Ridiculous Fun vs. Doing-the-Right-Thing

Tell me again why Americans are so wedded to green meatball foundation plantings.

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Proof, below, you can still have those green meatballs at the foundation.

Today's assignment: In your mind, take away your foundation plantings, replace with furnishings-gravel-urns-plinths, from above, in any permutation that is ridiculous fun & fabulous.  Really, do this, complete the assignment.  You have the rest of the day.
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Garden & Be Well,           XO Tara
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If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.
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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon.

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Pic via Pinterest.

Want Elegance? Espalier

No room for 'lawn'?  Little space to landscape?

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Go vertical.

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Woody shrubs with medium or slow growth are best.  No wires or trellis needed.

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Merely espalier.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Please add ESPALIER to your quiver of garden tools.

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If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.
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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon.

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pic via Tumblr

How to Design a Grill so it's not an Eyesore

Movable grills are awkward, not aesthetic, & do not 'fade away' into the backdrop.  Mostly, movable grills are an eyesore.  

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If a movable grill is on your buy-list study the exterior design, above.

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This is an expertly executed exterior design.  

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Obviously a styled photo I can still smell what's cooking.  And we 'know' there was no cooking going-on for the shoot !

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Why does this movable grill look good?  Props: comfort chairs-pillows-table-umbrella-mood, a color trinity was chosen/green-gray-stainless, simplicity, focal point (if you have an eyesore place a focal point nearby), contrast of many square shapes vs. round armillary sundial, formal landscape choices contrasted with informal plantings, repetition of flooring from dining area to garden area, an easy to maintain garden lets you focus on LIVING in the garden.  Simply.

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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara

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Pic via 5th and State.  No excuses about the house, above.  If it's beautiful at a historic estate, it will be beautiful in your landscape.

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If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group local or out-of-state.
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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon.

Garden Design: Bedroom Axis

Try this for your interior tabletop design.  The largest piece...outside.

If there is another window in the room, I swoon.
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You do know about rooms with windows on 2 walls?  We are hardwired for them in our DNA.  Christopher Alexander,    A Pattern Language, describes the architecture our souls desire & thrive best with.  
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Ginger Barber, above, decorating.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic Ginger Barber found at Cote de Texas.

Where to Site a Garden Focal Point

In the garden, your house is the main focal point.

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For centuries, this, below, has worked.

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If something has worked for centuries, there is a reason.

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And, it will work for you.

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Urn on plinth.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Never had a college instructor or seminar speaker say, In the garden your home is the focal point.

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Why?

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What did those 'experts' miss?  Paint colors on the home, lighting, hardware, views into windows, style choices, where to correctly site exterior focal points.  For starters.

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Most common question I receive, Where should I put this plant?

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If only that were the question.

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Garden design is about where to put a plant?

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Hardly.

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Pic via Jennings & Gates: Notes from a Virginia Country House.  

Inspiration: It's ALWAYS There

She only asked that her landscape be, Updated.

Not much had been done since construction over a decade ago.

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Yet, behind the garage was a shabby whisky barrel stuffed with tired herbs.

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The merest sign of DESIRE !

Of course I put an herb garden into her 'UPDATE'.  Thyme & rosemary going in this month, above.
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Are you ignoring something in your garden that would make you HAPPY ?
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics in a client garden.  And she thought the herb garden was a good idea of 'mine'.  Instead, I feel like my Garden Design gave her 'permission' to fully deeply wildly joyfully have herbs.

Pot + Plinth: Making the New Timeless

From the 1st appointment earlier this year I KNEW a focal point should be on axis with the front door.

Earlier this week, above/below.

A few minutes old, above, this urn looks as if she's been reigning at least a century.
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She's designed empty, with a floral designer brought in for catered events.  Remember, a pot must be so fabulous it can stay empty.
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Found the pot/plinth resourcing materials at the Americas Mart with client.  A great 1/2 day.  Would have taken a decade, at least, to hunt/gather what we found !
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics taken earlier this week at jobsite.  Shovels, 5 men, a level, were involved getting this beauty 'right' !

Port Cachere: Before + After

I was hired to 'refresh' the landscape.

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Leaving the port cachere as-is was not an option.  This is their main family door.  

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We went shopping at the Americas Mart in downtown Atlanta last month sourcing merchandise.  Not everything had arrived by this week but enough to get started, below.

