Curb Appeal Before Entering the Front Porch

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

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

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

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

Contorted & Twisted

Take advantage of contorted & twisted.  Honor them.

No lawn, no mulch, above.
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Yet elegance reigns.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic Susanne Hudson's garden this month.  Had the good fortune to spend the nite when the crabapple was blooming.  In the morning we had coffee in the library with the crabapple blossoms filling the horizon, backlit by the morning sun.  An unexpected 'life' moment.

Big Garden Design Rule

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

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

Said Without Words

Simplicity, beauty, easy maintenance, and saying, "Welcome", without words on a stupid sign or flag or doormat.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Susanne Hudson's garden, pic taken earlier this month.

What's the View from Your Porch Door?

Diffusing the view, Kimberly Queen, below.  Tolerates full baking sun or part shade, and she's not a shaggy mess unlike the Boston fern.

On perfect axis with the porch door, below, she diffuses the view in too.  Aka, double axis.

The lattice?  Regular, common, off the shelf, a disaster for any home but, in context, understandable here.  This home was rescued and is the Cultural Arts Center in Douglasville, Georgia.
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Back to the lattice.  For pennies more special order panels with thicker wood slats, they look custom.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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The fern stand is real, and almost a century old.  Been decades since it held a fern.  Pics taken earlier this month at the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival in Douglasville, GA.

The Table You Want on Your Porch

Rescued: door, windows, stool.  

Love the sexy lines of this stool, we chose it first so more galvanized accouterments placed for balance.  

    

 Dinner table, floral arranging table, potting table, styled table.  Whatever, they're FREE.

During the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival we caught many pairs of friends sitting, visiting, enjoying the breeze, loving the views.

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Susanne Hudson & I sat in the chairs admiring our work.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken earlier this month at the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival.  The porch got bigger with the furniture added.  Why?  More function added along with the beautiful forms.   How did Susanne & I get the porch done, we schlepped everything you see into place.  

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No magic minions.

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Passion is the magic.

Garden Path: Before & After

Leading to our porch garden, below.  Iron gates roped to the trees.  

Yes, horrendous security gates reborn with grace.

After the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival, below.  Hard to imagine the gates were ever there.

Terra cotta pots, top pic, are Cinderella-after-the-ball, below.

In my garden, above, the pots are still where I unloaded them.
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"Scope for the imagination", as Anne of Green Gables would say.
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Garden & Be Well,        XO Tara
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More of the garden Susanne Hudson & I created for the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival.
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Taking down a display garden is quite depressing.  It feels like the killing of a soul.

Air Conditioners: Before & After

If you have an eyesore put a focal point nearby.  

2 weeks ago Susanne Hudson & I created a garden/porch for the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival.

Our garden beliefs: simple, historic, focal points, axis, comfort, beauty & simplest.

 We pride ourselves on how little we can put in a garden.

We bought very little for our display garden.  Breezing thru with what we already own.  Proving our beliefs in what we created.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics taken earlier this month.  Hydrangea 'Blushing Bride' in the galvanized tubs.
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Nurseries don't like Susanne or me.  They want to sell you annuals & perennials, mostly.  Many independent garden centers have been slammed in this economy and are gone.   I know why.  They forgot gardens are what people want intuitively, from their soul.  Without knowing it, most people are intuitive gardeners/designers.  What they don't trust, within themselves, is the counterintuitive skillset garden design demands. 

Mass Market Annuals?

Mass market annuals are one of the least sustainable-eco-green things produced.

Insecticides, fungicides, weed-killers, water, electricity, heating, plastic, gasoline, trucks, soil, labor.
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Compare to a packet of self-seeding annuals or the vignette, above.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic same garden as previous post.  I was a professional grower for years.  We grew from plugs, seeds, cuttings.  Mostly plugs.  Adored doing the hydrangea cuttings late each summer.
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Mass market annuals do have their place & when needed I always put Jenny Hardgrave's company, Simply Flowers on the plan.

Perfect Front Porch

Of course the patina of the rooster is white.  It's her theme.

To the left of their front door, below.

To the right of their front door, below.

Mary Poppins said it best, "Practically perfect in every way."
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic same garden as previous post.

