Focal Point: Design Both Ends

If you are looking at a beautiful focal point (bench, urn, front door, &tc), you must be able to be at that focal point, turn, look opposite, and have a beautiful view.
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This front porch, below, intriguing on its own, owns a great view in the opposite direction.
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An allee, below, of conifers.  Pruned into an arching view.



From the street view, below, the same conifers retain their full exterior silhouette, with no hint of the surprise allee within.



And, the gap in the hedge, above, is permission and invitation to enter.
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Big impact plantings, balancing scale to the house, and a welcome.  More importantly, low maintenance, drought tolerant and deer resistant.
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Ca. 1900, these pics, from Enclosure Take Refuge, who found them from,  *Photos by Detroit Publishing Co., via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, made me smile at recreating, their garden design.  My previous garden had the exact hedge, except it was cleyera punctuated with tea olive.  They were 'plant of the week' at $1.97 from my local family owned nursery.  My hunt was for evergreen, full sun, size.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Adore those front steps, adore.  Though totally not to code in our era.  And the darkly stained wood.

How to Copy a Large Landscape into Your Small Space

Great example of historic/classic garden design in modernist disguise, below.



Don't have a rural property?  Your home is a classic 60's ranch in a sea of other 60's ranches?  Yes, you can have this landscape in your front yard.
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How?  What exchanges to make?
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The meadow/woodland, above, are the street & neighbors homes, so, block that view, keeping the rest of this incredible landscape design.  Behind the stone/cement walls, plant an evergreen hedge.   Choose for zone, height, drought tolerance, resistance to insects/disease, and deer.
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This landscape, above, is pure jewelry for a 60's ranch house in comparison to their builder installed  ubiquitous foundation plantings long ago pruned into green meat balls & meat loafs.  
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More, depending on the size of your site, this design, above, has plenty of room for a golf cart to zip around.
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Most odd, copying this landscape design, above, into a 60's ranch front yard provides the same elements of space, calm, and beauty as in the larger setting, above.  Promise.  It's one of those odd things you learn after decades of designing gardens.  The sky provides different types of magic, and confers 'size' to small spaces.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic from Gardenista.

What Happens When 2 Queens Take on Pot

After Scotland, weeks of studying historic gardens, I came home the Queen of Pots.
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Years later, I encountered another Queen of Pots, Deborah Silver, below.
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She put me into a new chapter.



Deborah's take on pots made me realize, "Perhaps I've been harming myself, by only doing 'my' Queens Pots."  Harm?  Embracing the seasons, in honor & thanks.  Enjoying hunting/gathering, assembling.



















My Queen's Pot, above, so wonderful it can be empty. or planted.
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Deborah took my theme, and didn't 'plant' in the traditional sense.  She creates exterior floral arrangements withstanding 'weather', for months.  Seeing her pots, why-didn't-I-think-of-that?
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Bottom line?  Choose pots so wonderful they can remain empty all year, AND you have a choice of adding an exterior floral arrangement.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Bottom pic from my garden, top pics from Deborah's recent post.

Creating the Perfect Front Door

Had a pair of platform cross strap sandals the same yellow, below, in high school, called them my 'school bus' shoes.
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Of course I clicked on the picture, for the yellow, then was delighted further.
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Length of the steps is gracious plenty, much too rare, and the real winner, placement of the urns.
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100% outside the door zone, no crowding, making the entry appear smaller.  The urns color, height & width, perfect.  More, they could be empty and still fabulous.  Better, notice the lack of foundation planting?  Swoon.
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Interior of this home, speaking from the curb.



Simple is hard.
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I spend a lot of time in my car going to jobsites, my little van is too noisy to hear when talking on the phone, so, it's the stereo.  Full spectrum, Mozart, Cole Porter, Edith Piaf, Willie Nelson, Bob Seger, The Cars, U2, you get the idea.  A lyric that goes deep, each time heard, Zac Brown's, "I've got everything I need, and nothing that I don't."
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Simple is hard, and that line should be the basis of a hymn.  A song of praise & thanks, sometimes a quest.
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It describes this front door, above, and garden.  Perhaps it should be a last question, designing your garden, "Does it have everything it needs, and nothing it doesn't?"  My last question, for years, designing a garden, when done, "What can I take away & it still holds together?"
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Pic via Content in a Cottage.
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I always pack lunch for the car, today, waiting to be grabbed when I leave, by the front door on the table, peanut butter sandwich, raisins, apple, banana.  Have you read, Pillars of the Earth?  They were always packing lunch, bread/cheese/ale.  Can you imagine a crusty sourdough homemade bread, cheese from your own cow, who only eats from the pasture, and local brew ale?  Don't want the ale for lunch but the comparison always draws a smirk from me when packing my own bland road trip work lunches.

