The Minimalist Guide to Building Your own Conservatory

Better Homes & Gardens magazine recently put a Conservatory I built with Susanne Hudson for the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival in their magazine again.  Haven't read it yet but am curious.

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My garden is 8500sf total, including house.  This is for tiny gardens too.

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Conservatory in my garden, below,  best investment in 'me' ever.

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Salient facts: 12' x 18' is the minimum size, doors must be on 2 walls minimum, electrical outlets on every wall, chandelier, ceiling fans, wood stove.  Site parallel or perpendicular to your home.  

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 A 'moveable' structure meets most zoning laws allowing you to site properly.

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90% rescued materials, below.  Most, a century old.

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A decade of search/rescue + filling the piggy bank to pay for labor/materials/electrical.  Voila.

Choose a good carpenter, let their talent shine on your team.

Never tire of these French doors, they began life a century ago, 1 each side of a fireplace, in my grandmother's Federal style house.

Ground was not level.  Stone steps were rescued, and gravel chosen for the floor.  No worries getting finished interior grade level.

Conservatory, above, Susanne & I built, in the new BHG magazine.  Styling, above, is ours, the magazine has theirs.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Top 3 pics in my backyard.  Wanted a larger Conservatory but space did not allow.  Squeaked by with the minimum, 12' x 18'.  The day my Conservatory was completed and the men helped bring in all the antiques from the garage, then left, I sat in the finished Conservatory for the 1st time alone, IT BEGAN.  Life's tipping point.  Who knew?  Beware of getting what you ask for.  It WILL change your life.  What was seen thru a glass darkly will shine clear.  In that moment you will let go of every thing holding you back.  Fear that crippled will fall away as if you knew nothing of its existence.
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Lunch Ministry is often held in my Conservatory.  Amazing the amount of laughter, and tears, this blessed Conservatory has already harbored with friends.  Beloved, when he realizes I'm in the Conservatory, most often, will leave me alone until 'I' decide to come in.  Grace pulsating.
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Minimalist?  Mentored, as a little girl, by Miss Katherine Scott, "I can live without the necessities but must have the luxuries."  From age 7, wisdom understood.  An understanding never appreciated by my dad, a little more by Beloved.  Kindred spirits totally 'get it'.
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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.

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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.

This Old House: On The Cover

Their Macon, GA garden had a shaded back corner which neighborhood dogs enjoyed as a powder room.

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"Do something with the back corner", they said.

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Creativity is a Muse & this time she knew immediately there would be an 'L' shaped conservatory, #89 granite gravel, a chandelier hanging from the oak over a table.

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He knew of a recently condemned property, over a century old, ripe for rescue. 

Quite fun, the client, nor I, knew we were on the cover.

Their front yard, above.

More of their home, above/below.

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The garden was designed in 2010.  

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More than 4 years to this story.

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Due to work changes, the clients moved.

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Hired  to design their new garden, another historic Georgia home, we had a moment of grieving about their previous home/garden.

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Their new garden includes a Chicken Coop in the plan with Conservatory.

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Haven't had the call yet, "Tara you must come see the garden!"

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Steve Bender of Southern Living chose this garden & Ralph Anderson shot it.

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I first sent Lisa Mowry pics of the garden.

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Another surprise about this garden on Instagram, for Southern Living Magazine, written on Ralph Anderson's Facebook page, 

"Ralph that photo was put on SL's instagram page and it has gotten more likes than any other photo they have posted!! congrats!! "

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Recently had a call from Lisa Mowry about gardens to scout.  A national editor was in town blah-blah.

Gathered pics, did captions, connected with clients to get permissions & make sure they could fluff their garden for scout, wrote little stories about the gardens for Lisa all on days already too full with work.

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Lisa emails that the gardens were too 'hardscape' for their particular focus.  They would not be coming.  This 2nd story is the typical-common-normal story.  Decades of them.

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Any gardener, any, with credentials in the media, has done dozens of things that never fruit.

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Thank you to every client saying 'yes' when I call in a hurry asking a huge favor then nothing happens.

 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.

Conservatory in a Tiny Garden Rustique

This week in my garden, below.  Small, less than 8500sf, it never bores.

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Potted hydrangea setting bud, below, blooms all summer.  Behind the hydrangea camellia sasanqua blooms all fall.  Left of the hydrangea a camellia japonica blooms all winter.  Hellebores in stone terrace, bloomed all winter, pruned down for summer.

