The Zen of Formal

"...the ability to start out upon your own impulse is fundamental to the gift of keeping going upon your own terms, not to mention the further and more fulfilling gift of getting started all over again --- never resting upon the oars of success or in the doldrums of disappointment....Getting started, keeping going, getting started again --- in art and in life, it seems to me this is the essential rhythm..."
--- Seamus Heaney
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Most common phrase customers say when we meet, "Oh, I don't want anything formal."  Then proceed to describe what they want and show photos.  You know what's coming next.
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Every description, every photo of their dream garden, FORMAL.
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Pic, above, here.
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Classically formal dining room, above.  Graveled rectangle, focal point on axis, canopy/understory bushes/trees, walls, floor, flow, function, contrast, texture, seasons, sound. 
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Easily decorated for mid-century modern, or any style, zone, theme you desire.
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"Small change, small wonders --- these are the currency of my endurance and ultimately of my life." --- Barbara Kingsolver
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Show me your outdoor dining room.  Better, invite your friends to a meal.  Not there yet?  Want to be?  There lies your small change, small wonders. 
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No budget for outdoor furnishings for a bit?   Pair of saw horses with planks, as Martha Washington served myriad guests in their garden at Mount Vernon.  Better, improvise, rescue 'saw horses', and 'planks'.  With this mission, your outdoor dining room will be unique, though the garden design technique has been in use long BCE. 
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What is an outdoor dining room to you, if you don't have one now?  "The opportunity to experience yourself differently..." --- Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
 
Pic, above, here.
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"All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection.  So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible." --- William Faulkner
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Yes, you can do the impossible.  In the garden of your heart.  Sure it's impossible.  That's why it's there for you to do.  "We go on.  Because it is the hard thing to do.  And we owe ourselves the difficulty." --- Nikki Giovanni
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Touring a beautiful garden, with our British historic gardens expert and guide, after he had described a garden compost area feature we were standing in, a woman said, "That's inconvenient."  Quickly he responded, "Making love is work, but we do it."
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It is the difficulty of creating our garden, bringing its blessing.  Most often your 'difficulty' will be mental.  Seeing.  Seeing rightly, is the work.  And gift.
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Pic, above, here.
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"Clear your mind of 'can't." --- Samuel Johnson.
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Pic, above, here.
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Thrilling.  Beyond thrilling, above.  So little there, yet it's a garden.  Living in a ca. 1938 starter home or 1990 cluster home?  Garden Design, above, is for you too.
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Pic, above, here.
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Trees as total Garden Design, above.  You cannot go wrong choosing this path.  More, choose a tough native pollinator tree.  Choose to pollard, prune them to shape. 
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"And so we turn the page over/To think of starting.  This is all there is." --- John Ashbery
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Pic, above, here.
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How many times has this Garden Design been done across centuries.  This one leaves no gardener or garden or home behind.
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Works every time. 
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In a typical USA subdivision, this is a good Garden Design, above, to copy, and site a hedge of evergreens at the front of your lawn.  Tall enough to hide the road & cars, for sure, maybe tall enough to hide your first story.  Depends on your location, views, noise.
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Pic, above, here.
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The Well Placed Chair, above.  You know you've designed a good garden, when, in season, Nature takes over all your efforts.  Laughing at you.  And you like it. 
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Pic, above, here.
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Use pots that won't break, trees tolerating your zone, and drip irrigation, above.
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Adore how little is in the garden, above.  It's Tara Turf, green ball, hedge, canopy tree, house as backdrop, color theme, textures, flow.  Did you already see all those things, above, and name them to yourself?
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Pic, above, here.
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Hiding the pool.  Especially good, if you must put in a fence, yet have acreage.  Make your pool the surprise in a Faberge Egg.
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"You have neat tight expectations of what life ought to give you, but you won't get it.  That isn't what life does.  Life does not accommodate you, it shatters you.  Every seed destroys its container or else there would be no fruition." --- Florida Pier Scott-Maxwell, Playwright, Jungian analyst.
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Pic, above, here.
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This garden, above, uses the same Formal Garden Design as the top photo: rectangle, focal point, flow, canopy, understory, floor, texture, color, shapes.
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Just because epiphanies arrive doesn't mean changes will arrive effortlessly or soon.
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Choosing to have a garden, the one in your head, is as simple as Dorothy learning how to go home.
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Choose.
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT
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A few  more from Florida Pier Scott-Maxwell.
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"You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours.  When you truly possess all you have been and done ... you are fierce with reality."
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"Making those we love happy sounds innocent as a dove, but it can be as destructive as a lion."
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"If we begin with certainties we shall end in doubts; but if we begin with doubts, and are patient with them, we shall end with certainties." --- Francis Bacon
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You realize this is a complete Garden Design course?  The important parts anyway.
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It's all important.  The Zen of Formal?  Easy to maintain, beautiful in all seasons, pollinators, lowers HVAC, raises property value. 
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5 years, this summer, in our ca. 1900 home.  Began gardening this month, finally.  No clue gardening would not begin for 5 years.  Repairing the pond, drilling a well, renovating sheds, moving sheds, building sheds, creating roads, clearing invasives, and clearing more invasives.  Life, my mom, caretaking, death, then major illnesses with Beloved.
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Starting wasn't something chosen or thought about or anticipated.  Apparently I had been at the bottom of the ocean, and shot up for air about 5am three weeks ago.  Could not breath, live, another day, without starting my garden.
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Quick phone call to Susanne Hudson, sourcing Conservatory parts, windows/French doors, Conservatory seating, somehow buying a honking huge antique library case too,  Honker.   Honk-er.
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Hedges, Conservatories, Tara Turf, Potting Table, Trees, and my library.  Leaving my 30 year garden, missed most, my built-in Library, and Conservatory.  Can't make this stuff up, the soul speaks.
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Did you notice, 'Conservatories', plural?  Life is good.  One of our tiny historic sheds, has a pair of shed roofs, each side, Beloved already built.  Soon, the East Conservatory will be completed, and hopefully, this year, we'll also build the West Conservatory.
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Their views wildly different.  The new potting table was sited at this shed, already I'm potting up and crazy happy.  Thankful of my years as a professional propagator at a nursery with 7 hoop houses, each with a different type of use; forcing, cuttings, plugs, annuals, perennials, herbs.
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Found living without a garden & library......untenable a moment more.  Getting a potting table, 3rd potting table across my adult life, previous 2 were wood.  This potting table, ca. 1940, is custom made, 2 shelves, backsplash, and stainless steel, from a sorority house at University of Georgia. 
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Have never felt so at home here.  Literally.  I'm home.  Garden, Conservatories, Potting Table, Library.  Every bit of air I shot upward for.  Whole again.
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Pic, above, here.

