Design Rule for Cute

One is not in control of which pictures will grasp the heart.

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Did owner of the apartment or building decide life could go no further without a bee skep at its corner?

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Totally sexist, was it a man or woman who originated this idea?

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What inspired, specifically, the bee skep and its placement?

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How was the artist chosen to create the bee skep?

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What is the bee skep made of?

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How was the scale of the bee skep chosen?

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4 bees, is there significance with '4' bees?

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How is the bee skep attached?

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How many people did it take to attach the bee skep?

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How much did the bee skep cost, how much was the labor to attach the bee skep?

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What era & country of origin is this particular bee skep based upon?

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What type of bees were chosen for the bee skep, what are they made of?

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Cute?

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Hardly.

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Whimsical. 

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Totally.

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Beyond whimsical, a statement.

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What statement does the owner intend?  Literal, metaphor, reality, spiritual, a mix...

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Remember, the more you go inward, the more you outwardly connect.

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Garden design rule for cute,  

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Cute Kills.

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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

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Pic via Pinterest on my Focal Points board.

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Have enjoyed the shrinking of the aisles of cute garden resin products at Wal-Mart as the economy readjusts.  

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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.

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NOTE to my gardening friends... look for changes to come. 

Knew before computers/cell phones, sitting in Atlanta traffic on way to a client, 'I must reach a larger audience with the same amount of effort.'   Soon after that epiphany I signed my CBS-TV, and, books contracts on the same day.

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Then I read an article in the NYTimes about something called 'blogging'.  Saved the article for a year before reading it.  Studied all the blogs they mentioned, hired a computer expert they quoted, and attended a blogging seminar.

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Blogging 2.0 has arrived, my knowledge is 1.0.  A believer in copying the best historic gardens across the globe it flows into every arena of life.  Watching Maria Killam grow her career/blog/life over the past 3 years made its impact.  Signed up  for a year's course with her blogging expert, Jon Morrow. 

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Changes will be slow, plodding is my adored method.  Pulling triggers here/there is spice in the mix.
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What do YOU want?

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Nothing is too small, too big, or too ego crushing to mention.

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Passion lies in sharing what has filled me to the depths of grace, joy & atonement, the best landscapes created over the last 2,000+ years.

Just so you know... 
 I  welcome your input.

5 Ways to Get Subsidiary Focal Points Right

Not a focal point, below, but a grand subsidiary focal point.

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Garden Design Rule: One Focal Point per Area.

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Not my rule, but agreed to.

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What to do?  Invent another rule.

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Focal Points are allowed subsidiary focal points nearby if they recede, touch foliage, don't draw attention.   Can be numerous if properly chosen & sited.

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Focal Points & Subsidiary Focal Points must both be so wonderful they will be fought over at your estate sale.

Pots must be so wonderful they can remain empty.  This young man, above, has dead plantings and he's fabulous.
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More, he flows with the style of the home's interior.
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Dogs, 3 young children, parents each own a business, they have farm property nearby, and a lake house.
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Get the picture?  Zero time for the garden.

Designing for women 80+, taught me how to truly design with tough love.  A huge honor, and weight.  They demand beauty, must have unskilled labor to maintain & little of it, something coming into bloom every 2 weeks, focal points on axis from inside views into the garden.  Nothing can go wrong with the garden.  Nothing.  Health issues arise, the house needs a new roof, a toilet floods.  If the garden has issues, they may decide to move.  It is my goal, their garden gives strength & joy to carry on in their home.  
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic this week in a client garden.
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 For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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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.

Garden Design Rule for Eyesores & Terrible Garden Gifts

This client was not home at the start of my work.

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I lasted an hour before I HAD to Move-The-Duck.

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Wish they had hired me before the new concrete walkway, and electrical outlet.
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Not much to do, if the dressed duck must stay.  Did you know there is a Garden Design Rule for this situation?  If you have an eyesore, place a focal point nearby.
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Doubt my professor imagined this dressed duck as a focal point.
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However, when children, grandchildren, or the toughest, a bit too prickly daughter-in-law are involved, the fill-in-the-blank must be 'displayed'.