Flying Buttress in the Landscape

At first meeting, enchanted.  Understood, "You're a flying buttress."
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Frame your home, the garden, create rooms, mystery, with little effort.   Little input, big impact, what's not to like?
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Cathedrale Notre Dame de Paris has fly buttresses, shouldn't your home?
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Not a Garden Whisperer?  Don't see, below, a flying buttress?
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It's the evergreen hedge, scalloped higher at its end.
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Same flying buttress, below, inside view, vanishing threshold.



Another layer of interest, and function, below, in the garden.
 


Another 'ideal' to achieve, above,  See it without me mentioning it?
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Garden only.  No 'stuff'.  Ubiquitous USA plastic hose carriage on wheels tethered to a faucet, blessedly absent.  Common USA resin sign, "Welcome", blessedly absent.  Fluttering nylon flag in garish colors "Seasons Greetings".....
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Arcadia created.  And, lived.  No signs, flags, intentions.  Intellect engaged, action steps taken, lives well lived amongst chaos given to all.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pics from Pentreath-Hall.
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This is a Voysey house.  Discovered Voysey by accident, researching an old hall tree I bought in the mid-80's.  It's a Voysey ! Second antique I ever purchased, go me!

Boxwood Fungus: We No Longer Design/Plant Boxwoods

Gardening is a safe lover to give your heart to.  She asks for everything you've got, in the wildest seduction.  Layers of intellect, strength, spirit, & more, you give.  Garden gives back, wildly, beyond measure.  A dirty lover, Garden dresses you in her garb, soil, foundation of life.  Bathing Her off, is privilege.
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Like cows in Pasture, Nature smiles at us on her Pasture.  We plant into Garden, we gussie her up with paths, houses, pots, benches, arbors, lighting, yet nothing compared to Garden's creations.  Think Grand Tetons, for starters.
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Fortunate souls tap into Garden's love, gaining insight, energy, answers, ideas, calm, the list is long.   Alexander Pope, ca. 1625, said it best, "God Almighty first planted a Garden."  We should do less?
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Susanne Hudson, her garden, below, called a few days ago, her boxwoods, over 300+ so far, dead/removed, due to the boxwood fungus.  Sharing her story, the facts of infection to death/removal, a timeline of many weeks.
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A few questions, then I said, "They are your sanity", "I know", she said.  Susanne is a matriarch, easily giving of her time/talents/grace to elderly parents, siblings, children & grandchildren, even her town.  Watering her boxwood, tapping into her relationship with Garden, has been the nurturing of sanity, calm, taking life's yoke with Garden, "my yoke is easy and my burden is light".     



Pic, above, by Tara Dillard, Susanne Hudson's garden, here.



Pic, above, Madison Cox Design, here.



Pic, above, Pinterest, here.
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I will not design or install boxwoods for clients until there is a cure found for boxwood fungus.
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No garden exists at our ca. 1900 American farmhouse.  Beloved & I have heated discussions about every Garden choice, except one, from the first, we knew 4 huge boxwoods would be bought from our supplier in North Carolina, and planted at the front porch.  No expense spared.  And, the only purchase at our new home with, "No expense spared", as an expectation.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

