Design: Speak Volumes With No Words

Live - Love - Laugh blares a painted garden sign, on the shelf, with price tag.  Next time you see any garden sign/plaque for sale think, "Danger Will Robinson.", while asking yourself the Dante'sque question, Does this path enlarge, or diminish, my thought?
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Mostly, if words are put into a garden Alexis de Tocqueville has been given another arrow to release at USA.  Mostly.  And that's one of the joys of designing your garden, knowing when to use your tiny percentage allowed, to break rules.
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In a garden it is important no matter the joys & sorrows amongst your days/years, you know you have a place actively nurturing sorrows and increasing joys.  Without effort.  This layer of garden design is rarely mentioned, but inherent.



Made me laugh, above.  No words.  Is it whimsy, or a pun?
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Doesn't matter.
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Secondary smile, above, at the height of the evergreen wall.  Noticed decades ago the economics of gardens and hedges.  The 4' hedge easily maintained by the owner.  The 6' hedge, still maintained by the owner, but a ladder is involved, or hired gardener.  8' + hedges pruned with scaffolding or cherry picker for hired gardener to reach.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Found pic on Pinterest, and it had no link to provenance other than what is stamped on the picture, Getty Images.
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"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.", Alexis de Tocqueville.

Dowager Duchess at Edensor House: Gravel Paths

Dinner tonight in honor of a friend's beloved grandmother.  She would have been 99.  Grandma's chocolate pie will be the star, and focused conversation for all, about grandmothers.  

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A dinner ritual for many years, I was unaware & suppose my continual mention of my grandma earned me an invitation.

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Days a bit longer and  will be able to see my host's garden before last light.  Designed her garden about 2 years ago, and they are totally DIY.

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Snakes are a problem at their home, and they have 2 young daughters.  

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Gravel is designed up to the house, and stones within the gravel, as needed for easier main paths.

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Gravel with pathway stones has been done for thousands of years.

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Another benediction for gravel with stones, below, Debo, Duchess of Devonshire, if Debo does it, case closed.

Duchess of Devonshire, below, at her dowager house, above, Edensor House, an old vicarage, she called, Old Vic.  Note, exquisite pruning, below, to the right of the door?

Centuries old, below, the backdrop landscape behind the Duchess is no accident.  None.  

Old Vic, below, rendering to be sold at Sotheby's.

The Duchess, below, was keen on many outdoor activities, in one of her books, can't remember which, she mentioned how cold/wet/mucky some pursuits were but the game was on for all included, Show No Discomfort.  

Before pie, we'll walk the new gravel paths.  Today, temps are freezing, winds gusting to 20mph, and we will do our best to show-no-discomfort.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pics from Sotheby's .  The Style Saloniste has a bit more about the Duchess, here.

Nicky Haslam & Miles Redd

Copy, it's the 1st rule of Garden Design.  If you don't like rules, who does, you'll like this one.

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Each permutation of 'copy' is unique, guaranteed.

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Copying from the best means you are opening a treasure chest to major talents across the globe, and time.

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Copy, it's a 1st rule of Interior Design too.

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Nicky Haslam, below, at a Sussex Farmhouse. 

Miles Redd, below, at his Momma's house in House Beautiful.

Copy, it works for 2 of the best, above.  It will work for you.

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Copy, glad my epiphany came, but why was I stubborn for so long, thinking I could recreate the wheel?  My work became more original once I knew to copy.  Who doesn't enjoy riffing on a theme?  Though, beware the trap of derivative works becoming stale.  

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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Florist Shop Technique in Your Garden

I remember well going into the old tiny white clapboard house, engulfed with oleander, gardenias, and sago palms, on the way to League City, TX, with its front half turned into a florist shop, they lived at the back, with mom when she needed to send sympathy flowers.  In the 60's this was not a phone call or internet purchase.  The large glass front refrigerator stuffed with flowers awaiting, scents, vases, ribbons, cut stems in a pile, no, I was not waiting in the car.  Life was electric in that tiny shop & home.
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Saw that house, long abandoned, during my last trip home in December.
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No matter its current state it has sailed a thousand ships in my work.  I have a Pinterest board for Florist Shops.  Clients with acreage, and little time, I send to that board to inspire when they have an open garden or private function.  Temporary beauty easily arranged.
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Claus Dalby, below, from Denmark uses the Florist Shop Technique.  No matter your continent, style, budget, the Florist Shop technique is for you too.    



Pic, above, Claus Dalby.
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Florist Shop Technique.  My favorite type of gardening, see it do it.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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Thank you Janelle McCulloch for another great find.