Basement Door is now the Dowager's Porch

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

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

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

Color theme was chosen and leveraged with punches of yellow.

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

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

Keeping Plain, Plain

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

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

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

Using Words in the Garden

Be wary of words in a garden.  

Welcome?  Don't have it in a 'word', say it with your front door, paint color, light fixture, door mat, plants, & etc.
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Let 'words' in your garden be subsidiary focal points, amplified in the song of your garden.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken near my front door last week.  A Christine Sibley piece.  Of course bought long before she died.  The ivy 'Gold Heart' is not aggressive.

Perhaps the Right Choice is....

What do you need to get rid of?  When Susanne Hudson came to choose colors for my interior she also moved furniture.  Then, literally, she picked up and threw out my sisal rug.  This was at least a decade overdue.

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1-2 times each month I do the same thing with clients.

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Mostly it's pots or their entire patio 'set'.  

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Today, look around your garden, what are you not seeing anymore?  

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If I came to your garden what would I throw out?

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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara

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Pic, lost provenance.

Choose a Theme then Overdose

 Choose a theme, Overdose on your Theme.

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Orchard House, (aka my starter home in a working class neighborhood of cluster homes ca. 1986, today.)

Feng shui has it right about gardens, better than any garden class, 'you must be able to flow easily around your property.'  Like Mrs. Wilcox I adore walking round my garden.  E. M. Forster knew women.  Coop, below,  is mostly rescued materials.  Why not boxwood, roses, itea, hydrangea, camellia, daphne?  The coop is worthy.

View across the drive, below, with front loading garage.  Some jurisdictions have outlawed my type of home.  Too unfriendly.  Garagecentric.  No worries, it is my starter home, here 5 years & off to something more worthy of my magnificence.

It's obvious I had to do more growing than the garden.

I'm particularly pleased with this bit at the side of my garage, above.  Though the white roses lost their graft and only the root stock is left.  Reminds me of an old vicarage wall .
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Did you see the neighbor's houses?  Why would you?  You've entered my world.  An old cottage......  and become lost in my theme.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken in my garden last week.

How to Use Heads in Design

Got heads?

They're for

exterior, and

interior.
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Have you noticed a formula for your favorite interiors & exteriors?  Not into formulas?  No worries, formulas are nothing more than Shopping Lists!  Now, I have your attention.
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I've always been drawn to interiors with heads & ......
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In my garden is a decades old collection of broken heads.  Most were a $1.
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Top pic from same home/garden as previous post.  Bottom pics Nicky Haslam, via Cote de Texas article.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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More than heads, bodies too.  And urns with plinths.

Front Porch: Chain Rail

Lunch, below, this week.  Every home seen from the chair I sat in was a century old and white clapboard.  

Front porch columns each have iron rings, below, for chains lost to history, I've already designed their replacement.

With their 'swag' to mach the arch, below.

Will copy a pair of the columns, deeper into the garden, as entry to a garden room with enfilade from the front sidewalk.
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Repetition.
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Notice the power lines, bottom pics?  The bane of my existence for a mature camellia I wish to keep and limb-up into a tree.  They will contact the power company to see what can be done.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics same garden as yesterday's post.

Let Simplicity Serve Your Needs

There isn't a lot here yet the magic is intense.

Narrative.  Simplicity.  Choices.
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"What plant should I put here?", I'm asked often.  It's not the right question, in return I ask, "How do you want to live?"
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic The Vintaquarian.  Remember this trinity: Narrative.  Simplicity.  Choices.  What is your garden, today, answering?

Choosing Color for a Fence & Fixing a View

May Day, yesterday, at one of my jobsites, below.

White fence?  Not happening.  Made the space smaller & became a focal point.  Detracting from the focal point of the home.

Now, above/below, a blend-into-the-background Benjamin Moore Alexandria Beige.

See the stop sign, roads, & home across the street?  Of course you do.  Ouch.
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Soon evergreens in a tapestry hedge, with fruit trees, will create a garden with grounds and no offensive views.
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Can it get better?  Yes, using existing evergreen shrubs needing to be moved anyway.
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Garden & Be Well,         XO Tara
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Pics sent from client.  Lucky children, my last May Day pole was in the 60's.