Best Dimensions for A Gravel Patio

Perhaps my little stories about gardening should be set within proper context, of their owners.  Every garden designed demands honoring its site, architecture of the home, and lives of the owners.  More than the mundane of plants liked, features wanted or where the main views from inside the house are, well designed gardens must travel with the owner's hopes & dreams, salve arrows & defeats, enrich beyond expectation.  And more.
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Last week, I went to an unexpected new client.  Friend of a client's garden I was at, she phoned & laughingly told my client she should bring me to her house when done, if I had time.  We did.
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Miss Unexpected owns an unexpected home.  Divorced/working, children, she rented a home as a base while looking for the 'perfect' new home.  Her landlord called, the rental house was being sold.  One child was very ill, she had zero time/energy to move again.  She bought the rental.
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Interiors mostly renovated, the landscape ripe for its turn.  A modest home, a covered/screened porch had been added at some point.  Not cheaply made, alas, poorly designed.  If a group of psychiatrists needs a setting to guarantee depression for all who enter, for purposes of testing new methods of healing, this is the space.
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Trying hard to salvage, at minimum, the roof, I could not.  Best plan for the existing screened porch, dumpster in the driveway, & hauled off.
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Once children are thru high-school Miss Unexpected will be moving to acreage she was raised on, and build a home.  Providing me a timeline & budget.  No matter the budget, one must live beautifully each day, life is not the end point, it's all the days leading there.    
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Gravel.  Beautiful, easy labor, cost effective.
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A kitchen door, solely, opens onto the new gravel terrace.  I added another door in her family room, now, a window.  Better flow, more use.  Game changer for how they live in the house, and entertain.



Pic from here.

Miss Unexpected has a slight slope in her backyard, stones, as below, must be used to edge the gravel, and ease of leveling the space.
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Pic from here.
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Minimum size for a patio terrace, 12' x 18'.  Less than this, don't bother, it will hardly be used, too cramped.
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We measured & set flags for her new gravel terrace, and I added a metal shed roof over 1/2 of the new space.  Ceiling fans/chandeliers, of course.
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Cost.  Amazingly, with stones/gravel delivered, she can do the labor herself.  She plans to, not to save money, she grew up on a farm and thrives upon the activity.
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Further away from the house, I put in a gravel terrace with a stone fire ring, and Adirondack chairs. Mom, her kids, dogs, friends who come over and that hunk of a man she's dating, have a new playground.
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Garden design with life story included, Mary Poppins completed her mission, off to another home/garden.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

Bill Blass: How to Edit a Landscape

Bill Blass said, "A woman with a closet full of clothes, but nothing to wear does not know herself very well."
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That sailed a ship.  If you have a lot of plants but not a pretty garden, you do not know yourself very well.
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Editing landscapes is inherent to every good garden you see.
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Arne Maynard's work, below, at an old estate.  Of course it's gorgeous.  And edited.  HARD.




Pic from Arne Maynard.
Hard to edit our closets, it's harder to edit a garden.  Garden editing may require heavy equipment.



Pic from Arne Maynard.

 In our new garden, above/below, yesterday.  Editing.  Chinese holly were not emotionally tough to remove.  The 2 oak trees were emotionally difficult to remove but had to go, they were growing into the magnolia, that will remain.  Boxwood hedge will remain, would not have designed it into its place, but zero heart to remove it.  Told you editing was hard.

Pic, Arne Maynard.

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All the pretty neo-new gardens you see?  Edited.  Hard editing.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Small recompense, the editing will be composted.

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Will find it amusing, in the future, when someone says, "I adore this boxwood hedge here."  You know it will happen, and more than once.  

Using the Sky as a Design Element

Framing the sky, below.  Often, never mentioned as an element of Garden Design.

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The sky has several uses.  Oddly, it's the element making small landscapes look/feel BIG.

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Use the sky, as an element in your Garden Design, to make your garden  feel 'calm'.

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If you have an eyesore in your garden, bottom pic, put a focal point nearby to draw the eye away.  For a year, at minimum, the only arrow in my quiver against the eyesore of shed/Kubota/golf cart, is this patch of sky.

And, Royal Gaze.

Until renovations are complete I'm using the Royal Gaze.  Eyes & heart do not see the necessities, above, they gaze into beautifully framed infinite sky.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics taken this month.  Shot of Kubota is estimate of exact spot to take 'after' pic.  A wrap around porch is being added to the back of the house, steps into the garden landing where Kubota/golf cart are now.  #87 Granite gravel added for landing and path into The Orchard.  First time seeing our new home with the realtor, I saw the new back porch, shed moved, orchard etc.....  More amazing, Beloved said he saw the same thing.