French Toile: Anna Belle Hydrangeas, Tool Bouquets, Garden Shed

A good French toile, below, come to life.

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Shot this week, I'm greedy and would like daily access.

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Shoot when the rose is cascading blossoms.

Shoot on a snowy day in the dead of winter.

 Shoot on a bleached out hot humid Southern afternoon.

Shoot from inside the kitchen, two big windows view this French toile.
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Fall shots, with rain, a refined camera allowing you to smell the petrichor from foliage, and rusty tools, or corrugated metal.  Divining the distinctions of each.
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A great year for Anna Belle hydrangeas.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics from Susanne Hudson's garden this week.  Come see her garden, it's on tour this Sat/Sun, Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival.

Elements of a Famous Garden: Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival

Shade encroached lawn, below, so it was removed & a gravel path was added with a row of boxwoods.

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Then, unexpectedly, a gift of huge pots with boxwoods, and an entryway was created, below.

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This is a new portion of Susanne Hudson's famous Douglasville, GA garden.  Her garden is on the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival tour this Saturday/Sunday.

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Aside from being in magazines, on TV and tours, Susanne's garden should also be famous for how easy it is to maintain.

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And, deer proof.

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Susanne's garden reads like a Garden Design Manual.

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Garden Design Elements:

  Complete architecture above, ceiling, walls, floors, doorways, rooms.

Hallway (gravel path)
Foyer (zone between arbor/boxwood in pots/end of gravel path)
Walls ( fence, side of house, hedges)
Color  (house/fence white theme)
Color ( layers of green, dark green, light green)
Color (granite gravel chosen to flow with white theme vs. brown river pebbles)
Ceiling (sky is designed by framing with canopy & understory trees)
Entryways (the more entryways a garden has the better a garden is)
Ballroom (invitation to the ballroom via the arbor, implied mystery, the garden beckons you)
Parlor (invitation to the parlor thru the large boxwood pots)
Art on the Wall (house is backdrop to the garden)
Art on the Wall (one focal point/area is the macro rule, here it's the arbor)
Flooring (gravel, low meadow)

Garden Design is Interior Design with different arrows in the quiver.  When you see a garden you like, there is a language to describe every element.  Learn the language, in this lone pic, above, and your quiver will be full for any garden you see moving forward.

When I give this lecture, I move to a new pic, use the laser pointer, and let the audience shout out what it is.  By the 3rd picture all are fluent.  Even those that were skeptical.  Name it to claim it is true for garden design.  Once you can name it, you can put it in your own garden.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic taken by Susanne Hudson.  Spent the night with Susanne earlier this week, preparing for my lecture at the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival this Saturday, 2pm, in the new courthouse.

When it's Simple, You're Dancing

For years I've known the best question to ask after 'completing' a Garden Design, "What can I take out, and it still holds together?"
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For decades I've had the privilege of being hired by women in their 70's-80's.  Most widowed, or divorced.  Why privilege?  Aside from demanding beauty with ease of maintenance, that's easy, the known quantity, yet unspoken, is staying in the house, till the end.  We're playing at winning the end game, without stress.  The end game is not for sissies.  Roofs with major winds, plumbing issues within a slab, a toilet leaking from upstairs while away on a trip flooding the entire home, a cancer diagnosis, perhaps a stroke, living for months with a grown child needing grandma's help with their little ones during a job transition.
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When I'm hired by these women, I understand unspoken reasons.
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Now, moving into a new home, I'm designing my new garden for my 80 year old self.



Looks 'modern', above, yet follows every classic Garden Design rule since before Christ's era.



Without awareness, or training, I know something, in metaphor, about Garden Design, Herbert Muschamp wrote in describing Venice, "The function of the City was to translate the religion into a visual & spacial code."



Beloved has asked me, more than once, always in exasperation, "Are you always a Garden?"  Yes, thank you.  More than believe, active choices are made throughout the day, every day, to 'Take Joy' as Tasha Tudor did, by knowing into my DNA, "Our energy flows where our attention goes."



"How can we know the dancer from the dance?", W.B. Yeats.  If you have a landscape, your answer is public, every picture in this post, the owner knows the dance, and dances.  



Above, plain?  Hardly.  You're seeing the dance.
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Why aren't more gardens, above, like this one?  Aside from easy to maintain, interiors flowing outside, do you notice the major force?  This garden reeks of invitation, alone or a pair, and quickly available to expand for a group enjoying dinner/wine.



This garden, above, combines the previous 2 pics.  Scroll upward and look again.  This is the dance.
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Haven't moved into my new home/garden yet, but I'm already dancing its dance.
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Isn't it time you dance yours?
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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All pics Pinterest: Vanishing Threshold.