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Behind this curtain are a stone terrace set in dirt, tea olives, azaleas, daphne, crape myrtles, red buds, sarcococca, roses, viburnum, aucuba, liriope  & etc....

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Not a day in the year does my garden lack blooms, structure or beauty.

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WITHOUT EFFORT.

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However, those are not salient facts.

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Maximum pollinator habitat is the most important detail.  Which includes subsidiary effects.
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No fertilizer to kill mycorrhizal fungi, earthworms or poison groundwater.  No need to even mention insecticides.  And, a potager producing 80% more produce with the increased pollinators.  In addition, no lawn to mow-water-feed.  Picking up on the time-effort-money this type of garden saves?
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Shade during summer cuts electric bills by 40% with leaves dropping allowing the sun to help heat my house.  Aside from mental health this little garden has given me a career.  Very nice, but more greatly, purpose backed with passion.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Conservatory is rescued doors/windows with siding from a century old fishing cabin torn down at Lake Burton.  Chandelier, wood stove, antiques, gravel floor, lamps-more-lamps, and my wireless reaches to the Conservatory.  Go me !  For a decade my garage held the gathering storm of this Conservatory.  
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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

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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.

Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival: Downsizing Conservatory to Chicken Coop Bike

Conservatory, below, I created for the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival with Susanne Hudson.

Susanne called last week about creating another garden together, "No."  Rains every week since mid-December have decimated my schedule.
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I'll be contributing a bicycle doodied-up as something drug from the Chicken Coop and the witch will be riding !  (Silence, well aware when one must doody-up anything, especially past a certain age, the robot is repeating, 'Danger Will Robinson.) 
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The distance from 'no' to the Chicken Coop Witch's Bike was under a minute.  Insanity.
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Anyway, the plan is to put the bike in my Chicken Coop when it's all over.  
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Susanne's garden will be on the tour.  MUST SEE.
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Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival, 7th annual, Friday - Sunday, June 6th - 8th, 2014, in Douglas County, Georgia.
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This year's theme is, The Wizard of Oz.  There will be wheelbarrow gardens, scarecrows, vegetable gardens, tour gardens, vendor booths, judged flower show & more. 
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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.

Views In: Conservatory at Dusk

 Looking into my Conservatory at dusk this week, below.  Your home is the backdrop to the garden.  Views in must be seductive.  Inviting.  Every view in must tell me who you are.

Returning from a lecture I gave in Chicago/Moline Wednesday there was a little pile of cards & gifts on the harvest table in the kitchen.

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The best present was working, aka lecturing, on my birthday.  Adore a job on my birthday every year.  Gift to myself, loving what I do.

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Back to the little treasure trove.  Had Beloved gather everything, I grabbed the champagne, and we trotted off to the Conservatory.  Fine way to spend a late afternoon.

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This morning, and the Conservatory pic, I realize pics must be made for every window of my home, from the garden, at dusk.

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Game on.

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Tick Tock

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Deadline, Dec. 2014.

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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

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First time to Chicago/Moline, far too short, grand hospitality, will go back.  

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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.

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.

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.

Abby Aldrich Rockefeller: Williamsburg, VA

A perfect distance from the house.  The Tea House.  

Abby Aldrich Rockefeller's home in Williamsburg, VA.  She spent April/October here yearly.

The scale is exquisite.

Knowing a bit about the depth of her philanthropy the scale and sweetness of her home speak much of her character.
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Her gardens are intelligent, potent in simplicity, narrative, formality, rusticity, line, axis, Nature.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken earlier this month while I was lecturing in Colonial Williamsburg, VA.

The Perfect Flower Stand

Something new learned from something old, below.

A flower stand must be so fabulous......it needs no flowers!
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic taken last weekend in Colonial Williamsburg, VA.  This is from Bassett Hall, home of Abby Rockefeller.
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Love the colors, slab of light, scale, calm, bricks with the redolence of .........     something I can't quite name.    A sweetness with harshness, a story.  

Chairs after Lunch

 After the party, or lunch, chairs are pure narrative.

Warmth, connection.

Conversation.
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Grace.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken last month after lunch in the Conservatory.  Torte de Shelle top pic.

Conservatory Dreamtime

You must have a Conservatory in your garden.  Direct connection to an experience of Australia's Dreamtime.  

Too many busy days had passed without being in my Conservatory.  I feel its loss in my spirit.  Yesterday's 14 minute lunch had-to-be in the Conservatory.  Short & out of proportion to what is gained.  Spiritual well is filled.  No words to describe this direct line to Dreamtime.  

