Warning: Strawberry House

Viewed from the front of the house, below, the Strawberry House sits calmly at the side of his antebellum home.

Viewed from the back of his antebellum home, below.

When told it is his 'Strawberry House' the game changed.

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My life must include being able to say, "Let's walk to the Strawberry House."

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Until yesterday I was clueless about the lack of a Strawberry House in my garden & vocabulary.

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Adore anyone forcing me to up my game.  

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These are the moments keeping me in gardens across the globe.  

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The hunt. For delight.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pics taken yesterday in the same garden as previous post.

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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.

On Houzz: Stone Steps in Waiting

Recently on Houzz here, below.

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Modern renovation to vintage home.

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Seriously good modern.

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Made me laugh.

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Why?

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Happens all the time with new architectural construction.

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Tunnel vision harking back to the old map makers, "Beyond this point there be dragons."

With long term clients, they learn to finish 'certain' landscape items sooner rather than later.
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How do I know?
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They tell my general contractor, "Don't tell Tara, we will not do XYZ yet but please put in those 3 stone steps so she won't be so upset."
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This beautiful old home with new renovation, above, went international with its 3 gorgeous stones 'not complete'.  In Tara Talk those stones are jewelry-for-the-landscape.  Setting is complete, stones are bought, please let the jeweler do their work.
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Best part of this home/garden?  Nothing has to be 'undone'.

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.

How to Create Wall Art Using Old Tools

Their collection, below, better than most museums.

Do not know the names of 95% + of these tools.

 Do not know how to properly use most of them.

Decades of scouring for old tools, never found most of these.

 If this homeowner is in Garden Club they're a perfect venue for a monthly meeting.

There must be someone who knows all these tools and could speak about their proper use, name, era, what the earlier/later versions were, what types of wood they are made from, how the metal was forged, which parts are handmade vs. machine made, how many decades of use they encountered, which crops each tool could help with, which parts of the country they were most widely used, what is their derivation from the European counterpart, & etc.

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Each tool, silent witness to greatness.

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Pulling Earth's bounty to our benefit.

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The action feeding mind, body, spirit.

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Perhaps this is the great metaphor from Providence, personally pulling Earth's bounty.  We don't work the tools they work into us every good thing.

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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

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Heading off to any trip Beloved has learned he must say, "We are not going into any museums."  Luff me a local museum.  Guess who always says, "I'm glad we came in this museum."

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Asked to lecture at a huge symposium for Atlanta Botanical Garden, they gave the title, Tools.  Honored to be asked, via phone this was pre-internet, I hung up in sinking fear.  What did I just do?  How can I speak for an hour about tools?

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Straight to my 8" thick Webster's dictionary for the Latin & Greek derivations of 'tool'.

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First definition is, 'weapon'.  Interesting.  Second definition is, 'penis'.  Yes, talk was in the bag.

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You know what happened.  Have been asked to give this talk many times since !

Took pics at an open garden this spring in Buckhead, aka Atlanta, GA.

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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.

Do You Make This Costly Landscape Mistake?

Anti-mulch Landscape Design, below.

A mature landscape should not need mulch.
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Landscape Designing for dead brown mulch interspersed with green meatballs is a construct of USA garden centers & testosterone-on-wheels-mow-blow-go-commodify-all-I-touch.
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Landscape Design your garden to include covering ground with shrubs, groundcovers, perennials, bulbs, & meadow.  Enriches soil, increases pollinator habitat, decreases cost/labor.
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Significantly less to buy from the garden center & maintenance team.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic of an Arne Maynard garden found here.
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I did the dead brown mulch thing for decades.  Ugh.  Still catching up with the shrubs & groundcovers.  Where mulch is still needed I use leaf litter mulch.  Arrives free and alive with bacteria, fungi, earth worms etc.  Amazing, in hindsight, how lock-step I was with the dead brown mulch everyone-else-had.
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Most amazing landscapes, to me, employ ideas of killing all insects/fungi, mono-culture lawns unwelcome to birds/pollinators, need irrigation, nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium fertilizer toxic to ground water, require men in trucks with gasoline powered machines, aka totally man-made constructs.  Where are these landscapes?  At almost every large house of worship across USA.  Their metaphor shouts, "In this house we honor G*d but surrounding it 'man' is in control."  Where are their fruit orchards to feed the hungry, meadows to feed the butterfly/bird/etc, trees bringing eyes to the sky in thanks for Earth, opportunity to gather together in strength of hand/body/mind/spirit touching Nature while pulling forth Her Bounty, harvesting fruit to feed body & Spirit with plenty leftover to give to those in need?  Oddly, have never seen that at a large house of worship.  Have seen it in community gardens.    
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A slight neo-exception I have seen is The Cove, Billy Graham's conference center.  Much of the landscaping is the retaining of Nature.  When I was in their bookstore, many years ago, I was excited to look for the garden section.  You know what I found.  Zero garden books.  And, Life began in a garden.  Link, here, to see their green meat balls in dead brown mulch at the foundation of their conference center.  Terrible metaphor of words, 'foundation-of-their-conference-center.'  

