of Le Jardin Blanc.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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You will not believe what this Garden Room looks like. Can't wait to show you the money shot, soon poppets ! Alert, this garden room built solely with the labor of 1 man & 2 women. None labeled 'young' in contemporary culture. Ha, young in what we create. Please, let us create a Garden Room for YOU. It's all we wanna do. Oh dear, this snippet is turning into the lines of a country song......... ta-ta before it gets worse.

Repetition

Puppet Barbuda took awhile to trust repetition, a landscape design tool. Wasted years. Puppet Barbuda was stubborn. Still is.

Puppet Barbuda was too smart to COPY !!!!!

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Alas, years in the wilderness, and Puppet Barbuda DID NOT recreate a new wheel.

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REPETITION, if it works in one landscape it will work in your landscape. Each time repetition repeats....................IT'S NEW & UNIQUE at each repeat.

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Of course poppets you must adjust for plant zone, money, maintenance, & time. Ironically, copying $$$ landscapes rewards you, often, with better results than the original.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics from Susanne Hudson's garden last month.

A Favorite Landscape Book

5 bookcases line the walls of my office. One of my favorite books, below, Garden Magic by Roy Biles.
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Several editions of this book are on my shelves; of my top 10 go-t0 books this is one.
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Seeing it displayed in Susanne Hudson's conservatory, above, made me smile in complete understanding.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken last Sunday.