Simple Landscapes & How They Do So Much For Us

"I think in concepts, not words." A. Einstein. 
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Until reading, above, a few days ago, I had no words to describe my thought processes to anyone outside my tribe.  They don't need that; they understand without words.
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I think in metaphors with drop down menus, punctuated with equations made of words and math symbols, overlayed with visuals, background sounds and music, topped with templates formed from books read & movies seen.  Simplified, I think in metaphors, not words.
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How do you think?
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Seriously, how do you think?
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When did you realize your thinking 'style' was a bit different from most?
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College years, a boy I dated said my thinking was 'quirky' and 'romantic'.  His way of saying, crazy?  I should have asked him to clarify.  We're all entitled to opinions.   


Pic, above, here.
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In a mash-up of thought processes, taking in visuals of gardens, from birth, playing & working in gardens since age 3, studying historic gardens globally since age 16, designing gardens professionally since my 20's, there's something I know for sure about gardens. 
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Both gardens, above/below, are top of their game, best of the world's gardens, since roughly ca. 1400.
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Why?
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Can you name the important layers each garden has?
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Can you describe why these layers are important?
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Who is the primary beneficiary of these gardens?
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Pic, above, here.
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Take your time.  Life conspired my bits of knowledge, over decades, in client gardens designed historically, and in historic gardens.  More, I didn't know what I was seeking, beyond the hunger to seek more knowledge about gardens. 
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We've not progressed, from these gardens, above.  We've lost these gardens, Nature's pinnacle of gardening.  Templates and stories greater than survival.  Lives richly lived.  Survive vs. Thrive.
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Listen to the bees.  Listen to the raising of children.  Listen to the health of our bodies.  Listen to the laws of governments pertaining to land, water, agriculture, livestock, us.  Listen to the health of our forests, wildlife, climate.  Listen to how you think of all these things.
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What are you looking at in the gardens, above?
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Gardens little changed in many centuries.  A type of gardening supporting a family, villages and cities, for centuries.  Agrarian. 
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Their formula: Wildwood + Meadow + Stone Focal Point = Lives Well Lived, Nature well nurtured and in return, Nature nurturing all.
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Tending these gardens, poyeema, imparts knowledge gained from putting body to Earth in washing of the servants feet.  More than self-evident 'inalienable rights' given, in the garden is our health, its micro-biomes formed directly from Nature.  Nature talking to us, literally, via her electricity, bacteria, more.  Who hasn't been humbled learning about our gut biomes controlling more of our brain, than 'we' do.
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You have the components now, of the gardens, above.  Do you know how they work?
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Meadows are Nature's ecosystem for specific maximum types of wildlife, bacteria, fungi, insects, etc.  Woodlands are another of Nature's ecosystems for specific maximum types of wildlife, bacteria, fungi, insects, etc.  Life forms expand where margins meet.  Life-happens-in-the-margins.
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Where woodland meets meadow, Nature's pollinators are greater, increasing crop yields by 80%.
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Next, same topic, different idea.  Assignment of Thought.
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Your garden.  How could you turn your garden, into the style, above.  What would it take?  Don't forget, your home.  It must be considered as backdrop, focal point, and where your garden begins, from interior views.
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Yes, you're allowed to break the rules, above.  If they're broken using metaphor, templates, and their equations followed.
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT
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Secondary benefit to this Garden Design Assignment.  Taking your brain into your garden, to design, separated from your bank account.
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All the world is a garden designer, until they go into their own garden.  Taking your brain off your wallet, is a game changer.
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BTW, I'm left handed.  Also the daughter of an Air Force test pilot, during the years they didn't know pilots all have daughters.  Getting my license renewed last year, an elderly African-American woman began talking to me immediately when I sat down after matriculating thru the first wave of counters/officials.  She had seen that I was left handed, she's left handed.  We talked of how our brains worked, what we liked to do.  Sisters traversing many of the same mental models through life.  Of course we hugged when we parted. 
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Who's the primary beneficiary of the gardens, above?  Earth.  She has her people working with her Nature.  How did we lose simple?  It's on each of us, to get it back.

How to Create A Smart Landscape in a World of Dumb Landscaping

Pure GENIUS.  At first sight, below.
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That's it?
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That's it.


Pic, above, here.
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Trees & gravel grit.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Of course, siting, type of tree/s, pruning, factor into this genius.  Notice, no cobblestone edging at base of trees?  Significant, and major skill, making that choice.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Not zero maintenance, yet little.
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Pic, above, here.
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Benches, chairs, tables.
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And HEDGING.  Adapting this garden, above, to your home?  Site a hedge, above, at the road.  Hiding cars, road, neighbors homes; gaining privacy to your home, without hiding or blocking your home.
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Grand pollinator habitat.  Butterflies adore gravel/grit after rains.  Song birds adore the habitat of trees for nesting, hidden from predators, and open zones for insect gathering.
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Another TRINITY; Trees, Hedging, Grit.
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Trees, Hedging, Grit, is a complete garden design.
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Where to site the trees, hedges, placing benches, chairs, dining table/s?  Oh my, that life pleasure.  More, the spreading of grit, planting of trees/hedges, each, quite uncomplicated.
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Choose for heights easy to maintain with trees/shrubs, and drought, insect, deer...proof.
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My mission statement for & from the garden is to look out my windows, any day/any time of day, and think, Oh WOW.
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Beauty & Awe.
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Seeking transcendence.
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"I catch the inconceivable breath of the garden at dawn."  Boris Pasternak.  How many years of dawns is this true in your life?  Assuredly, this style garden provides, 'inconceivable breath'.
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"It is false to say that frontiers do not exist.  They do exist, temporarily.  But at the same time there exists a force of creativity and truth uniting us all, in humility and in pride at the same time."  Albert Camus.
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"All true happiness, as all that is truly beautiful, can only result from order."  Benjamin Franklin.
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"...yet, as Camus so stunningly reminds us, order itself, when worshiped too blindly and rigidly, can consume our fragile chance of happiness."  Maria Popova
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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Too much slope?  Trees, Groundcovers, Hedges.
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Grit not happening?  Make it Tara Turf.
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"Nobody can discover the world for anybody else."  Wendell Berry.
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Gardening is conversation.  Gardening is prayer.  Gardening is thanks.

How to Garden Like You Mean It: Macro Layer

Easy fix, below.  See the problem?
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Ok, slow down.  Define the Garden Design problem, below.
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Next, how would you fix this problem?
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Quite an excellent Neo-Le-Jardin-Rustique, below.
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What's stopping it from being a Purist Le Jardin Rustique?