What the French Gave: Monocoloring

Credentials I have, yet my true Garden Design education spanned 2+ decades and several continents.

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Smiled when I saw this, below.

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France gave me 2 huge arenas of learning, 1 is below.  

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MonoColoring.

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Language is no barrier to studying the best historic gardens across the globe.  Gardens speak Gardenese.

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Applying a French Garden Design lesson, below.

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If you field gather garden chairs, no worries about style, beyond comfort of course, paint them all the same color. 

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This lesson holds true at every price point home, castle, gated community, farm, villa, pied a terre, section 8 apartment balcony, townhome, even in my little working class cluster home neighborhood.

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Chairs, below, have a choice of colors for monocoloring.  Use trim color from the house, or an interior color that is prominent in the best artwork owned or from the carpet, perhaps a wall color.

Of course more needs to be done, above, in this sweet garden room.

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Vine maintenance, above, is about a month overdue.  Bring a ladder to the French doors landing, with jackhammer drill, mortar screws, galvanized wire, install, finally, threading vine across top of French doors.

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Stay there, and hang the lantern, from the second step, centered above the French doors with the bottom of the lantern hanging 3 courses of bricks above the top of the French doors.

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Done with the ladder, put a level on the pot at the right of the French doors and get it level.

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Finally, use some spare bricks from home construction and raise the serving table, next to the house, 4 bricks high.

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All of these changes, are what my brain does, all of the time, driving or looking at Pinterest.  My brain 'fixes' gardens.  A well-honed skill.

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My brain can rest from this particular form of Garden Design OCD when camping at beach/mountains, and joyfully in my friends gardens.

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When a client garden is headed for Garden Tour it is amazing the to-do list we create for an already fabulous garden.  Pages long.

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If your garden is ready for a garden tour, but you've not done one yet, I strongly encourage you to do it.  Your garden will go to another level.

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You will never have been so driven in your life, promise.  Aside from weeks of exhaustion and hunting/gathering, your checkbook will provide, in a manner that feels like Zen but prior to the tour felt like fear.  It gets worse, you will begin new garden layers, to be finished prior to the tour, you never anticipated.  Providence, supplying epiphanies and inspirations, and you will be Peasant in Chief, happy to oblige. 

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Did you just smirk at this?

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Then YOU are the one that will do all described.  Promise.

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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

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Pic from HERE.  

We Want What We Say We Don't Want

Few have a language to convey what they want for/from/within their landscape.  Doctors must think the same when a patient has symptoms, and no vocabulary to describe them.  My stomach hurts.

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I want those white flowers.

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I don't want to spend a lot of money, and don't want anything high maintenance, nothing formal.

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Nothing formal.

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Perhaps the most abused request, "Nothing formal."

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Followed by pictures of gardens they like, 100% with formal lines, and high maintenance filler plantings, aka expensive.

All of this I thought of seeing the sweet garden, above.

Every element of good garden design for the last several centuries is in this garden. (Copied, repetition, contrasting foliage textures, evergreen structure all year, movement of eye/pollinators/foot, axis, cross axis, change thru the seasons, framing the sky, framing the home, hi density/low density attracting widest variety of pollinators.)
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This garden, above, could have a lovely 'modernist' overlay by removing all perennials/flowering shrubs and replacing solely with low evergreen groundcover.  Expense goes down, fun choices arrive.  Site hardscape focal points, or a line of pots, to be planted, or not.
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Another direction to take this garden, above, take away all perennials and replace with a variety of hydrangea, mophead/oakleaf/paniculata.
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Oddly, I know I've entered a new chapter.  Instead of wanting hydrangeas, for 2 decades, groundcovers have become the delight.  Perhaps 6 large pots of hydrangeas.  Line them up in 2 rows?  Perhaps anchor an enfilade with 3 pairs?  Where would a pair of benches go?  Where to place a double axis of vintage urns/plinths?   A proscenium is born.
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Delighting in this simplicity, a fun challenge, and exercise in continual refinements.  Hodge podge lodge was fun too, the years simplified into a new game.
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When a client has full time job, kids in elementary school, pets, and no means for maintenance beyond basic mow/blow/go, and asks for this garden, above, I sell it minus the perennials, adding groundcovers & focal points.  Describing the maintenance, and skilled labor/expense, sells the simplicity.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic by © Nicola Stocken Tomkins. Countryside April 2012, here.