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

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

How to Design Your Landscape --The Ultimate Guide

Lush in early summer, minimalist during winter.

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Views into the home considered, views from home into the garden considered.

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Canopy trees, walls of plantings, flooring with plantings - gravel.  Within this trinity are contrasting foliage textures, contrasting foliage sizes, contrasting foliage colors, a color theme, repetition, focal points, subsidiary focal points, pots so fabulous they can remain empty,  pots/focal points so fabulous they will be fought over at your estate sale, use of plinths for proper heights with urns, backdrop of the home included, color echoes of flowers to paint color on home, repetition of color on iron pieces fence-downspout-lighting-trellis-arms of bench,  seating with arms & back tall enough to rest the head/nap, transition zones from formal to wild wood, house/garden have a vanishing threshold, maximum pollinator habitat with its high density/low density,  ornamental plantings increasing potager yields up to 80%, sensory delights with visual-fragrance-sound of birds & wind thru foliage - foot upon gravel, historic-a template older than CE.

I see an entire Landscape Design course in this picture.  What do you see?
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Name it to claim it.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic via Pinterest, here.
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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.

.

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 Happens When the Turkey Looks Back

Bounty, beauty, thanks.  The Trinity I-choose-to-believe is the foundation of scenes on vintage ironstone & china.

Now, too, I see complete college courses at the intersection of agriculture & horticulture.

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For centuries 'we' looked at the turkey, above, in Thanks.

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The turkey now asks, "What have you done?"

Fruits, vegetables, livestock, enough to feed family, barter, sell.
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Letters would arrive, early 60's, when I was a little girl from my paternal grandmother.  Mom would call sister/me and read aloud the missive.  Her letters always included vegetable seeds from her own garden or a friend's.  To conclude the reading mom tossed seeds/letter in the garbage.  Her duty done.
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I ALWAYS wanted to grow the seeds.  Mom's disdain palpable, it was safer to let those seeds go.
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Dad never knew.  A brilliant NASA engineer with lives on the line, it was more unsafe to mention wanting those seeds to him.
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A sad story, then.  But, oh my, the joy it has brought to my days since.  FREEDOM from their ways of thinking, being, doing.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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In defense of dad, Ted Freeman, Charlie Bassett, Elliot See, Gus Grissom, Ed White, Roger Chaffee, co-workers, neighbors, friends, had all recently died.  USA remembers the successes, correctly so, many lived the losses too.
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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

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

The Nicky Haslam Guide to Lining Up the Pots

Do it like Nicky Haslam.

What is Haslam doing ?

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Copying.

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Specifically, below, he's lining up pots and statues/plinths, and repeating a minimalist color theme.

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Copy the copycat.  He's not original.

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Yet, totally original.

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Copy, it's the 1st rule of Garden Design.

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I discovered, Lining up the Pots, while on a tour of historic gardens across Italy decades ago.

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Been lining them up ever since.

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Not convinced?

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Still wanting to be original & unique?

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If it's beautiful in another garden it will be beautiful in yours.

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Every site is unique.

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Price point has no claim to this garden design rule.

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When choosing your pots to line up they must be so fabulous they can remain empty.  

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If the pots lining up do not match, their rims must be at the same height.

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 Liking a good sentence, it's not uncommon for me to bath with Nicky, below.

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Perhaps you should start bathing with Nicky.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Wall Street Journal pics of Nicky Haslam's home.  And, mine at bottom.

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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

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

How to Layer Your Garden, Save Money & Create Less Work

Espalier apples, below, layered with flowering plants increase yields to 80%.

 Flowering trees, bushes, ground covers, above/below.  Chosen for sequence of blooms, toughness against drought/disease/insects, position for layers, and, attractiveness to beneficial insects & song birds.

Once mature, garden layers eliminate need for mulch & fertilizers, less or no mowing, prevent weeds, and enrich soil.        

                                         What garden center wants you to have this type of garden?  They cannot sell you annuals, weed killers, fertilizers, mulch.  Yearly.  For decades.
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When is the last time Suze Orman saved homeowners this much money, and costly effort/time, while benefiting Earth?  And put healthy, tax free, inexpensive fruit/vegetables on the table, with garden layers increasing property value while reducing HVAC expenses.  Suze, who?  Go me.  And you.

Did you know nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium fertilizers kill soil mycorrhizal fungi & earthworms, & are toxic to the water supply?

Unexpected 'majesty', aka stateliness-dignity-beauty, in my little garden's layers, above.

Through the apple orchard, above, Laura. 

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pics taken yesterday at the Bay Terrace, aka front yard.  Today, working at the table Laura sitting on, above.  Stopped for apples last month at the grocery store.  Asked the clerk if she had the product correct, each apple was over a $1.  Hello fruit trees, and veggies in my 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

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

How to Fix the Porch to Patio Dead-End

Lovely porch & courtyard.

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Porch opens into house, not courtyard.

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Dead-end from courtyard to porch.

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Dead-end from porch to courtyard.

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Not in my realm.

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This will not be.

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Center section will soon be French folding screen doors with steps to the courtyard.

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Why 'folding' ?

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They entertain, French folding screen doors take less space.

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Have never seen or thought of French folding screen doors till this job.

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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

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Pic on the job last week.  Yes I wanted to take precious home !!  He stayed faithfully by my side as I worked throughout his 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

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

From Amusement to Stewardship

 This is what I sought, below.  Only recently, decades in, the mission is known to be mistaken.
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Garden Design, contrast round flowers with spikey flowers, big leaves with small leaves, dark green with silver, focal points on axis with the house, expose the sky - frame with canopy trees - dress the walls - cover the floors, a bit of woodland & meadow, something coming into bloom every 2 weeks all year.
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Go ahead, take the above facts and create your own beautiful garden.
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Sited properly HVAC costs lower & property values rise.
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Do the above & you've done a lot.

Done for myself, paid to do it for others.  Thought this was the mission.  Not a little wrong, wildly.

 With a knowing smile, I see others deeply into Garden Design, personally/professionally, aware that was me, in a past life.  Glad to leave it.

Garden Design is mere amusement.  Garden Design gives a reaction, there is much more to be had.
 

From amusement to stewardship, a relationship of atonement & abiding with Nature.

 Garden Design lesson above?  Copied from studying historic gardens across the globe for decades.  Never realizing it's maximum pollinator habitat & about survival.  Agriculture needed ornamental gardens.  What had been understood as pretty historic gardens & homes were machines for survival.
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What?  Combining agriculture with pretty flowers increases crop yield by 80%.

What I had sought as a beautiful historic Garden Design formula is instead the template of Providence.

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My garden, and Garden Designs have been organic & sustainable for decades.

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Organic & sustainable are not enough.  Stewardship is the key.

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Take the key, it's free & simple.

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Organic & sustainable, in the great USA manner, are something to sell.

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Stewardship is within you.

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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara

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Pics in my garden this spring.  Wish the chickens had been here my entire 3 decades.  Their poop goes into the garden daily.  Their eggs have become my 'Egg Ministry'.  And gave me Stewardship.  Understanding the relationship of Earth, livestock, plants, survival.

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

.

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

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

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.

.

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

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.