Vanishing Threshold: Looking into Roger Hazard's Windows

Junior high through high school I was on my bike after doing dinner dishes.  Stay at the house with both parents home?  On my bike, gone.  We lived in a beautiful neighborhood surrounded by Galveston Bay, marsh, a salt water lake, Clear Creek, and plenty of palm trees.
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Instead of getting out of my parent's house the rides became a choice for their joy of solitude, learning I do my best thinking exercising & sweating.  College was 4 more years of biking, those years in Dallas, TX, a several mile radius from campus, SMU.  Had my own car in college but it was most common I would turn down social invites, saying I had plans, and head off on my bike, alone.
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Now, I design views into homes from gardens.  This zone I have no name for but call, Vanishing Threshold.
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It's rare to come across Vanishing Threshold in any article, much less 3 Oscar worthy shots.  Roger Hazard is the winner, and it seems his dog, & partner too.
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Enjoy, but enjoy with a purpose.  What can you do to create beautiful, warm, inviting views into your home, from the garden?




 




Garden photographers, too often, overlook this zone, Vanishing Threshold.
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More about this house/garden, HERE.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics via Hooked on Houses from Roger's website.

In the Landscape: What Type of Backdrop is Your Home?

Ca. 1986, I gave myself, English Cottage Gardens, by Ethne Clarke & Clay Perry, below, for my birthday.  Hungry to learn 'everything' about designing gardens, I didn't learn 'more' about designing a garden.  Instead I learned what had the most impact in a garden.  Your house.
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Your home is the backdrop to your garden, and its main focal point.
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Until this epiphany, I gave house exteriors little to no consideration.
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Compare a common USA home to homes in English Cottage Gardens?  Not happening.
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Use a clear eye, aka honesty/integrity, not an easy lipstick-on-a-pig thought process.  Love your home into being a beautiful backdrop to your garden.  Because it is more, it is the backdrop to your life.
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Living in my starter home, ca. 1986, for less than a year, it was an incredible interior, to me, yet depressing exterior.  It gets worse.  Coming home after a weekend away, sometimes I would cry before walking inside my home.  Real tears.  Frustration at living in such an ugly house with a stupid landscape.  No money to change anything.  Poor me.  This is the exact situation teaching me there was much I could change.  As a little girl it was rather common to hear, Tara-the-Terror.  Delicious, she woke up.  My garden, and house, knew, 'game on'.
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Elements of the house, as backdrop to your garden, you must consider.  Views into your home, types of window treatments, interior lighting, no exposed views of the backside of a tv-sofa-pictures-etc, paint color, make the patio/deck a destination of comfort/beauty, need shutters, light fixtures outside, types of hardware on the front door, door mats, cable box/airconditioners, underside of a deck, views into the neighbors garage/RV, paths from the house into the garden, scale of plantings to scale of house, flow around the house, how does the house look from the curb, what do I see walking to your front door, what do I see walking out your front door, and any other tidbit, no matter how minute, fluff it up, regardless of your bank account.  You have a brain.  Use your IQ, figure it out.      
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I sourced exterior furniture, focal points, stone/brick, at garage sales, vacant lots (with permission), trash day gleanings, thrift stores, paint was from the returned paint section of the hardware store.  Plants came from sources in the Extension Service Market Bulletin, or the local nursery's plant-of-the-week, 97 cents, sometimes, $1.99. Mostly it was my own labor, and inner vision of what I had to have in my garden to breath to survive.  Patience, ick, had to be an element too.
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Years later, reading Karl Jung, "Our lives are about getting the outside to match the inside."  I did understand.
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Decades later this passion for a beautiful garden, and home, has not lessened, instead, increased, and still learning.  When garden epiphanies arrive now, they make me laugh.  Nothing is hard about creating a garden, instead it is the pealing away of ego.  Realizing the brain is obtuse to all a beautiful garden freely gives.
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Read, English Cottage Gardens, with your 'eye' analyzing house-as-backdrop.



Good backdrop, below, Sharon Santoni's home in France.



Copy, is a huge tool in garden design.  Sharon's garden is a good example of be-careful-what-you-copy.  If you live in a 60's ranch, or 80's cluster home, as I did, this is not a garden for you to copy.  Why?  You don't have her backdrop to carry the weight of down time in her potager.  Come winter, what will you have?  Bleak.
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This situation, winter's bleak garden, creates another garden design tool.  Design your garden for winter, not only the ease of spring.  A garden beautiful in winter, will be beautiful in spring.
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Still want to have Sharon's garden in your 80's cluster home?  I did.  I addressed all of the 'house' issues listed above, and added evergreens to structure my garden throughout winter's bleak.  Done.
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Simple fix to have this potager, below, in front of your 60's brick ranch.  Add evergreen structure within the potager


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In comes that robber/foe/obtuseness of your labors/money/brain waves, you see the answers, you read the answers, yet don't execute.
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No worries, it's human nature, I did it at the front end too.
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In my new home/garden 2 months, it's the phase of patience.  Paying attention to sun/shade, drainage, flow, privacy, views, parking, destinations & etc.  Knowing, and letting, house renovations have their pace.  The urge to garden here is fierce, a foe at present, especially in the micro details.  Instead, Tara the Terror is vanquishing the foe with patience.  Stinks being mature about this.
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TtT is attacking another foe, having-too-much, and planning for a historic American farmhouse garden, deer proof, drought tolerant, little maintenance, productive in beauty/repose, and agriculturally with 'just-enough' fruit, berries, herbs, vegetables.  This doesn't mean, in the least, I don't want to work in my garden.  Working in a garden is a privilege of being on Earth.  Metaphor of washing-the-servants-feet, and with a free/happy heart.  The best parts of my life have come from this relationship.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO T
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Top pic from Amazon, order if you don't have it, bottom pics Sharon Santoni.

2 Odd Facts About Designing Your Landscape

Two odd facts about designing your garden, begin with an odder fact.  At the start of your garden design, plants do not matter, don't think about plants.
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Studying the best historic gardens you'll discover pics like this, below, its Garden Design rule self evident.  Exterior walls of your home must have 3-D interest.  Don't live in a grand estate similar to below?  Lacking casement windows, stone & brick, equatorial sundial, bespoke clothing?
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Live in a starter home with vinyl siding, no shutters, & hundreds of exact replicas surrounding you?  The imperative for 3-D'ing your exterior walls, greater.  Begin with shutters, moving on to espalier woody shrubs.  They need no support on the house, no trellis, no wires.





Yesterday I had a consultation with a new client.  About 2 acres, mostly wooded, strong slope scattered through out, home neofarmhouse ca. 1980.  Four young children plus mom/dad.  Soon, 6 cars, not counting friends/family visiting.

She hired another designer before me.  Their ideas all began with removing loads of plant materials.  Not where I started, in the least.  Turning into their long winding sloped drive, 1st time, I knew before crossing that threshold they needed a golf cart or Gator.  Four garbage cans were wheeled to the top of the drive for pick up day.

Stopping in the drive, after a few hundred feet, to gain scope for the imagination, pure Anne of Green Gables, seeing, their front porch must be extended to wrap the corner.

Then, after more such gleanings, I met my client.  She loves boxwoods, and any plant with hydrangea in its name.  Deer love her hydrangeas more.

But I've gone ahead of myself, just as my client has.

Her landscape, now, is zero about plants.  Zero.  Her landscape has no FLOW.  No manner of getting from point A to B.  Before designing the first planting, FLOW must be designed into the garden.  Flow for cars, family, pets, guests, Gator, delivery trucks, and most importantly for the eye to flow upon views of beauty to focal points on axis & cross axis.
   


Once FLOW is designed, deer issue addressed, her beloved boxwoods & hydrangeas can be designed into their perfect locations.

Before I left I gave her an assignment, "Do not think about plants."

Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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pics via Half Pudding Half Sauce.

The 'In Italy' Method of Garden Design

This is for anyone wanting a pretty garden yet abhors any hint of a Garden Design 'rule'.  Why would you?  You're smart, you're going to recreate the wheel, your Garden Design will be marvelous, anything done by anyone in any era will pale in comparison.  With sincerity, and your wallet, off you go to Home Depot, on mission.

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Beyond this, while typing 97 words/minute, twirling a bit of hair just above the right shoulder with my right hand at the same time, and glancing out the window into meadows with dairy cattle framed with century old pecan trees, I need go no further.  

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Aside from describing myself, it describes my favorite clients to work for.    

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One client, for sure, knows what's coming next.  Any sentence beginning, "In Italy....."  She smiles & freezes, knowing what is next.  The most fabulous bit of Garden Design EVER.