Monet's Fruit Tree with Climbing Rose

After touring Monet's garden, hours, we went to the shops behind his home, at bottom of pic below, and bought sandwiches.  The day was too fine, experiencing his home/garden too intense,  we sat under an ancient fruit tree, it's in the watercolor below, in a stupor.
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More, the fruit tree was ancient, with an equally ancient climbing rose threading thru it, in peak bloom.



Boring enough tale, yet to anyone speaking the language of gardenese, tale of a lifetime.
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We travel the globe for these moments.  And plant them at home, the luckiest among us have hundreds of gardens to plant them in.  Client gardens.  My wealth lies not in the bank, but in my career.
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Walking my sweet garden, 30 years here, has me in tears daily now.  Especially the moments ahead of peak gloaming.  There is no word in English, probably in another language for this, pulling in with the eyes, nose, and skin trying to imprint more than they can take in onto my DNA.
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Selfishness, of a peculiar sort, fear, hunger for more, and the feeling of never being able to return, must learn, educate, retain, sort, deduce, elucidate, sense all of the ephemeral that has passed, translate, know that it will be the soul understanding the language, not my head, the muse, erudite, able to create what the gardenese clearly speaks.
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Yesterday, above, in my garden.  Climbing rose into the Crape Myrtle.
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Best part of this pic?  I'm standing in the street with a dozen working class houses intruding.  Yet for this ephemeral fragment, gardenese owns the space.  My house is behind this tapestry hedge.  In this moment you don't know the location, acreage, era or reality.  I am fluent in gardenese.  Looks a bit wild, yet totally designed, rustic.  And you see the role Monet played.  Hint of another story, in Italy, in the pic too.
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My soul would have withered, living here, without my garden.   Yet with my garden, though I've traveled the globe on the hunt for historic gardens, there is a bedrock epiphany, I travel farthest in my garden.
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Like the story from Dr. Zhivago, this talent for extravagant travel within my garden, 'It is a gift.'
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Soon, I'll be living an hour east of my garden.  Like Karen Blixen, after leaving, I will never return.  In my new garden, I know I can return any time.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Top pic via Trip Advisor.

Weddings, Graduates, Joy, Rudeness

Greatly anticipated, I went to a bridal shower last weekend.  

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The bride, fresh master's degree, and new career, made a brilliant choice for her new married life.  He will be in law school, in another state, while she is thriving in her new job.   Copying her parents commuter marriage, she will have the same.

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Her thinking never entered my head, graduating college in the 80's.  You go girl !

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Enjoyed meeting her pack of well educated girlfriends.  Another common thread amongst them?  Like the bride, they are a posse of old souls.  Strongly sense, decades of threads between them, sometimes tight, often at a great distance, but never further than the phone.

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I brought the rudeness, with intention.  Arrived early to get pics of the garden, it's a favorite home/garden.  And, knew the husband would still be there for a walk/talk.  He was taking out a bag of trash while I parked.  Indeed, my skills of timing rudeness are well honed.

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He forgot the rest of his chores, and off we went, lost in our little world of gardening.  I knew his wife needed him.  Your point?

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Quite a few things to show off, and a huge dilemma.  We both knew our time was limited, but we fit it all in.

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My ultimate rudeness, at the end of this tale.

Eggs from their chickens, a cooking lesson for her famous banana pudding.

Their home is new construction, to look old.

Seated at several tables, luncheon was served in courses.

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Appetizer was Barefoot Contessa tomato soup, shredded Gruyere cheese on top, served in a white ironstone coffee mug, set on a plate with homemade herbed butter & petite cornbread.

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Lunch was chicken salad, mixed green salad, and a frozen jello fruit/vegetable medallion.

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When the banana pudding arrived, it was in a punch cup, with silver spoon, on a plate with a surprise, homemade fudge brownie & a pair of decadent ripe strawberries foliage still attached.

Buying a ca. 1900 home, I went thru my friend's home with new eyes, a great seminar, without words, only examples.
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Historic accuracy, below, with ceiling, moulding, picture rail, painting arrangement, curtains, her master bedroom.  Amazingly, her corner cabinet, small white table, lamp, painting, I already own close variations of.

 As promised, my ultimate rudeness, below.

Never saw an azalea potted like this, almost a bonsai.  Toad, of Toad Hall, could not have been more expedite in wanton selfishness than I.  Eight year old Tara, on full display.  Here's the thing about serious, into the DNA, gardeners, their 8 year old self will respond to you.  Nothing is rudeness, it's necessity to life/breathing.
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"Where did you get that?"  "A man I know does them."  "Can I have one?"  "Yes, I can get you one next week."  "No, I'm moving, I'll want it in July."
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Haven't moved in, and thoughts are swirling where this new treasure will be placed, immediately, and in the long term.  Perhaps on a step to the new Conservatory that won't be built for at least a year.  Why a year?  How could I possible know sooner?  Must LIVE in the house, the land, discover the axis and so much more.
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Didn't I have a most successful bridal shower?
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Garden & Be Well,     XOTara
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Pics taken at the bridal shower.  Facebook has been a joy the past couple of months.  Friends children graduating college and many becoming engaged.  Exciting times.  And, thank you to the parents, USA needs the children you've produced and educated.  Unable to have children, cannot imagine my cats driving a car, moving away for college, or their own lives.  Nope, kitties stay with me.  How you parents are doing this, I don't know !

Recognizing 'Flow'

Built, in the Republic of Texas, from 1839-1841, below, this pic, 1934, stopped my eyes, at the dead-end. Knowing, 'The more entry ways a landscape has, the better a landscape is.',
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How badly does this 'dead-end' bother you?  Did you see it immediately?



Same home, below, pic taken, 1934.



Much better.  Instead of 2 dead-ends, above, at the porch, 2 entry ways.  Function, form, and metaphor, yes, breathing better.
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Came across these pics studying for a 1900 home I've begun working on.
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Two take-aways from the pic, above.  White trim/siding, and lattice style/placement.  A good find, color & lattice style, chosen.  Whew, client is a tough cookie.  My favorite type.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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pics Enclosure Take Refuge.

Fast Company: Science, Brains, High Ceilings

In a subdivision, along the side of the house, I've done this design, below, dozens of times.  It's a formula that never tires.  Allee of trees, shrubs, path, and done.
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Yet, why does this condensed space, typically between 2 houses, live 'large' ?



Creating a patio/terrace/deck garden room, below, again, I wonder, "what makes this small space live so large?"



Inside, below, with a vanishing threshold into the garden, I ask myself, "Why does this room live so big?"




Years spent wondering why my little garden, surrounded much-too-closely with neighbors at every view, lives so entirely large.  More, how does a small space live large AND feel like it's living on another continent in a different era?
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Seriously, years.  College degrees in engineering & horticulture, decades of reading garden/architecture books, decades attending garden lectures/symposia, with zero mention of small space gardens living large.
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Slow, but the answer arrived.  The sky.  All of the above Garden Designs use the SKY as an element.  Garden Design frames the sky.  Better, you own the sky.  No matter where the sky goes near your home, you own it.
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Another word for 'sky' in Garden Design?  Ceiling.
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This is going somewhere important, stay with me.
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High ceilings, in real estate, cost more money.  Across cultures/era/continents humans pay a premium for high ceilings.  Why?  Science, now, has an answer.

"... participants were more likely to judge a room beautiful if it had a high ceiling compared with a low ceiling. But the greater insight emerged when Vartanian and collaborators studied brain activity. They found heightened activity related to high ceilings in the left precuneus and left middle frontal gyrus—two areas associated with visuospatial exploration. The left precuneus, in particular, has been found to increase in cortical thickness after spatial navigation training.

So another part of the appeal of high ceilings seems to be that they capture our visual attention and engage our desire to observe our surroundings. Vartanian and company ruled out other explanations based on the imaging data, including the possibility that high ceilings simply put us in a good mood. That idea didn't pan out because participants looking at high and low ceilings showed no fMRI difference in brain regions related to pleasure, emotion, or reward."...

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Garden Design, using the sky, wields a potency to our brains we cannot produce ourselves.  Amusing.  Another tidbit from Providence, the first Garden Designer, and best.  

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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara

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Pics, above, Pinterest board, Vanishing Threshold.

From Fast Company, the full article:

Why Our Brains Love High Ceilings

Not just for bragging rights.

One of the first things a realtor will point out to prospective home buyers or apartment tenants is a high ceiling. To many of us, anything above the standard eight-foot ceiling is a big selling point. In recent times, home buyers have tended to pony up for the amenity of nine-foot ceilings; in the abstract, when added heights aren't adding to mortgages or rents, people prefer their ceilings 10 feet high.

Part of the appeal of high ceilings is no doubt related to a general preference for space, but the behavioral and brain evidence suggests there's more to it than that. Some research from a few years back ties high ceilings to a psychological sense of freedom. And new neuroimaging work shows that a tall room triggers our tendencies toward spatial exploration.

"You can imagine that our enjoyment of rooms with higher ceilings could be due to these two processes working in tandem," psychologist Oshin Vartanian of the University of Toronto-Scarborough tells Co. Design. "On the one hand, such rooms promote visuospatial exploration, while at the same time they prompt us to think more freely. This could be a rather potent combination for inducing positive feelings."

A Liberated Mindset

A few years ago, marketing scholars Joan Meyers-Levy and Rui Zhu wanted to see whether the height of a ceiling had any impact on the way a person thinks. So they recruited test participants for a number of different experiments and modified the study rooms so that some had 10-foot ceilings and others had (false) eight-foot ceilings. Meyers-Levy and Zhu also hung up Chinese lanterns so participants would look up and, consciously or not, process the ceiling height.

Working in a high-ceiling environment (left) put participants in a freer, more abstract mindset than did a low-ceiling setting.Via Journal of Consumer Research

Across several experiments, the researchers found evidence that high ceilings seemed to put test participants in a mindset of freedom, creativity, and abstraction, whereas the lower ceilings prompting more confined thinking.

In one test, for instance, participants in the 10-foot room completed anagrams about freedom (with words such as "liberated" or "unlimited") significantly faster than participants in the eight-foot room did. But when the anagrams were related to concepts of constraint, with words like "bound or "restricted," the situation played out in reverse. Now the test participants with 10-foot ceilings finished the puzzles slower than those in the eight-foot rooms did.

Another experiment asked participants to identify commonalities among a list of 10 different sports. Those in the high-ceiling group came up with more of these themes, and had their themes judged more abstract in nature, compared with participants in the low-ceiling group. Meyers-Levy and Zhu suspect this outcome emerged from the psychological freedom that comes with taller ceilings—a mindset that might also enhance creative thinking.

Rooms with high ceilings prompt us to think more freely.

Altogether, they conclude in a 2007 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, the research "shows that, by activating freedom-related or confinement-related concepts, ceiling height can be an antecedent of type of processing."

Ceiling Brain Scans

The new neuroscience study, led by Vartanian, had test participants look at 200 images of rooms while in a brain scanner. Half of the pictures showed rooms with high ceilings, half with low (below). Participants had an easy job: indicate whether they considered the room "beautiful" or "not beautiful." (The data actually came from an earlier study that looked at why our brains like curvy architecture, but were reanalyzed through the lens of ceiling height.)

Courtesy Oshin Vartanian

Little surprise, participants were more likely to judge a room beautiful if it had a high ceiling compared with a low ceiling. But the greater insight emerged when Vartanian and collaborators studied brain activity. They found heightened activity related to high ceilings in the left precuneus and left middle frontal gyrus—two areas associated with visuospatial exploration. The left precuneus, in particular, has been found to increase in cortical thickness after spatial navigation training.

So another part of the appeal of high ceilings seems to be that they capture our visual attention and engage our desire to observe our surroundings. Vartanian and company ruled out other explanations based on the imaging data, including the possibility that high ceilings simply put us in a good mood. That idea didn't pan out because participants looking at high and low ceilings showed no fMRI difference in brain regions related to pleasure, emotion, or reward.

The findings, reported in a recent issue of the Journal of Environmental Psychology, should be considered preliminary given the study's limitations. For one thing, the test couldn't control for factors besides ceiling height that might have led to "beautiful" ratings, such as the lighting or color scheme or curved design. And, of course, people weren't physically standing in a room with high ceilings, which could change the experience.

Higher ceilings activated the precuneus (left) and middle frontal gyrus—brain areas associated with spatial explortation.Via Journal of Environmental Psychology

But Vartanian says the research—in conjunction with the earlier work linking ceiling height and freedom—does add to our understanding of why people find high ceilings worthy of a real-estate premium.

"The combination of psychological and neural data can help us formulate a more complete picture of what is driving our choices," he says. "Knowing that people's preference for rooms with higher ceilings might be driven by the ability of those spaces to promote visuospatial exploration helps partly explain why people opt to live in such spaces, despite the fact that they cost more to purchase and maintain."

Furniture in the Garden: Windsor

George Washington's Windsor chairs, below.  




Shopping with a client yesterday, Atlanta's Merchandise Mart, something new, below.


George Washington would have been thrilled at their material, cast aluminum.


Cocktail table, above, dinner table, below.



Available in several colors.  Scaled to historical perfection, comfortable, light weight.
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Designed, manufactured by Three Coins Cast.  Beyond this you are on your own resourcing them.
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Finally, a new (old) silhouette for the garden.
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At the start of my Garden Design career, 3 decades ago, I knew I had to get clients outside, into their landscape, to ensure they wanted to install their Garden Design plan.  Plans included furnishing the deck/patio.  Ironically, a garden zone NOT included in my horticulture degree.  Paint colors, light fixtures, pots, etc.....too.
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You might like my Furniture in the Garden Pinterest board.  
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

Front Door: Before & After

Lovely home, below, builder-special landscaping.