Pic, above, here.
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Garden Design problem, above, belongs to the pair of pots.
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No worries one is smaller than the other.
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Major issue? Differing heights of the pots.
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In Italy, studying historic gardens, if only one thing is learned, it is Pot-Rims-at-Same-Height.
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Pot, at right, above, must be raised on a plinth, both pots at equal rim height.
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Plants not matching, not a big issue. 
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Next topic.  What's keeping this garden, above, from being a purist agrarian garden?
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The lawn, a monoculture lawn. 
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Properly, the 'lawn', above, should be a low mixed meadow.  Poof, Le Jardin Rustique, and fully agrarian.
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What's gained with fully agrarian?  Several items on agrarian list, above, one is at the top, static.  The other items allowed dynamic order.
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Maximum pollinator habitat is at the boundary of meadow to woodland.  Life happens at the margins. 
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Creating maximum pollinator habitat is more than sustainable, regenerative, eco, green, reduces climate change.  What is this ingredient, of maximum importance, about pollinator habitat, and its relationship to you?
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Stewardship.
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Stewardship to yourself, others, wildlife, Earth.
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Stewardship in action, a layer of poyeema from Providence.  Washing of the servant's feet.
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Nature's gift to us, if we understand her language.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO T
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A client mentioned, Life happens at the margins, and I wrote it on a scrap of paper.  A few days later I texted a girlfriend with same skin/hair coloring as mine, "Need to buy blush, what color?",  "Orgasm, by Nars." she replied. 
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Under, Life happens at the margins, I wrote, Nars Orgasm, on the scrap of paper.
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A couple weeks later, Beloved asks me, "What is a Nars Orgasm, what's going on?"  With an odd countenance. 
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He had seen that scrap of paper laying on my dresser, after I had recently bought the blush online.
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Blew his bubble.  He was All-In on whatever a Nars Orgasm presented.
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Orgasm is the perfect color for my hair/skin.  Had never bought Nars before and have since ordered other items from them.

Make the Right Choices For YOUR Garden

The best gardens are flexible.  This garden, below, has been done myriad times across centuries and continents. 
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This garden was mine, for awhile, in my 20's.  By late 30's I knew, take out all the perennials, too much down time in winter, too much dead-heading, cutting-back, dividing.  Instead, flowering shrubs, evergreen groundcovers, a mix of bulbs.  A few perennials paid the rent, iris, hardy ferns, helleborus, Dianthus 'Bath Pink', peony, rudbeckia, a French hollyhock a student gave me, done. 


Pic, above , here.
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The necessity of making trade-offs alters how we feel about the decisions we face; more important, it affects the level of satisfaction we experience from the decisions we ultimately make.

― Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.

With changes, my garden was easier to take care of, with no major dormancy season.  Most importantly is time saved, opportunity cost.  What opportunity?  Enjoying my garden, instead of my garden working me. 
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Fall in love with the garden, above, sure.  Yet, make it work for you, your life.
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There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.

— Thomas Sowell

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Good Garden Design inherently has myriad right choices.  Oddly, when it's 'your' garden bad choices aren't as apparent.  Give Garden Design advice to a friend or neighbor, and mostly right choices flow.  A new Cole Porter song is in this truth, with a Noel Coward play backdrop. 
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"Each of the myriad decisions we make on a daily basis carries an opportunity cost. If we don’t consider them, we easily end up stuck in situations where we’re forgoing things we’d rather prioritize. We end up lamenting what we’re missing out on against our will, unsure how this happened. But if we first consider the tradeoffs associated with the decisions we make, we can end up with far more satisfying choices."  Farnum Street.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T