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  Italy was probably my 3rd/4th historic Garden Design study tour pilgrimage among a dozen plus.

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Have you already intuited the Garden Design formula, above?  In Italy, it is a formula to have a formally clipped low/medium evergreen hedge, fronting,  blowzy shrubs behind, and the serendipitously sited tall cone shapes.  Done.

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Contents of no importance aside from drought tolerant, cold/heat tolerant, no bugs/fungus, not invasive or too fast growing, etc.

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Now, look at the top photo again, as you have just read it scientifically pontificated.  No worries, I know who the doubting Thomas is, the spouse.

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Ok, moving on.

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In Italy, they place a pair of focal points, below, telling the eye & feet where to go.

  In Italy, contrasted shapes-textures-colors, this trinity, below, never fails.

In Italy, it is common to pair disparate objects as a focal point.  Below, obelisk on plinth.



In Italy, common, below, to stay all green.  Do you see the beginning of the French style Garden Design, below?  In Italy, they will tell you French food is merely the French take on Italian.



In Italy, just line it up, below.  You have know idea how many times this Italian Garden Design RULE has saved my a**.  Let it save yours !  I should do a coffee table book on this Garden Design rule alone.  In Oxford, Mississippi I took this Italian Garden Design Rule a step further.  A client had a few acres, and a major collection of old farming equipment, huge major pieces.  What to do?  Designed an evergreen backdrop tapestry hedge, read above again if you don't know what this is, and lined the equipment in front, Museum Style.
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Still so proud of myself for that bit of 'genius'.  Stealing not merely Italian, but from museums too.



In Italy, whatever they serve & however they serve it, below, it is the Julia Child rule for food.
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Don't know the Julia Child rule for food?  If she said it, wrote it, did it, it's for you too.  Julia's best, "Asparagus is to be eaten with your fingers."  Seriously, she said this on one of her shows.  Occasionally I'll make a faux pas at a meal, the quick recovery, "Julia Child said to do it this way."



More ammunition/proof for the In Italy method of creating marvelous?  How many gorgeous gardens will you see driving about USA today?
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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All pics, Ben Pentreath.  Don't know Ben, or Charlie?  Discovered their blog recently & am enchanted, you will be too.

Garance Dore Shoots Aerin Lauder's Southhampton Garden

Rare is the USA garden passed amongst generations.

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Aerin Lauder's Southampton garden began with her grandmother.

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More amazing than Aerin inheriting a lovely garden, she's kept it a lovely garden.  Without sacrificing her 'voice'.  Says much about her ego, confidence, talent.

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Photographer Garance Dore, below, recently shot Aerin's garden.

Pruned hedge, above, a Flying Buttress.  The event for the table must be delightful, but how the vignette is framed by the photographer, magic.

Combing classic & modern, above.  Metaphor, Lauder's grandmother & Aerin.



My mother-in-law was a professional photographer and this foodie shot, above, made me smile and remember how many hundreds of them she took, and, how she used food as a magnet gathering her grown children, their spouses, and grandchildren around her.  Only the best, and in decadent amounts
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Basket, above.  My basket collection is beyond decadence in quantity, must reduce, and my best antique basket is similar.  Perhaps Aerin inherited this basket from her grandmother.  Hope so, incredible having such a useful touchstone to someone she loved.
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Few garden photographers excite me.  Garance Dore, shooting Aerin's garden, feels like a gift, and a Madeleine.
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Enjoy the complete Garance Dore Lauder shoot, here.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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If you like good garden photography, enjoy, Clive Nichols.

How To & How Not: Creating a Landscape

Another example, below, designing a garden as backdrop to your life.

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What does that mean?

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Of course the ubiquitous necessities: beautiful, low maintenance, organic.

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"I can live without the necessities but I must have the luxuries," Miss Katherine Scott, close friend of my grandma, said in conversation when I was 8 years old.  Doubtless you already know Miss Katherine Scott taught Flannery O'Connor her first college writing class, English 101, General College Composition.

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Back to the garden & making it a backdrop to your life.

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Aside from being able to go into my garden, (note: any garden I design/install is forever 'my' garden) and shoot a roll of 36, each worthy of a magazine/book cover, impromptu life scenes must have incredible setting/backdrop, a daughter getting married, cats being crazy cute, a friend at lunch, a grandchild's 1st birthday party, a spouse arriving home with the great news of a big award, a teenager having a sweet 16 with her best friends, and etc...  