What, below, happened?



Adjusting eyeballs back into sockets, the before/after leave only questions.  Did new owners move in?  How much property for the site, for the front yard?  What does the backyard look like, too small, slope, etc?  Who's brilliant idea to treat the front yard as a back yard?  Painting the brick, yes.
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Every penny of this hardscape goes into house value.  Wooooowzzzzzza.
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Views from inside the home changed.  Lifestyle of the home changed.
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Historic garden design, nothing new.  However, totally new here.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics Page/Duke.

Garden Design: How to Handle the Car/Driveway

Beloved accuses me of being too wildly appreciative of the simplest elements of life.  Therein lies my wealth, is my response.
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Since the chicken coop massacre, a month ago, the pair of profoundly wounded hens are healing well. But, cannot get to their roost at dark.  Every evening I lift my girls to their roost.  This task enriches my soul beyond measure.  Merely thinking, 'I need to go lift my girls', as the chiaroscuro of dusk goes entirely black, makes my day.
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I keep a journal of pairs of words, and have begun noticing pictures insert themselves as pairs.  The latter due to Pinterest, for sure.  Favorite Pinteresting spot?  Claw foot tub, glass of wine, Pinteresting on my large galaxy note, cat sleeping nearby.  Ridiculous, my bad, told myself when the tub was put in a few years ago, 'no technology - only books.'  Lost the battle, joined the winner.




New landscape, above, with an old soul.  Adored, immediately, eyes locked/loaded, the car entry.  A lot of challenges in this landscape, myriad.  Each solution, a winner.  Why the car entry, so much?  Its location, scale, needs, necessities are each diminished, in abeyance to greater drama/importance, the front door.  Owner/designer got every layer right, including the 1st layer, William Morris's, "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."   "The true secret of happiness lies in the taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life."
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I must know who you are at the curb.  Want to see, above, their interiors, art, books on the shelves, colors....  Garden design, above, is as beautiful in winter as summer/spring/fall.  Low maintenance & eco.



This garden, above, honors the car gods, and slab-of-concrete-god.  Parking court reigns supreme.  Front door?  Welcome, ye car.  Welcome, people?  When the annuals die, shrubs stop blooming, what's left?  
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There is power in awakening to,  "...genuine interest in all the details of daily life."  Aside from increasing property value, decreasing HVAC costs, above, this homeowner will have less stress/frustration with caretaking their landscape and increased pleasure/calm/peace/atonement once the epiphany arrives, my garden needs to be ME.
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An afternoon Garden Design class, using only these two pics, is enough.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Top pic, Cote de Texas.  Bottom pic, here.
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Bottom pic is common USA landscape story.  House built, builder landscape, keep for decades, done.

Flowers vs Structure

Thinking backwards, creates my career.  Supporting backwards thinking are the big box, many independent garden centers, websites, newspapers, magazines, flower shows, and etc.
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In amusement, at myself, former queen of backwards thinking, you will discover zero rapprochement here.
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Flowers.  Sex machines.  I've taught college botany, but that was much later in the game.
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You want flowers in your landscape.
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Your landscape wants structure.
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A decade of learning across continents & another college degree separates the previous 2 sentences.
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Structure?  Trees, shrubs, groundcovers.  Game on.  Choose for zone, sun/shade, across all bloom/berry seasons, hardiness against drought/flood/disease/insect, no need for chemicals/fertilizers/irrigation once established, little maintenance, siting to shade/sun the house, and attractiveness to pollinators, and destinations for dining, and pure redolence in the sublime, in atonement or a gathering.
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Structured landscape, below.




Flowers, give me flowers, below.  Have this garden if you want, below, but do not start with this garden.  Start with structure, above.



Adore this pair of pictures.
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I began, after college, gardening for amusement, above, after decades trying to get it right, top picture, I've learned a garden is about stewardship.  Better, stewardship is reciprocal.  Settle for mere lilies?  Place lilies in context, structure, they will take care of themselves/soil/air/insects/wildlife/beneficial bacteria-fungi.  Plant lilies first, and you've planted your garden backwards.
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This isn't an admonishment about not having flowers, it's a path to having them more richly, and easily.  Not only for yourself, but myriad layers you've yet to arrive upon.
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Garden & Be Well,        XO Tara
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Top pic from here.    Bottom pic via Pinterest.  Which garden is gone by morning, eaten by deer !   Truly, this pair of pictures makes me smile, and know I'm blessed to be living a life that kicked me out of the first layer.  Did I like every layer Providence gave?  No.  Check out my Quotes board on Pinterest.   Pure grace, and thanks, Providence decided to site the theatrics of my life in a garden & career much adored.