Their Perfect Home Was Missing This Layer

Recently I lectured in North Georgia.  A neighborhood amongst lakes, streams, hardwoods, in the foothills of the Appalachians.  The program chair invited me to stay in her home.  Yes.
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Their home had the good fortune of being custom built, and better fortune, atop a mountain.  Their views surpassing many of the best views I've seen in the South.  At the back of their home, all windows, are views of sky, lakes, rivers, islands in lakes, mountains, more mountains, as far as the eye can see, yet below them, views to hillsides sloping steeply down, expanses of woodland upon soft rises, and hardwoods climbing quickly up steep cliffs across a ravine, betray none of the neighbors homes nested on hillsides.  Their neighborhood property owners association has miraculously kept it as pristine as the Blue Ridge Parkway.
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Their views are greater than 180 degrees, closer to 270 degrees.  No words.  Plenty of awe.
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Pic, above, here.
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Over early morning coffee, overlooking views, then breakfast of yogurt mixed with oatmeal & fresh fruit, overlooking different views, I had to share an observation of her interior.
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All perfection, not a single wrong layer.  Surprise, at what was missing.
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Pic, above,  here.
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Tall branches, in arrangements.  Views of thousands of acres of hardwood trees, yet no vase/s of tall branches.
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Pic, above, here.
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Her mind was quick to bite, I could see it on her face.  Then, "Would you come back again and lecture about floral arranging?"  "No".
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I've already sent her resources for someone to speak about floral arranging.  Their passion for floral arranging matching mine for Garden Design.
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Pic, above, here.
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I have no words for what plants and arrangements from the Garden do for interiors, excepting, grace, a form of thanks to, and from, Providence.  If that makes sense.
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     "Knowledge hinges on an act of correlation & interpretation.  At the top is wisdom, which has a moral component, it is the application of information worth remembering & knowledge that matters to understanding not only how the world works, but also how it should work and that requires a moral framework of what should & shouldn't matter, as well as an ideal of the world at its highest potentiality."  Maria Popova.
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When I mentioned what was missing from her interiors, I knew she 'got it' too, about Maria Popova's words.
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Now I'm wanting to see which vases she chooses, types of branches, and where they are placed.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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 I sent Floral Designer info about, Faith Flowers, Laura Iarocci, they also do international floral design tours.  Laura hired me years ago to design her private garden.  We met thru our Career Coach.  Since meeting, she's begun her thriving floral & events & tours business.  Been a joy bearing witness.

You Think the Pace is Yours?

In the garden, pace develops quickly, if it's just you, and the terrain.  Whatever it is you're about to do in the garden, the garden joins in.  Tempering your pace with its own.  Time of day, seasons, and weather are tag along pace markers. 
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Amusing, when you're trying for this, below, yet it seems another bank account and decade away from reality. 


Pic, above, here.
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If you have the good fortune to install most of the garden, above, yourself, know this for sure, it is one of the greatest gifts you'll receive across the span of your life.  Pace and epiphanies live across their own timelines in a garden while you're gardening it.  What you learned 3 years ago, becomes another type of epiphany 2 decades later.  Though you may have moved from the garden, the garden doesn't stop its work of pace and epiphany in you.
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Those moments in my garden I had thought I was lost to the present, instead were the moments I was most truly inside myself.
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I sought conquest in my garden, instead, I reaped contemplation, a willingness to let the soul lead, listen, inform, change me.  How many years was I leading?  None, the garden won its conquest before I was born, the garden leading me, with its soul.   
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"Place and a mind may interpenetrate till the nature of both is altered."  Nan Shepherd.
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Pic, above, here.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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Trust the pace of your gardening & garden.

Before/After: Color

Charming before/after, below.  Don't know any details about the home, purchased to live in, bought to flip, perhaps a new owner knows they will only live in the house 4-5 years max, and the budget had to go into new wiring, plumbing, septic, windows, floors, kitchen.
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Without primping, the house has great bones.
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Pic, above, here.
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Notice the fascia boards at roof's edge, above.  Painted dark, they lift upward visually, into the roof, giving greater height to the house from the ground.  Always adore making this change.  And, the gutters are dark too.  Perfect choices.
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Another height altering paint/color technique, with a home at this scale, above, paint the gable the same color as the walls.  Nothing to 'pull down' the height, a pure line of color rising up.  Two colors, at this scale, makes the gable look  more 'squat'.
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The white windows are probably vinyl and not easily painted, or painting them would invalidate a warranty.  If this is the issue, and those windows were being chosen now, choose almond vinyl not white.  White windows, above, are jumping forward, instead of calmly receding, and looking larger.
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Great choice replacing the front door, depth of character.
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In addition, at the front door, swap the square post, for a round post, greater contrast with all the square lines of the house, and new post about 25% larger in scale.
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Opening the front door zone further, remove the side rails, wrap the steps around the entire front door landing.  Reuse the handrail at the angle where the new steps 'turn' from the front.  Now, the front door zone is scaled to a focal point welcome, not merely a small niche along the front facade of the home.
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Changing the front door steps, the curbed garden edging will need to be changed. And, the stone walk must be enlarged to create a landing at the steps.
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Another before/after, below, using color as their best tool.
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Pic, above, here.
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Won't mention, above, landscape plantings, it's the colors used in the 'after' drawing delight.  'After', the foundation uses colors from the house, to the ground, making the house recede, appear larger, and creating flow from the house to the ground.  Keeping the house the focal point, not the foundation.
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Bright colors on foundations too often accentuate the foundation, not the house.
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Another bit of fabulous flow, above, the new entry from the sidewalk, up the steps, to the house.  No longer must you enter the house from a service court, now you can enter the house via the garden.
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Pic, above, here.
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Another before/after, above.
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Porch rails, top pic, probably not original to the home, yet added not long after construction.  Have seen those exact metal pole rails used across Georgia at many historic homes.  Not good if you have children/grandchildren.  Nor if you're selling your home and the buyer uses a VA loan.  VA loans require modern safety/efficiency layers for approval.
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We made an offer on our ca. 1900 home within hours of touring.  Another family made an offer a few days later, VA loan.  Our lucky day.  We love our front porch, still historically accurate, no rails.
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The porch, above, would look a bit larger, in the 'after', if the rails were painted the same color as the foundation.  In addition, the fence/gate to the left of the home, above, stained same color as the brick columns, will extend the architecture of the home.
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Plantings, above, I would move to the slope and add more plants, creating a hedge from sidewalk to crest of hill, growing no taller than the porch rail.  Why?  Add privacy to front porch, yet keeping visibility outward to neighbors, trees, and without seeing parked/moving cars, and the road.  More importantly, creating the hedge closer to the road blocks many toxins cars spew.
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Rubber crumb, from tires, used to make mulch, is toxic to soil, ground water, and above certain temp turns into fumes absorbed thru our skin.  And that's merely one layer of toxicity from cars.
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Lastly, above, painting gutter/fascia boards at the roof line, the same color as the foundation, will make the roof rise taller, and settle the house into the landscape vs. currently jumping forward in the landscape, similar to the painting of the fascia in the top pic.
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT
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Appreciate the thought going into each of the renovations, above.  Every thought = $$$, both in renovation expense or sales price or rental income.  In addition to the joy of living in the homes.  Alas, landscaping always last on the budget list, literally.

Simplicity is the Best Garden Design

Tasha Tudor chose one of the most powerful quotes, as the sign off to her letter writing, Take Joy.
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Take Joy.
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Did you get it?  Had you already had the epiphany?
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Doesn't seem possible.  Yet it's true.  Joy is always present.  'Take', is up to you.
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Pic, above, here.
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Green Meatballs have irritated me for decades, then this, above.  How could I not laugh?  Apparently I adore green boxes and wedges.
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Recognize the stone path, above ?  Variation of the centuries old stone wheelbarrow paths.
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Hint of Tara Turf, above, too.  Meadows of Tara Turf, pure pollinator habitat.  Tara Turf under fruit trees historically named, guilds.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Evergreens/trees, meadow, home, above/below.  Relationships.  Core connections.  House to garden, garden to Nature, us to garden, Nature to us. 
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At the front end, decades ago, I could not be this simple, above/below.  Not for me, I was still too special, knew so little, thought I knew something.  Now, the garden, above, reeks of sacred & scientific wisdom.  A gift from centuries of the best minds.  In conversation with us, if we'll listen.
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Simple?  I see layers of complexity, above.  At the front end, for years, I saw none of the complexity.  Complexity?  Aka, layers of riches. 
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Pic, above, here.
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Squished smaller, the meadow, below, is a brick terrace.  Variations on a theme.
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Pic, above, here.
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Pic, above, here.
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In all seasons, below, these gardens delight.  Design your garden for February, and you've designed it for all year.  No matter the style of your design.
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Pic, above, here.
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Aside from natural affinities of placement, house to meadow, house to hedges, house to allees, which reign, I assess an odd secondary reigning power.  Furniture.  Where do you want to sit, where do you want to eat, where do you want to visit with friends, where do you want to nap, where do you want to read....?
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Aside from the bonuses of complexity with gardening simply, these are the gardens going full measure, into age, theirs and yours, and into the Great Beyond*.  "Three chords, and truth.", as they described early Country music.
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If you aren't sure about a garden this 'simple' it's apparent, they allow you to fill in, to a greedy heart's content, with flowers/flowers/flowers.  Begin with flowers/flowers/flowers, please do.  It's how I get the majority of my clients.
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Simplicity of these gardens is a liturgy of Nature, if you see their complexity.  Nothing we have to do, everything done by Nature, for us.
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"Nothing is ever solved. Solving is an illusion. There are moments of spontaneous brightness, when the mind appears emancipated, but that is mere epiphany."  Patti Smith
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And I've been the epiphany hunter, for decades, in my garden.  
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"There’s no hierarchy. That’s the miracle of a triangle. No top, no bottom, no taking sides. Take away the tags of the Trinity — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — and replace each with love. See what I mean? Love. Love. Love. Equal weight encompassing the whole of so called spiritual existence."  Patti Smith
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And I've broken layers of Garden Design into trinities, for decades.  
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 "Just negotiating zones. No rules. No change. But then everything eventually changes. It’s the way of the world. Cycles of death and resurrection, but not always in the way we imagine."  Patti Smith
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And I've had decades with little change.  Saturday, driving the Blue Ridge Parkway, a World Heritage Site, coming back, Beloved asked which way I wanted to go.  Another highway or the Blue Ridge Parkway again.  Depths within answered, "What is first will be last, and what is last will be first."  Oddly, Beloved got it & he's not normally Metaphor Man.  
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Benediction, returning, along the Blue Ridge Parkway.  
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“The grounds for hope are in the shadows, in the people who are inventing the world while no one looks, who themselves don’t know yet whether they will have any effect…”  Rebecca Solnit
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Hope is like joy, it's always there, if we take.  