Designed, less than 5 years ago, path, above, on axis with the porch & opposite axis from drive, then overdosed theme with flagstones, pairs of boxwood, gate, etc.

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Photographer knew my intention, above, and it is the 1st bride's photo posted by the event planner.  

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This is how I 'check' my work, creating a life of its own.  

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Understanding the core value of Miss Katherine Scott in my gardens via these 2 photos, above/below.

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In college I was trained/taught to design gardens EXACTLY as, below.  Degreed less than 5 seconds I knew I couldn't design a garden to save my soul, or any soul.  With no money, but pure grit, I began 2+ decades studying historic gardens across Europe.

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Landscape of necessity, below.

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Garden of luxury, above.

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Cannot believe I saw this pic, above, recently, online.  Total incurves, outcurves, drifts, specimens, contrasting shapes, be sure to use odd numbers, contrasting textures.  Everything I went to Europe to unlearn.

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Understood Miss Katherine, age 8, five decades later, feeling as though I'm paid to play.

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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

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Met with clients last Saturday morning to run through plan/bid for their garden.  Mentioned the garden as backdrop, to the husband, for all that is arriving ahead for their 2 little boys with events/pictures at home, knowing he was unaware of Miss Katherine Scott's motto, and his eyes glazed over a bit, he smiled politely.  No matter, the choice was made for him.  I can design no other way.  He will understand, his epiphany will arrive.  

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Top Pic, Brita Photography, bottom pic here.

Moved In: ca. 1900 Farmstead

Last week, below, feeding the chickens, an audience arrived.  How do animals this large appear at the fence within seconds, no sound?

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Our views of neighbor's dairy farm.  Soon, when more invasives are removed we'll have views of their lake and rolling Piedmont hills, the last, before the coastal plain.

Still moving in, over 3 days almost 50 boxes unpacked.  5 boxes refilled, heavily, and another Goodwill trip taken.

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How did I ever live without a front porch?  Boxes went to the dump each night.  Fear, not tidiness.  Did not want boxes sitting, and possibly finding a timber rattler in one.  

From the boxes, below.  Over 90% of china/ironstone unpacked.  Dining room has 2 built-in closets, this one, below, was for glass jars of fruit/vegetables.  At least that's what markings on the wood shelves report.

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The door, blessedly was not painted inside.  Made of pine, it has been faux painted, over a century ago, like an expensive wood.  Rest of the doors in the house were painted white.  Will never know if they had all been faux too.

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Shelves, below, go to 11' ceiling/wrap each side, and filled to overflow.

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This is solely colored china/ironstone.  Agreed, Houston we've got a problem.

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On the other side of the fireplace, below, blue/white china cabinet.

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White ironstone still in boxes.  Painting to be done before unpacking those.  Hardly near the top of our action list.

We've done nothing, below, to the garden, other than take what I brought from my last garden, a cottage garden, to Goodwill, or place on 8 pallets under a century old water oak.
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Driveway, below, a compacted meadow, and narrow.  Perfect for us, not our trucks.  Drama ahead.
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Soon, all foundation plantings, below, will be removed with the Caterpillar.  Excepting the camellias, at the end of the front porch, and 2 oleander at my office windows.
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Beloved & I wanted to get it done today, but finishing the pantry renovation beckons more loudly.

 A month living here, I braved my first nail.  House is ample, closet space not.  Basket on wheels is one of my longest & best employees when I lecture.  Files, shredder, printer etc in this closet too.

Mentioned above, drama, below.

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County permit department came, and we were approved to add another driveway.

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No trees will be cut.

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In a perfect world this would not be the new drive entry, it affects axis views, cross axis views, & enfilades of placing the new orchard, rose arbor, potager, smoke house.  For starters.

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What I know, for sure, after 3 decades of studying historic gardens, and designing them, issues in reality always make a garden better.

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Form & function.

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Beloved needs his driveway, and a barn at its end.

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Our new drive will curve, below, it has to, you read the list, above, for this new garden room.

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How long before our new curving drive looks like this, below ?

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More than a bit impatient.

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Life is good.

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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

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Top pics mine, bottom pic, Pinterest.