Free Garden Design

Modern 2,000+ years ago.  Modern today.
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No need to be an expert, to understand why garden centers are not 'on board'.



Calm.  Facade, bench, pots, gravel, fade their colors into each other.  I see the silhouette of branches in winter striking the house, and gravel.  I hear the leaves, wind rustled, see their fall colors.  Gravel crunching underfoot.
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This house doesn't make the Garden Design special, instead, the choice to have this Garden Design is special.
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Free Garden Design.  Equally at home with a brick ranchburger ca. 1963, pioneer cabin, starter home, $2 million home in a gated community.
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Myriad choices made with this Garden Design.  Especially adore all of the 'no' choices.
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Why is this Garden Design harder to choose than keeping foundation plantings, installed by the builder, and a pocked lawn needing mow/blow/go, fertilizers poisoning groundwater, zero aesthetics to increase property value, no choices for plantings to reduce hvac expenses, no thought for color, or pulling the foot outside to enjoy Nature?
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Picture from here.

Clive Nichols: Shooting Gardens at the Edge

Clive Nichols, below.  He shoots a garden, and it is his garden, yet given away as shutter snaps.

Of course you want your feet to crunch on the gravel, above, and walk thru that door. I have walked thru dozens of these graveled doorways across continents & countries, Clive Nichols shoots them exactly as they are in the memory of sparking brain cells.  His shots capture the owner's fantasy & caretakers hands, and my moments being there.



Repeatedly, Clive Nichols shows the beauty of the present, above, yet greater enticements soon to arrive, in the bud.  Perhaps this is his talent, capturing the frisson of life's potent edge, the margins of change.  Providence.  Atonement in the cusp of change, abiding in the moment caught.
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Clive does not bring his equipment into any garden for amusement.  His skills are used in stewardship.



These are not olive trees, above, with breeze blown lavender.  No.  You are walking thru lavender and touching olive branches as you pass.



More than 'how' to shoot, Clive Nichols, knows 'what' to shoot.  He owns the rose, above, yet gives it away, both, in the same moment.  A truth about  gardens.  No matter the 'owner', a garden is given to all who see.




Clive, you unmask me, in a quick snap, above.  The snows of early summer have begun, above, with petals falling to the ground.  Tara Turf, winding past temporary focal points with the roses in bloom, and the subsidiary focal point with a watering can on the chair, Tara's Garden Design Rule: Just Let It Touch, a chair leg just-brushing the taller Tara Turf, rose foliage caressing a chair's shoulder, a petal fallen on the watering can, color theme chosen, scent of a mown path's new growth, scent of the taller Tara Turf, musky, redolent of native bees honey still being skewered into their pollen basket with nectar, and the gift of letting us have hints of roses on the wind, as you do.  (Wowza, that turned into a free, Garden Design Class - All About Subsidiary Focal Points.)





Nothing 'modern' in a garden is new.  Nothing.  New gardeners think there is a difference amongst styles of gardens across centuries, including our own moment.  Clive keeps shooting his own way, knowing the newest of gardens is as old as the earliest recorded.




Designer, owner, caretaker, time as it takes that trinity across occupants, above, Clive captures the earnestness of heart-on-your-sleeve gardening.



My garden study tours across the globe have been the most thrilling/exhausting work I've ever done.  Up at 4am for breakfast, riding the bus to another garden for a day's allotment of 2-3, rain/shine.  Clive Nichols captures exactly, above, the moment 4am-toil-expense-inconvenience, gone.  And, I can smell the freshly mown low Tara Turf, above, hear the water, feel the morning rays, understand dimensions, feel the proportions, intuit the age of focal points-trees-shrubs...turn toward axis, understand why they are there, showing off, or hinting at seduction.
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It isn't my interest to shoot like Clive Nichols.  My interest is designing gardens Clive wants to shoot.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Clive Nichols teaches photography classes, here.  Perhaps, in the fullness of time, I will take my own photography from the edge of being a Clive Nichols, to being a Clive Nichols.  Hunger still too strong to create those gardens Clive wants to shoot.  However, would love to attend a Clive Nichols seminar.  Perhaps one of my clients, with frequent flier miles, a barn with accommodations, a garden on site to shoot, and several nearby could sponsor something like this?  Acquiring Clive Nichols in their garden, shooting, as reward.