“You too have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.”  Mary Oliver
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We have great help along the way, with unseen partners, heroes, liberators, teachers, lovers, and none must necessarily be human.  Gardens do this.  Whether you think so or not.
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For better and worse, growing up, my dad was an engineer, part of a team of 50 great engineers first to put man on the moon.  Will never forget something he said about electricity, "We know how to use electricity, but we don't know what it is." 
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His lone sentence, about electricity, informs beyond its basics, if you take it to.
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Recently, discovering trees use electrical current, no different than we have pulsing in our brain or heart, to communicate, I knew, finally, my communicating with gardens wasn't merely feel-good-mumbo-jumbo, nor one-way.  Science caught up, to what Garden Whisperers have understood from birth.  
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"Yes, trees are the foundation of forests, but a forest is much more than what you see… Underground there is this other world — a world of infinite biological pathways that connect trees and allow them to communicate and allow the forest to behave as though it’s a single organism. It might remind you of a sort of intelligence."  Suzanne Simard
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From Brain Pickings, "Simard, whose research was foundational to German forester Peter Wohlleben’s wildly popular book The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate, discusses her work and the improbable path that led her to it in her wonderful full-length TED talk: "  

Garden & Be Well,   XO T

If you have no time now, mental mark to watch later.  Stunning.
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A hoot, thinking back in college Horticulture would be rather safe from new discoveries.  Dunce hat thinking.
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Earlier this month Beloved & I went to Brasstown Bald, highest elevation in Georgia.  After touring the museum, I debated speaking to the Ranger about the museum's outdated 'science' of flora in the region.
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You know I did.
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Ranger's face was frozen at 90 mph wind force.  And I had mentally prearranged my delivery manner to him in advance.  So.  You watch the TED film about how Trees Communicate, tell me how it goes ............................................................................................................
My little story about driving the Blue Ridge Parkway earlier?  First time to be in a true forest, after seeing this TED talk, above.  Changes everything.  How clueless we must be about so much more upon this Earth.     
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Thank you to everyone keeping up with Beloved.  His procedure with chemo beads into the liver cancer zone went well.  His liver transplant was delayed a year due to the prostate cancer.  He must be clear of prostate cancer recurrence for a year due to immunosuppressants given after transplant.  Those drugs make any cancer grow minimum 10x faster.
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We're considering this year a sweet spot of time.  And it already is.
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* Leonard Cohen.....and the Great Beyond, below.

Search Results

Knowledge Result

Tom Jones - Tower Of Song - YouTube

Garden Design: Using Only Trees

France was an education in Garden Design with Trees while studying historic gardens there.  French Garden Design, with bushes/perennials removed, leaving trees, are wicked good in intellect while magnificently more beautiful.  A concept not approached in USA Garden Design.
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This dear Garden Design, below, not French but still, only trees, no bushes/perennials. 
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Would be fun to use same plants/house, below, in the French manner.  What does that mean?  Add garden rooms, entries, allees, focal points on axis, pots, urns, gravel, stone, to the Garden Design, below. 
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Quite a few rich intricacies, below.  Trees for buffering winter winds, saving on HVAC, trees for buffering summer sun, saving on HVAC, and trees for pollinators, trees for food to the kitchen, trees raise property values, trees providing privacy, trees providing all year color. 



Pic, above, here.
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Pic,above, here. 
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Quite fine, above.  I know you're both.  Put it all in your Garden Design.   
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Pic,above, here.

 
Pic, above, here.

 
Pic, above, here.