Moments in the Conservatory are atonement.  And abiding.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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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.

Designing Anticipation

Junking last month I found a huge birdcage on plinth.

'The-plan-is', lunch with girlfriends in the Conservatory with a pair of heirloom chickens in the birdcage for entertainment.
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The Girls will love the change of atmosphere from their Chinoiserie coop & run.
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Life is good when Garden Enhancements are in the anticipation realm.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pic via It's About Time  Can't imagine  having a day of life without Garden Enhancements percolating in my imagination.  

The Table, Diane Von Furstenberg

Lunch in the Conservatory yesterday.  Who can eat alone without a book?  

Had to make calls to clients, then leave for appointments.  The book remains anticipation.
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$2.02 from the thrift store I knew it would be worth it without perusing.  Diane Von Furstenberg is a huge supporter of the High Line Garden in NYC.  Better than expected, Diane's own garden in Connecticut is featured.
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Interiors, gardens, recipes.  Beautiful photography.
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Garden & Be Well,               XO Tara
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Pure catnip getting this book so cheap.  Plenty more here.

Lamp in the Landscape

 

Women who have these lamps, I thought as a child, are wacko.  Ticky-tacky gold leaf, gaudy.

Was there an exact date I grew up to be 'wacko'?
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Even in the afternoon I can see the sparkly light bulbs from the house, and they make me happy.  More stupid, about this lamp was its price.  Found at my favorite Antique shop I waited several visits for its mark down.  Not.  I made an offer & you see my trophy!

Conservatory Built With Existing Wall

Too many garden walls haven't had their

Conservatory attached.
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Today's assignment: walk your garden, exactly as Mrs. Wilcox did at Howard's End, and decide where your Conservatory is to be placed.
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Garden & Be Well,        XO Tara
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Pic via Belgian Pearls.   

Blue Lamp in the Conservatory

 In honor of good service, the peacock blue ginger jar lamp with original shade.

Been in the library for years & now rotating off duty from 2 years in the Conservatory.

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We are each allowed to love a hideous lamp.  This one is mine.  She will resurface. 

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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

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Notice the tassel hanging from the key on the French door?  A punctuation of delight.  Who needs drugs with these amusements?

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Pic taken last month.  Conservatory view is to the new French doors in my kitchen.  A bit of gardening still to be done at the landing.  Life is good, a gardening project awaits!

Lunch in the Conservatory

Lunch in the Conservatory.

 Pears, yogurt, cottage cheese, pistachios.  There's something about multiple little bowls,

mismatched silver spoons, plate, linen napkin, making the choices.
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Walking across the garden & choosing where to sit in the Conservatory.  These are the great dramas I want.
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Amid hectic days my Conservatory never fails to enrich my spirit.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Wish lunch in the Conservatory were more often but you know I'm happy to be at jobsites too.
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Decorate With Multiple Collections

She drinks alot of Perrier perfect bottles for rooting cuttings, below.

 She inherited boxes of shells, it took about a year of spare time to sort them, below.

 Old, broken, water salts & moss make her terra cotta better.  Of course the arrangement is fabuloso, below. Have you noticed how people that arrange flowers seem to be able to arrange anything?

Clustered & themed, she uses collections to decorate. 
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This trinity of collections are close to each other in her Conservatory.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics taken last month in Susanne Hudson's Conservatory.

Lunch In The Conservatory

Friends for over a decade, we've kept up for too many years via ambient community, aka mutual friends & social media.

 We had lunch in my Conservatory yesterday.  Each of us brought to tears several times during meandering conversation.  Happy tears.  Tears of knowing.  Tears of bearing witness.

 Mostly laughter.  And buzzing with energy.
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Grace comes unbidden, and by nurture.  Yes, you want a Conservatory in your landscape.
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Garden & Be Well,            XO Tara
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Smallest Conservatory footprint, if you have a choice, is 12' x 18'.

Cotton In The Conservatory

In the garden, below, 2 days ago, looking into my Conservatory thru the century old French door.

 It's an arcane delight, looking into windows.  Seeing cotton (or anything pretty) already 'painted', not real, in the past.

This is my first high cotton.  Literally, this year, in-high-cotton.  Inside Conservatory, above, looking into my tiny back garden.
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The old pottery jug, above, with broken handle, was a very good day at the thrift store, $2.94.
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From the house seeing this jug of cotton has been a joy.  A garden view, it's why I garden.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara