Garden Design Cheat Sheet: Design Shapes Before Plants

Upon the land, below, do you see garden rooms?  Parlors. dining room, foyer, hallways, mudroom, doorways and more.  And, with the garden rooms, do you see what is dealt with?  Flow.
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Site the first garden room, using the world's most used template, see previous post, from inside your home.  Once your 1st garden room is sited, repeat, repeat, repeat.  Play with rectangles, squares, ovals, circles & more, adding enfilades.
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Need a lawn?  That is your Lawn Room or Meadow or Playing Field or Pasture whichever endeavor best suits your 'lawn' needs.
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With this drawing, below, everyone is an expert garden designer.  Intuitively knowing what is a tree/shrub/groundcover/stone/gravel/focal point on axis/double axis/flow.
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Most important, this is the order of designing your garden, shapes.  No worries about specific plants at this phase.  Shape, then specific plants.
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USA has the Extension Service for best plant choices/zone.  Outside of USA visit nearby old good gardens, and botanical gardens.

Pic, above, via Jala Gardens.

Worst garden design question to ask at the beginning?  What plant goes here?
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Our ca. 1900 American farmhouse is at the start of the Garden Design phase.  Garden rooms & flow.  We must flow via foot/car/tractor/gator, and I must have an orchard, potager, shrubbery, vistas, pleasure walks, garden house, chicken coop, vined arbor for harvest table.  The garden must have something coming into bloom every 2 weeks, ease of maintenance, and make me think, 'Oh WOW', each time I look outside any window of our home, zero watering, chemicals, fertilizing, deer proof, provide a tasty tidbit for the table throughout the year, more than Earth friendly, wildlife friendly, a garden of stewardship, enriching in waves beyond my soul.
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Topics inherent within this mission statement?  Increased property value, decreased HVAC expense, happier days, stewardship.
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Read all of the above, again, with laser precision about property value, decreased HVAC expense, and ease of maintenance.  I went after all of the above, for the love of gardens, instead found many of the truths in a simple phrase, G*d almighty first created a garden.  Won't go into that rabbit hole now, instead, money.  2015 was my year for several real estate sales, for myself & others, fast and at market value, with several perks added.  No, I'm not a realtor.  The homes were staged inside/outside.  All of the above skills put money in my pocket, and my friends pockets too.
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I was gardening to follow my bliss, in addition, much later, a great deal later, discovered I was following the money too.  Thinking of selling your home in the next 3 years?  Stage it now, live in the joy/beauty, reap a larger sales price.  Have your cake, eat it too.
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Not selling your home?  Create a beautiful garden, for you, Earth, friends/family.  Beautiful easier living.
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Garden & Be Well,    XOT  

Garden Design Cheat Sheet

Big smile when I saw an old friend, below.  Pair of focal points in double axis, laid in line with central pane of central window of house.  Choosing another historic winner, layers of green, while contrasting shades of green & sizes of foliage.  Nor does this garden skimp upon the full design, using, canopy trees-understory trees-walls of shrubs-groundcover shrubs & flooring.
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Magnificent.
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Simple.  Proven.  Copied for centuries.
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Complete garden design class in 1 picture.
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Lovely home, yet this Garden Design is for all eras & price points.  Especially troublesome architecture.  Think 1960's brick ranch backing the garden, below.  Pendulum swing, in full, yet the garden design holds true.




Pic, Howard Design Studio.
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There are 2 top garden designs surviving the ages, this is 1, above.  And, the 2nd is a variation added to this one.
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Look at the pic, above, while mentally labeling each part.  Canopy trees.  Understory trees.  Focal point on axis.  Double axis,  Flooring.  Walls.  Once you become familiar with garden design terms, you own the process.  Promise.
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This is perhaps the most copied Garden Design of the ages, yet it is new/fresh with each iteration.
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This is your cheat sheet.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T

What Historical European Landscapes Can Teach Us About Our Own Landscape

Freshman year of college, aged 17 & having skipped my senior year of high school, I found myself in a cavernous classroom, with hundreds of souls listening to our puppet master gushing ad nauseam into the ether about macro/micro economics.  Except, for me, it was worse.  Little puppet master, obviously, held the secret to vast knowledge, yet his vocabulary was pure gibberish entering my brain.  Looking around, everyone else seemed to get-it.  Stress was building, my 1st college coarse, and knew the game was over.  Finally, I asked my closest amphitheater attendee, "What is a margarine, sounding like, 'marrghareen'?"  An hour spent locked on that word, nothing.  Smiling, she said, "Margin."  Decades later, it still amuses to think in terms of macro/micro.  A personal inner life joke.  How nice it would be to sit for an hour this afternoon listening to Little Puppet Master again, explaining the world's current banking & etc.
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Years after the macro/micro pairing, I locked onto another, sacred/profane.  Most recent pairing to make waves, amusement vs. stewardship.  (If you've ever locked onto a pairing of words.....please leave them in comments, I would really like to know !)      
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Moving on, into the macro about USA landscaping.  Lawn, foundation plantings, mulch, annuals, maintenance contract, fertilizing, insecticides, fungicides, irrigation, pre-emergents.



Pic, above, Pinterest.

With my starter home I immediately gardened as my father had, mowing, and, chemicals, faithfully, monthly, to kill bugs.  I'm not a rebel.  Within a year, I had stopped the 'method', I was trying to get pregnant.  Thinking to stop chemicals until the babies came.  The babies never came, infertility.  However, within 6 weeks of not using chemicals, to kill insects, I noticed I had fewer insects than when I was spraying to kill them.  Macro to micro.  I never used chemicals again, 3+ decades and counting.



Pic, above, Pinterest.

Within 5 years of zero chemicals, I had zero turf remaining.  Almost 3 decades without grass.  Recently moved to a ca. 1900 American farmhouse, there is no lawn, only meadow or woodland or gravel.  Studying the best historic gardens across Europe, it only took seeing 1 to know there is a template for landscapes, in the macro, trees/shrubs/groundcovers/stone focal point/low meadow cut at 2-3 heights/zero irrigation/no chemicals.
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It took designing/installing historic European style landscapes, for decades, to learn they are not merely about no lawn/no chemicals etc.  The agenda is much greater, pollinator habitat, and balancing the sacred/profane, into stewardship of Earth, community, self.  Amusing, I had accepted micro as macro for so long.
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Surprisingly came across a concise micro/macro about American agriculture in an article in The Guardian,  about Edward Luttwak, " Military strategist, classical scholar, cattle rancher – and an adviser to presidents, prime ministers, and the Dalai Lama. Just who is Edward Luttwak? And why do very powerful people pay vast sums for his advice? "
“Most people live such pointless lives,” said Luttwak as we walked toward his gate. “Not desperate lives – they have cable television – but pointless. For politicians, it’s not pointless, but it always ends in disappointment and bitterness. But meaningful? Their lives are not as meaningful as the Mennonites. The Mennonites are free in the Hegelian sense – they are self-consciously free. And they have unintentionally revealed the ongoing fraud of American agriculture. They don’t destroy the land, they don’t drug animals to death – they make vast profits using 18th-century technology. Personally, I cannot live that life, but I want it to flourish. I relate with Ulysses because I demand an interesting life. I demand it.”
Full article, The Machiavelli of Maryland, here.
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Bunny Williams home, above.  Her garden resonates, it's the historic template, yet more.  Obvious she has demanded that her life be interesting.  Her book, An Affair With a House, is one of the few I tell my clients to purchase.  If you learn best via photos, her book is for you.  It's about interior/exterior, vanishing threshold.
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Bottom line?  What kind of landscape do you want around your home?  The landscape of your heart, that makes you smile, or one fitting in with the neighborhood?  Choose in the macro.  Then follow the micro templates of your choice.
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How do you choose in the macro?  Pinterest.  Create a board of pics for landscapes you love.  Don't stop the board until you have at least 100 pics.  There will be a thread amongst the pics, and your landscape will be that thread.  Promise.  Macro, create your Pinterest board, micro, deduce the thread from your Pinterest board.  More than putting in a landscape you'll be creating an interesting life.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

7 Steps to a Beautiful Easy Landscape

Why, really, have a Garden?

"...understand that what you resolve will need to be resolved again. And again. You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness."




"...a mistake for which you alone will pay."


Pic, The Sunday porch:enclos*ure, Delray FL 2, 1959, Library of Congress

"Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue."



Found on vestidoslindosatelier.tumblr.com
"You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else."


Found on decoestilo12.blogspot.com
"Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you’ll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you’ll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room."
Found on cotedetexas.blogspot.com
"The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming."

Pic via, The Little Hermitage.
.Topics, above, your garden will answer, absolve, comfort.  From, 

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar — Cheryl Strayed.

"Tiny Beautiful Things will endure as a piece of literary art,” Almond writes, “as will Cheryl’s other books (Torch and Wild), because they do the essential work of literary art: they make us more human than we were before.”

“But it’s a memoir with an agenda,” Steve Almond writes, “With great patience, and eloquence, (Sugar) assures her readers that within the chaos of our shame and disappointment and rage there is meaning, and within that meaning is the possibility of rescue.”

"Inexplicable sorrows await all of us. … Life isn’t some narcissistic game you play online. It all matters— every sin, every regret, every affliction."

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In a Garden, there is rescue.  How many decades, now, have I known to frame a life question/event, head into my Garden, let the question go, and come away with calm, and answers?  In my Garden, more often, free ranging thoughts arrive, unbidden, life's action steps.  "How did you know to do that?", "Well, I was in my Garden."
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If the essential work of literary art is to make us more human than we were before, Gardens are a book.  Gardening, in popular culture,  is a shovel, shredded car tire mulch dyed a redwood hue, mowing, swapping annuals 2 seasons/year, pouring chemicals.  In those gardens, who can hear?  In those gardens, chaos is fed.
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Curated these pics for you, I know each Garden is taking you in, welcoming, calming, inspiring, lightening the load.  A Garden Design course could be made from these few pictures.  Every topic a Garden imbues, is shot above.
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Have you already realized, in these pics, a Garden's mission statement & your 7 steps?
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7 Steps to a Beautiful Easy Landscape:
* A place to nap.
* A place to live your life between house/garden.  Terrace, deck, veranda...
* Framed views from inside your home, into the garden.  Vanishing threshold.
* Pockets of pure Nature, rusticities.
* Furniture in the Garden.  A place to share dinner/lunch with family/friends.
* Choose a Garden color trinity.  Green/brown/white is the classic, a proven friend.
* Interior style must flow into your exterior style.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Over lunch, in my Garden, in the Conservatory, I have heard stories, no woman shares, unless she's in a Garden confessional.  Great laughter, loud laughter, much laughter, mostly laughter and tears too.  The confessional safe, all have shared, exposed themselves.  Leaving the Conservatory is leaving the events of the stories lighter, yet the spent laughter grows heavier in joy as time passes.
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Thank you Farnum Street for inspiring today's post.

How to Transpose Interior Style Into Your Landscape

Designing a garden, I must go inside your home.  I need to see how you live in the home and which garden views, from inside, are the most important.  Your color choices are important, from, sofa, wallpaper, paint, art, accent pieces.
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Another element is how furniture is arranged in the living room, dining room, and breakfast room.  Those arrangements I often copy exactly for furniture groupings outside, in your garden.  Style choices for the garden furniture too.  Your interiors/exteriors must flow.


pic via The Garden Home.


 
Pic via Pinterest, here.

Arranging plantings in your garden, I often copy a few groupings, below, from table top, chest top, mantle top.  Transposing a pair of lamps into a pair of understory trees, pair of plates into a pair of plant drifts, pretty bowl at the center, below, could easily be the focal point bench/urn, you get the idea.



Pic via The Garden Home.


Pic from Pinterest, here.

Garden, above, could be pulled from a mantle with a pair of vases, a lovely bowl in the center, and a nice painting on the wall.  See it?
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How you design your table tops inside your home says a lot about how your brain works symmetrical/asymmetrical etc.  And I know you'll like the same styling outside.
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Quite fun, it never pales, when a client will say, "Oh, I love that.", then I reply, "I simply copied that chest top you have in the dining room.", "OMG, you did."
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Subtle & sublime.
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No one taught me to do these things, I just knew to do them.
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My grandmother, Laura, was a great piano player, by ear.  Little access to sheet music, she was known to play the newspaper or magazines.  Transposing written words into notes.  I like to think I've transposed her piano playing into my garden design methodology !
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Now, look around your home with new eyes, and take it outside into the garden.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Tweaking a Good Garden

Ernest Hemingway, "Never mistake motion for action."
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If you're working in your garden, and it's easy, you're probably doing it wrong.  Looking back at the early years of gardening, in my 20's, what would I tell that girl?  Most of gardening is counterintuitive.  Copy historic gardens from Europe.  Choose the simplest solution.  Keep your love affair with plants last on the priority list, top your plant list with those-great-bores performing against, drought, flood, deer, disease, insects, with little maintenance.  Do not design your garden from the street, stand inside your house, look out the windows, and begin designing the garden.
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Question pretty garden pictures, are they supporting the house, property values, Nature, and lives of those in the home?
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Pretty garden/home, above.  But.  If the sidewalk/street is at the front, move the hedge forward along the sidewalk/street, replace a central part of the turf with more paving, turn a couple of those windows into doors, and create a courtyard, espalier a flowering evergreen woody shrub against the solid wall for instant lush with little maintenance, choose comfortable seating, and small tables at the chairs for easy outdoor dining, and......
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Past my 20's I cannot look at garden pics without the brain overlay.  Better, it's not personal, the ideas are all historic, done for centuries.
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How many other ways to historically change this sweet garden, above?
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Many.
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This is my idea for a garden show, have 10 entries do the same project.  Would be happy to do all 10 myself.  That would be fun, challenging myself, making each one sublime.  But I would still want to see how 10 other people would do it.  Am selfish that way, always wanting to see more, learn more.  Always.
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How would you change this garden, above?
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Pic from here.  I have a Pinterest board, Changes, filled with good gardens I would like to tweak.

Curated Not Collected

Sourcing focal points/pots/furnishings for your garden, before any item comes home, ask yourself, "Is this piece so wonderful it will be fought over at my estate sale?"
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Paying attention to the best gardens several observations resonate.  Alas, the most important, don't.
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The best landscapes have multiple narratives of curating.
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Lack of curating creates a common theme amongst new landscapes, hodge-podge-lodge.

Moving from my 30 year cottage garden into a historic American Farmhouse taught me more about curating.  Several layers of curating are site specific, other layers travel well.  Wish I had known this before moving.  2 massive truckloads to Goodwill later, I've earned a new expertise.
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Last weekend I was able to further curate garden accessories on their 12+ pallets.   
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Head Collection, below, made the transition, along with terra cotta.  Still looking for St. Francis' head, he started the collection.



Clusters of vintage watering cans, below, made the narrative move.  Hopefully the huge chandelier, below, will find the perfect arbor or oak/pecan tree branch.
 

Cat collection, below, made the move.  Laura, below, was conceived/born in my Cottage Garden. and loves the move.  Enjoy watching her create routines. 

Next best focal point rule, after the one at top, one focal point per area.

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How do the heads & cats fit into 'one focal point per area' ?

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Subsidiary focal points.  Not main focal points they are tucked within foliage, only seen by the observant.  

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How many people toured my small Cottage Garden & never saw the head/cat collections?  Many.

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Those narratives, curated.

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Collections can overwhelm, if you are there, with too much stuff, lucky you, a new brainwave, curate.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pics taken this weekend.  

Small Garden Landscapes: 2 Opposing Views.

In France I learned to Sky Scape, which is landscaping with trees.  Until then I had never considered landscaping the sky.  Small gardens, especially, respond to landscaping the sky.  Which is why my tiny cottage garden lived BIG.
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More, I use trees with contrasting foliage textures, and seasonal blooms/berries/fall color too.
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Spring, below, Sky Scape in my cottage garden, Chinese snowball & Kwanzan cherry.
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Last weekend I was keynote speaker at the Clayton County Master Gardener Extension Volunteers 10th Annual Symposium.  My topic, The Garden View.  Another speaker's topic, Gardening in Small Spaces.
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My lecture included bits about small space gardening too, since I had 3 decades in a small garden.
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Amazingly, their small space gardening & my small space gardening were 180 degrees from each other.  Their view looked down at the small garden, literally, below.  Which I enjoyed, seeing the various small plant combinations.


Pic, above, from Better Homes & Gardens.

Top/bottom pics are my view of small space gardens, looking up, into trees & sky.



Though small, my cottage garden, with Sky Scaping managed the cluster home subdivision beautifully.  Both top/bottom pics were shot in my front yard, at least a dozen houses encroaching.
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Not in my realm.
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Obviously, the sky view, and the view looking down are both important.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Amazing venue.  More amazing was the finished product of the symposium.  Catered lunch, folder with handouts and vendor discounts, vendor booths, raffle drawings, snacks, extra drinks, excellent audio/visual help, etc.  Thank you Clayton County Master Gardeners for making my job easy.

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.