Pic, above, here. Maybe not French, but amazing.....trees.
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Pic, above, here.
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" I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own.   Andy Warhol    " 
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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"So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness."  Hermann Hesse
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"It all starts with the wolves. Wolves disappeared from Yellowstone, the world’s first national park, in the 1920s. When they left, the entire ecosystem changed. Elk herds in the park increased their numbers and began to make quite a meal of the aspens, willows, and cottonwoods that lined the streams. Vegetation declined and animals that depended on the trees left. The wolves were absent for seventy years. When they returned, the elks’ languorous browsing days were over. As the wolf packs kept the herds on the move, browsing diminished, and the trees sprang back. The roots of cottonwoods and willows once again stabilized stream banks and slowed the flow of water. This, in turn, created space for animals such as beavers to return. These industrious builders could now find the materials they needed to construct their lodges and raise their families. The animals that depended on the riparian meadows came back, as well. The wolves turned out to be better stewards of the land than people, creating conditions that allowed the trees to grow and exert their influence on the landscape."  Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate.  Via, Brain Pickings, here. 
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Pic, above, here.
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Pic, above, here.
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Pic, above, here.
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Designing with only trees too simple ? 

Top 3 Garden Design Rules

Which major Landscape Design rule do you see, below?
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Which subsidiary Landscape Design rules do you see, below?
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If you had this single garden pic, below, to teach a Garden Design course, what does your hand-out look like?  What are its headings?


Pic, above, here.
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Great wisdom, above.
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Choose a pot so wonderful, it never needs planting. 
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What else about this pot, above, must be copied in your garden?  For every pot, focal point, and piece of garden furniture you consider, ask yourself, "Is this piece so wonderful it will be fought over at my estate sale?"
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Another bit of wisdom from, above?
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A garden designed to look beautiful in winter, will be beautiful all year.
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Best Garden Design book ever written, is titled, The Garden In Winter, by Rosemary Verey.
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How best to site groupings of plantings?  Contrast foliage textures, colors, sizes, contrast shapes of plant silhouettes, mix evergreen plantings with deciduous, create architecture of a room/s with ceiling (sky)-walls-floors, include art/function/change thru the seasons, site focal points on axis from main views of the house, plantings must include scent/blooms/fall color/berries, plantings must be deer resistant/drought tolerant/bug-fungus proof and cycle with interest throughout the year.
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This is fun, from a single garden pic we've already started a nice Garden Design course.
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Urn, above, is a delight, in memory at my own stupidity, ahead of epiphany.  How do you think I was able to have an empty pot epiphany?  Seriously, anyone out there had the Empty Pot Epiphany too?  Found a quote this year my mom wrote down, "Genius may have its limitations but stupidity is not handicapped." 
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Yes, these bits of Garden Design are this important, for me to repeat, repeat, repeat.....  If you don't have The Garden In Winter, plenty of used at good prices with the link. 
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Copied a simple historic garden room, in our ca. 1900 home this year, a life moment arrived recently, and beyond measure that garden room, and Nature, tended, in great love,  not only a life moment, but the entirety of my life.  Why do you want to Garden Design?  I know why I do, it's for those moments, knowing another may never come.  And that is fine, what has been received already is beyond measure.

An Interior Design Trick To Use In Your Garden Design

Garden Designs are Interior Designs.  I cannot do a Garden Design without seeing a home's interiors.  Table & chest & mantle surfaces dictate, happily, how I will design particular spaces in a client's garden.  Obviously, more in a home inform a good Garden Design, but only using the table/chest/mantle surface feast, below, for now.
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My grandmother, Laura, could play the piano from newspaper/magazine/book writing.  When you're Appalachian poor, you figure it out.  Using interior surfaces for Garden Design 'playing' comes from my grandmother Laura, I assume, and glad of it.
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Garden Design, below, is a backdrop hedge, pair of evergreen large shrubs or a pair of trees, and a drift of 2 shrubs, with a single accent shrub modestly sited as focal point from the drift of shrubs.
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Easy, yes?  Now you understand my grandmother Laura too. 


Pic, above, here.
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This Garden Design, below, a bit more challenging without seeing the rest of the house.  A backdrop hedge, pair of understory trees, evergreen groundcover carpeting the space, and a focal point  subtle in scale at center. 

 
Pic, above, here.
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Now you are good at table/chest/mantle top Garden Designs too, yes?
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Been doing this so long it's an amusement to peruse a home the first time, looking for copied echoes.  Have not had a home with different brain wave surface decorating between rooms yet, they all flow.  Interesting.
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Many times a client hires me because they've become 'stuck', not knowing what to do next in their landscape.  Historic Garden design is so modern in its templates there is never a reason to truly be 'stuck' for Garden Design ideas.
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With good gardens on tour it's enjoyable noting the interior shapes/forms moving from inside to outside.  The best gardens never display their true genesis.  Inside & outside are one, Vanishing Threshold.
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Garden & Be Well,    XOT