Now, the dressed duck is drawing the eye away from the electrical box and providing welcome at the steps.
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A mentor said, "It's what we do with what we have."
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This garden has a child.  The duck will happily stay as long as the dressed duck magic is needed for her.
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The prickly daughter-in-law?  Easy, use her gift prominently in the garden for a few months then it has an 'accident'.  Tree limb, wind, ice, when it is safely taken to the thrift store.  In one garden the offensive item, a resin dollar store birdbath, could not be easily 'lost', that daughter-in-law had prickles of toxic steel.  The birdbath was horrendous.  Epiphany !  I designed a creeping fig at the base to engulf the offensive birdbath turning it into something lovely.
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Knocking at a friend's door for a lunch date I locked eyes on her new wind chime, melted glass beer bottles hanging from fishing line on a bit of tree root, then her.  She merely said, "My step-daughter."  I replied, "It fell and broke into shards."  Now you know the story of that thrift store item.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken at a jobsite this spring.  In the South terrible garden gifts are received with a smiling exclamation, "You shouldn't have, bless your heart."

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.

Three Best Mistakes to Make in Your Landscape

Choose to make garden mistakes on the side of too simple, too little, too plain.

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Better to want more later than dig-up, move plantings, replace a now-thought-cheap/tacky-bench, regret the shape-style-color-of.....

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Long term, cute in a garden grates.  Whimsy is better.

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Be wary of 'words' in a garden.  They hold thoughts hostage that should flow randomly, Cole Porter's, Don't Fence Me In.

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Of course there are exceptions to all of the above.  Indeed.

This morning, above/below, Tomato & Hydrangea.  Perfect name for a spiked tea & scones cafe.

Feeding cats & chickens, assessing what the night wrought & will it rain today.

Tomato still in its peat pot with cellophane wrap & tags.  Awaiting a much larger pot & bamboo cane trellis.  Perhaps this weekend?  Hydrangea blossoms hanging lower, petal margins crispier, will I cut to dry or leave to enjoy from the windows?

Calm.  Boring is good.  Idle chit-chat in the head.

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Something new to learn about Social Media.  Facebook cannot control pictures during war.  Images seen cannot be unseen, merely absorbed into a safe, prayerful, place.

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Again, my Garden working for me.

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Have you watched the award winning foreign film, Burnt by the Sun ?    "The film depicts the story of a senior Red Army officer and his family during the Great Purge of the late 1930s in the Stalinist Soviet Union. Like a tragedy bySophocles, Burnt by the Sun takes place over the course of one day."  Wikipedia

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Oddly, it's beautiful. 

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Glad it taught my heart to assimilate what I saw yesterday within mundane ubiquity of beauty in a tomato & hydrangea.  The gift of choices, health to act upon them, perhaps a dinner party in late summer honoring the last of the tomatoes.  With dried hydrangeas in a vase.

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This is freedom.

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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara

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Pics taken in my garden this morning.

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 For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

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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.

Words: Use with Caution in Styling

With some people, years ago, I learned not to share joyous news.  They took delight in diminishing my joy.  Another epiphany, not too long after, 'I choose the plants in my garden, choose the people in my life.'  Within seconds eject button pushed on several persons.

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Lightening life's load was instant.  No regrets decades later.  

Words in the garden, be wary of using them.  Words, most often, dominate any mood, any narrative, weather, ephemeral delicate beauties, etc.
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Gardens speak, without words.  It is the human cheapening their language.
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Instead of admonishing with a picture proving my 'words' I've chosen an exception.  Words in a garden providing pleasure.  If my garden needs a sign, 'Spring has Sprung', do not ever, in a lifetime galaxy of black holes, hire me.  My garden decadently overflows spring's bounty.  Front door, above, is not my home/garden, it belongs to a young woman.  Her mom renovated/styled the home, to perfection.  'Words', included !
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Love exceptions, and breaking rules.
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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.

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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.

What is the narrative of your garden?

Cute kills.

Whimsey is for the intellect.
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Pure narrative.  Got any in your garden?  These cats, this narrative, melts me.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Pic Deborah Silver, Dirt Simple.  She designs & owns a nursery.  Take the link, enjoy her shop.  Are there even 10 such shops in USA?
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This pair of cats are also, subsidiary focal points.  Name it to claim it.  I've had to name a lot of things in this garden design world.

Shoes: Stupid or Fabulous ?

 Remember when maternity clothes were covered in teddy bears, elephants & other stupidities?  Baby bags too?  I know, showing my age with these observations.  Gardening wear is stuck in that era of having a walnut for a brain.

Why are there no gardening shoes with these, above, as inspiration?
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Rubbers with flowers?  Ladybugs, grasshopers?  Gardening ensembles from hat to shoes are suitable for Aunt Clara.  Why not choose Samantha !!!!
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Garden & Be Well,            XO Tara
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Pic via Habitually Chic.

Color Echoes

Cute Kills in a garden

 Except when you like the cute.

 Pamela Harper wrote of color echoes in landscape design 2 decades ago.

 Advice to

follow.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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This is a new garden room.  It had been a few green meat balls & lawn.  Daylight basement level at the side of her home. 

Bathroom In The Barn, For The Help

Her jobsite is a bit far & I had to run for the powder room in her home every time I arrived.  Now, she's put a bathroom, below, into the Dairy Barn, for the help.

 Attentive in all she does I know the door was chosen & hung with care, below.

 Accouterments are perfecto, below.

 Incredible shower, below, and the right amount of whimsy with the milk can. 

 Good accident reflecting more lite, below.

 One entry to the Dairy Barn, a century old, below.  Made of

terra cotta blocks, painted its original white.
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Was on site yesterday placing flags & laying string for new plantings & drives.
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I must stop thanking her every time I come for this bathroom, for the help, in the Dairy Barn.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Who knew I would grow-up and WANT to be the help.  It means I'm doing another garden.  Doing what I love.

Richness In Simplicity

Simplicities in my house, below, intensify

 my garden view.

Landscapes & interiors are double axis.
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How does your landscape look from inside your home?  It is art on the wall at every window.  Whether you think so or not.
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How does your home look from your landscape?  It is the focal point of your landscape.  Whether you think so or not.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken yesterday, a gray day with rain.  No flash for the pics.  Light streaming in, indirectly, from the garden.  My floor, banister, stairs, and me, each bathed in garden light.

Cute: Curb Your Dog

About 7" tall, below.

Too cute.
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Remember, Cute Kills in a landscape design.
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There is an exception to every rule.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Flag Site

Landscape Design Rule: 1 focal point/area. Flags are focal points, frontdoors are focal points. Flags, sited at/near frontdoor diminish both.

Flags reeking of cute? Must I go there? A flag with the word 'Welcome'. Oh dear. Your home & garden say 'WELCOME'. Remember, CUTE KILLS.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic taken in my garden this month. The best gardens BREAK RULES.

Hobby Lobby ?

A greenhouse for table, wall, or to force bulbs indoors & the cats won't chew them up.

Did you know, Hobby Lobby sells a few garden things? Good size, weight & depth for this metal house, above/below.

Chinoiserie, below, what will it look like painted your color?

I don't have, below, this shape of cloche. Tempting, but it has plastic panes.

Prices comparable to a nursery. BUT, everything shown is 50% to 66% off. Oddly, most nurseries I go into don't have this merchandise.

Found my quarry, below, a small cloche.

In Italy I saw large urns filled with bronze plants used atop buildings as finials. Wish these metal flowers, below, came in more sizes.

Smallest tray, below, $5.

3 size terra cotta pots, cheapest I've seen anywhere recently.

Classic pieces. Each will be unique in your garden.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken over the weekend. Needed watercolors too for renderings of my Landscape Designs. A good shopping trip, found everything I needed. No, Hobby Lobby has no idea I'm doing this post.

GARDEN DESIGNERS BLOGLINK: TARA'S TRINITY OF THE SOUTHERN GARDEN

With, Tara's Trinity of the Southern Garden: Azaleas, Camellias, Hydrangeas, you'll have blooms everyday in your garden. Oakleaf hydrangea bloom late spring, mophead hydrangea bloom early summer & summer, 'Anna Belle' hydrangea bloom summer, 'Tardiva' & 'Pee Gee' hydrangea bloom late summer to frost. Above, lacecap hydrangea.

Southern Indica Azaleas, 'George Tabor', above, bloom in spring. They stand up to drought, bugs, cold. Use Exbury azaleas too, they bloom before 'George Tabor'.

Camellia sasanqua, above, bloom in fall. Camellia japonica bloom in winter.

Landscapes designed with evergreen hedges & entries, cultivate the eye, songbirds, & increase property value. Chinese snowball, above. Pathways should flow around your entire property, no dead ends. 'Tardiva' hydrangea blooming, above.