This table is temporary, above-below, a very nice temporary.  Soon, once a vintage large French buffet is sourced I'll get you more pics.

I made do with the few pots/flowers she had last Monday, above/below.

Small moments of beauty, above.
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As she gets into her car to leave, and then returns, her port cachere is embracing arms for going into the world & returning from the world.  A matriarch in every layer of her life, she has a lot going on and appreciates all Providence provides.  It's in the small moment thanks are deeply felt.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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pics taken at jobsite last Monday.

Art on the Walls in Interior Design

Have you had this epiphany, Your garden views are art on the wall.

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No?
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Once you do your garden, and life, will change.
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Beautiful garden, beautiful life.  Vanishing threshold.
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More, the beautiful life awaiting is beyond the limitations of filthy lucre.
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These are the gardens I design.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic via Cote de Texas.  Why waste a moment on this earth designing green meatballs, a lawn, and annual beds for testosterone-on-wheels-mow-blow-go-commodify-all-I-touch?  The post-WWII-industrial landscape Monsanto & Ortho & Scotts sell to?  My landscapes are agrarian, historically based to enrich the soil, watershed, pollinator habitat & soul.    

Garden Design + Interior Design

Garden Design begins inside your home.  Ginger Barber interior design, below.

If the lane is indeed a dirt drive to this home I, seriously,  swoon.
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A trinity for Barber's work, " Designing beach houses, farm house and ruralist." 
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In a single picture, above, a several week class on garden design & interior design can be taught.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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pic Ginger Barber.   First seen at Cote de Texas.  Pure vanishing threshold.

Interior Design: Dan Carithers

Dan Carithers, after decades of designing, kept his fresh/light touch.

Dan Carithers on Pinterest.
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A wonderful tribute to Dan's career, here.
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His gardens were as good as his interiors. Alas, he did not focus greatly on that skill/career.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic Dan Carithers....

Garden Design: Color + Proscenium

Choose a color trinity for your garden.  Green, Brown, White is one of the best.

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House & Garden are YOUR proscenium.

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Why?

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So YOU are the star.

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What will it take to get your Home & Garden to this level of competence?  

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Merely being aware.

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It's that simple.  

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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara

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Pic Aerin Lauder. 

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You don't need Lauder's bankroll.  It's all in the attitude.  Taratude, get you some !

Garden Design: Designed to Handle the Toughest Thoughts

Almost 2 decades ago, working in my garden, I spent much time praying for 3 quite ill friends.  By the end of the year my lesson was clear, Pray for G*d's will.  They were all dead.

Late this spring a text arrived in the early morning hours.  An extended family member, age 50, was dead, suicide.
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Something new to take into my garden.
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I did not like her yet knew where those odious parts of her personality arose.  In her teens I witnessed the train wreck passed off as 'parenting'.  An entire family melodrama, for decades, her parents ensorceled their clan into tacit approval yet the ridiculous cliche was true, The king wore no clothes.
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We were the only 2 at Lake Rabun, she had her 3 dogs, I had my 2.  Slept late, swam, played with the dogs, boated most of the afternoon, a picnic for lunch on the concrete dock, sunburned, it was dark when we sat in the kitchen, champagne + canapes, for dinner.  Is there any better chaos than 5 dogs in a small kitchen and cold champagne?   Casement windows & French doors wide open, it rates, still, as one of my favorite all time good dinners.  Total laughter
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Before calling her brother I made a list of all the validation points he would need to hear from me.  A good person he suffered the most, after her, in collateral damage from her raising.  And he tried many times in many ways thru the years to help her.  Only to be treated shabbily by her in return.  A long call, he meandered of his own volition thru each of the validation points I had written.
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A text last weekend, he had received the coroners report.  Conclusively, suicide.  Is her headstone at the cemetery yet?  With no more than that he knows what I'm asking,  Will you meet me at the cemetery when it's there?
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Married 30 years, I couldn't live with his alcoholism anymore.  Divorced almost 2 years, we will meet at the cemetery whenever.  No one can blame another for their drinking yet I know his family dynamics contributed greatly.  Sham parenting which bullied all those around into silence, Emotional Blackmail, Be complicit she is fine our parenting is fine.
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In my garden I realized she was one of the best at rescuing cats/dogs, I wish she had known that.  Our champagne dinner and all the pets she rescued, it's enough to remember someone with a smile.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Sham parenting?  They did everything John Rosemond says not to do, aka, give a man a fish dinner or teach him how to fish.  Her parents merely fed her fish.
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Pic via Gervais de Bedee.

Things That Inspire

Their home is large, and so are the drives, garages & port cachere.  Beyond the garages, a fenced garbage can area.  

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Really?  Beyond the garages?

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Guess where she keeps a garbage can?

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Of course, near the back door.

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Planter, above, is in my Garden Design.

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Behind the planter, her garbage can.

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Years of ugly, she's excited to see the planter from her kitchen & family room views.  

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic Things That Inspire.

Wendy Posard: Bathroom View

And the garden, below, is art on the wall.

Though a tooth brush & tooth paste seem an inconvenience, above, that is forgiven for the casement windows.
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Oakleaf hydrangea, white sasanqua, tea olive, gardenia, Natchez crapes, asiatic jasmine, akebia, & the requisite oaks, conifers, kousa dogwood, grancy graybeard, sourwood,  yes, I know exactly the garden for this view.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic Wendy Posard.  Imagine every window with a garden view.  That is my starting point.  Anything less is a trifling effort.

I Know Why Your Landscape Doesn't Look Like It Should

I know why landscapes do not look the way the majority of owners want them to.

Micro: We see a beautiful landscape, in person or picture, and isolate a few things to copy.  This cuts 'the hermeneutic circle',  ("which describes how any single part (a word, a line, a data point) of a book is best interpreted after completing the whole work. The whole explains the deeper meaning of the parts, though individual parts constitute the whole." Harvard Business Review, 11-14-13)  
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Macro: The Dirt Bias.  Somehow, the thinking goes, it's just dirt and there could not possibly be any 'great' intellect required to make dirt do-what-I-want.
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Yet, most people are Intuitive Gardeners.   Why, then, are there not oodles & oodles of gorgeous (Human made) landscapes doting the globe?  You don't trust yourself.  Your inner voice seems too simple.
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Why can I design the landscape you want?  I listen to your inner voice.  Instead of fearing it, I take it and PLAY !  Keeping every element simple & functional & pretty.
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Creating beautiful landscapes is as easy as following a recipe.
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Alas, that Dirt Bias & ego of intellect.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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You know I was the former Queen of the Dirt Bias, glad that reign is over.
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Pic, my lunch.  Little time to cook, the presentation is always lovely.
 

Michele Bonan: Architecture + Interior + Garden

Much to delight, below.  

Garden design with only 2 elements.  Meadow & vine.  A combination from agrarian ideals.
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A duo screaming, This is not in USA !  At the minimum, not a USA garden designer.
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How do I know?  There is no monoculture lawn, green meatballs + concrete sidewalk from the French doors.  'That' type of garden design is pure post industrial.
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I 'see' gardens before architecture + interiors.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic Michele Bonan.   Liked Bonan for his garden, above, then discover he does architecture and yacht design too.  Of course, he is not American.  Italian.  Alas, an American 'designer' working for a typical design-build-maintain landscape company would be fired for the garden design, above.  Why?  Not much money in meadow + vine.  Agrarian derivatives are human factored, sustainable, Nature.  Post industrial derivative landscapes are consumer, $$$, driven.
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Yes, been reading Wendell Berry in the tub again !  When you have time, click the link, it's a fabulous interview with Berry by Bill Moyers.

Wendy Posard: Kitchen + Garden

When the garden is a feature of the kitchen I know the architect has gone beyond their education.  And delved into the realm of intuitive.

Flooring flows inside/outside and the scale is charming vs. large.  Other comparisons: happy vs. large, nurturing vs. large.......
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Necessity vs. luxury.
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"I can live without the necessities but I must have the luxuries.", a quote I first heard age 8, repeated by Miss Katherine Scott, a grand influence.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Pic is a Wendy Posard project.

Empty Fabulous Pots

Pots so fabulous they can remain empty are the best pots.

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Why?

What fun to doll-them up for a party.  And that's only reason #5.

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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara

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Pic Greige Design. 

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Had the empty pot epiphany at Glamis Castle, and named this garden design rule, The Queen's Pot !  

Garden Design's Unexpected Element

More windows should be doors.  

More doors equal magic circles.  More doors improve the garden, and the house.
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Perhaps Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language, knows 'exactly' why humans respond so well to multiple doors.
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Did you look closely, above?  5 doors.  Another thing I did not learn in college about creating gardens, doors & magic circles.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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pic Wendy Posard.