Use wit & whimsy in your landscape, above. Beware, CUTE, it's treacherous.

Start your landscape design from inside your home, Vanishing Threshold. Patio, above, viewed from my kitchen sink.

Design your landscape for February. It will be gorgeous all year. View, above, from my living room.

Site deciduous understory trees, crape myrtle, above, to shade your home from summer sun. Window, above, views stone terrace, below. Summer's blanket of rudbeckia gives way to smooth Tennessee gray flagstone the rest of the year.

If you're new to gardening in the South you'll adore, A Southern Garden by Elizabeth Lawrence, and, Hudson's Southern Gardening by Charles Hudson. Use your local Extension Service for specific advice to your county/state. The Garden In Winter, by Rosemary Verey is an incredible garden design book. My 5 books ( 3 on garden design, 2 on plants) are at the right, scroll down.

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Tara's Trinity Of The Southern Garden is gorgeous, low maintenance & a workhorse of your Southern garden design.

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Today is GARDEN DESIGNERS BLOGLINK across America. 12 garden designers sharing what's unique to their region. ENJOY !!!!!

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Jocelyn Chilvers (The Art Garden) – Wheat Ridge, CO
Susan Cohan (Miss Rumphius’ Rules) - Chatham, NJ
Michelle Derviss (Garden Porn) – Novato, CA
Dan Eskelson (Clearwater Landscapes Garden Journal) – Priest River, ID
Laura Livengood Schaub (Interleafings) – San Jose CA
Susan Morrison (Blue Planet Garden Blog) – East Bay, CA
Pam Penick (Digging) – Austin, TX
Susan Schlenger (Landscape Design Viewpoint) – Charlottesville, VA
Genevieve Schmidt (North Coast Gardening) – Arcata, CA
Ivette Soler (The Germinatrix) – Los Angeles, CA
Rebecca Sweet (Gossip in the Garden) – Los Altos, CA
Become a Fan of Blue Heron Landscape Design on Face book – http://bit.ly/yq1XT
Read the Blue Heron Landscapes Blog: http://www.bhld.wordpress.com/
Become a Fan of Blue Heron Landscape Design on Face book - www.bit.ly/yq1XT
Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ScottHokunson
Connect with me on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/scotthokunson

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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All pics my garden except hedge with window. Took that pic while writing one of my books.

SO OBVIOUS

Can you name this? SLEIGH PORT !!!!!
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Carport, heliport, airport............
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Yes, another pic from Susanne Hudson's last week. She named her Sleigh Port. The antique sleigh? Americans are larger now. A pair of young teens would fit. Two adults? Barely.

BROKEN HEADS

Working in the shed behind the greenhouse I had to be careful of spiders, snakes, rats & stacks of collapsing merchandise. I loved it!! The oddest rat scurried at my feet. I screamed. Thoughts in chaos. Why? The small black rat was in reality the BROKEN HEAD OF ST. FRANCIS, about 3" & black, rolling quickly by.
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Brain thought, RAT. Eyes saw a face.
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That began my BROKEN HEADS collection.
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Girlie, above, is about 4". She cost a $1 at some nursery. Another joy of my BROKEN HEAD collection? Cheap. One nursery tried to charge me $12 for a BROKEN HEAD, ha, I walked.
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Only the observant will discover my BROKEN HEADS collection in the garden.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

HEDGE FUND IN THE LANDSCAPE

Cute Kills in a landscape. Yes, another Tara Rule. Why?
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Often, cute, has lovely origins but in execution the effect is derivative, clumsy, pedantic. Cute hijacks thought processes. It's static. Not a dynamic statement. Nor timeless.
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What to do instead?
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WHIMSY.
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If hedges are the walls of garden rooms, shouldn't they have windows?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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I took this pic in Atlanta while Joel Tressler was shooting for my book.

DINKY STINKY

Beautiful homes with dreadful mailboxes are a particular pet peeve. They have such a Pin-The-Tail-On-The-Donkey picaresque quality.
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Susanne Hudson says, Dinky-Is-Stinky.
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This gorgeous house will soon have a new mailbox & planting. Graceous lawn will envelope the new mailbox & a vine will grace its exterior.
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No more dancing the Dinky Stinky.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara