A Fine Prospect

Last of the Piedmont, below, heading into the Coastal Plain.  Earlier this month Beloved helped me place my 6' teak bench.  She had been a garden focal point for years, later, placed in my Conservatory for a couple of years, then I moved.  Now, she's subtle, purposefully insignificant, a perch for this fine prospect, below.



Look close, below, and you'll see her.



Invasives were impenetrable when we bought the property.  Getting to the pond not an option.  Beloved hacked a trail immediately upon closing on the property.  For months we thought the far side of the pond was the end of our land.  We discussed offering to buy more land from that owner.  Then we got a survey.  Great news, we already owned a nice amount of land behind the pond.  A bottle of champagne had been in the fridge far too long.  We toasted our good news.
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Last weekend was full, by early Sunday evening I was craving solitude, wildly.  My DNA spoke, Get yourself back to the pond bench.  Six feet long, I sat in a corner of my bench, cradled by an arm & back.  Old friend, you came to me as a Christmas gift from a pair I loved, now gone, how was I to know it would be just you & me, and you would give an embrace of solace?
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Pic, above, here.
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Beloved found me on the bench, he had ridden in on the Gator.  Sat next to me for a few very short minutes, said a few things about clearing the growing underbrush.  He finally became aware of my face, above, and drove away.
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Not an introvert, he will never understand my need for solitude, but he did understand my eyes, leaving me to harvest my riches.
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT

Annuals: Easily Have Them or Not at All

Great lip service is given to the quote, "I want my garden to be low maintenance."  What follows that request, as a professional listening to a new client, is the full monty destroying their request for low maintenance.
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I want to look out the windows of my home and the garden views, each and every one, are, "Oh wow."  More,  I want to enjoy myself in my garden.  You know, "Come for lunch this Friday, we'll have lunch in the garden."  In a few days it will be Saturday.  Zero thoughts contemplating garden chores, instead, "Should be a good Saturday to sit in the Adirondack overlooking lake, woodland, chickens, and begin reading my new book that arrived last month."
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About garden chores.  The few I do have are not 'chores', instead they are the gift of stewardship in partnership with Nature.  Best metaphor-come-to-life, to me, for washing-of-the-servant's-feet.  'Gift' is too small in scope, an honor.
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Back to low maintenance gardening.  A garden to be enjoyed, below.


Pic, above, here.

Colorful annuals have their place.  Somehow they've become the go-to-must-have landscape design ingredient.  Before epiphany, stewardship-not-chores, I knew if a residential landscape design 'needed' annuals, the design was a failure.  Commercial landscape design is another beast entirely.  Yet, thought thru, even they don't need annuals swapped 2x yearly.

 
Pic, above, here.

If you want annuals in your garden, above/below, fabulous method to make it easier.  Before eco/sustainable, having worked professional propagation for years, I knew how toxic the annual flower industry is to Earth.  Packaged soil, wooden pallets shrink wrapped with goods, plastic plug trays, plastic hoop houses, heating/cooling, fungicides, insecticides, pre-emergents, trucking/transportation, mulching.  Nope, nothing eco/sustainable there.  Instead, self-seeding annuals are my choice, if needed at all.
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Pic, above, here.
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Annuals could go into the garden, below.  But they don't 'have' to.

 
Pic, above, here.
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And the conceit of low maintenance, above, in this garden flows around the entire property, below.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Great use of colorful annuals, below.  You are in charge of adding the color, as needed, not the garden with a swath of dead annuals due to a change in season.

 
Pic, above, here.
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I'm giving a garden talk in April, they requested a certain title, Color in the Garden for Sun/Shade.  Sure I'll do some annuals, don't want to alienate any newbies.  Remember, stewardship.  In addition, I will include plenty of color used historically, green.  My hope is to widen horizons.
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Garden & Be Well,  XOT

Tabled Pot Cluster: Simple Beauty

Always a good day, learning something new.  Pot cluster in terra cotta drew my eye, then saw the scalloped metal trays to catch water.  They seem to be from the kitchen, a tart tin?
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Where I would like to place a table top pot cluster, front porch or back deck, both have same issue.  Living rural, winds across pastures are a 'thing'.


Pic, above, here.

Great table for a pot cluster, below.  Learned long ago how to keep the wood from rotting.  Do you already know too?  Brush boiled linseed oil on it once a year.  Once Beloved has his pole barn built, I take ownership of a delightful shed with double, large lean-to tin roofs, one facing east, the other west.  Each side will have a pot cluster on a table, with a rolling barn door built of conservatory windows, blocking pasture winds.  Toad of Toad Hall was never more joyful in an adventure, or planning in his garden, than I, and this little shed.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Pic, above, here.
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One table in my garden, a harvest table made of historic tobacco barn wood, receiving fierce winds, I will use large pots, above.  And, in the category of living a simple life with a fabulous garden I know exactly what choice morsels to plant in them.
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Big impact, little input.  Every layer of my garden, its full narrative, has rent to pay.  Don't pay the rent, you're gone.  What's the rent?  It must make me happy.  Needy for attention, not beautiful, don't tell a story, too much down time, poof, voila, gone-gone.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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“Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.” 
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Controlling an Unsightly View in the Garden

Almost 2 years in our ca. 1900 farmhouse, the pantry still has issues.  Two rotting shelf boards were replaced and the entire pantry painted, but beyond that point of necessity, work remains.
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Another issue, is the pantry window & its view.  Living historically, includes being close to the road & hugging a property line.  Next door is our neighbor in his ca. 1890 home.  



Meet our neighbor, below.  An evergreen tapestry hedge has been planted, drip irrigation, and we've already pruned hard last summer, will do a last hard prune, making them flush full and fast this spring.  A mix of tea olive, holly, azalea, hydrangea, anise.  Not chosen or designed, left over from a mix of jobs.  A friendship path for neighborly walk thru was put in, and used often.






Three years ago, never imagining I would move from my 30 year Cottage Garden, I found a toile linen curtain panel.  Custom made.  Junking, $5.






Now, still adoring my neighbor, above, I only see magnificent aspects of his garden.  Once the hedge is grown, it's evergreen, the toile curtain will probably be taken away.  What's not to love about a tapestry hedge blooming throughout the year along a gravel drive, capped with century old trees & sky?
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Every bit of this mundane story, a truth, currently, for all my garden views.  Looking up, until renovations higher on the priority list are completed.  Patience.  Learning too, more specifically what I moved away from.  Simple, potent, joy of walking thru my home and feeling the love of a garden pouring into the windows.  A friend, a loving friend.   I don't stay there, I stay in my new chapter, it's exciting, joy is different, but no less, joy.
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The pantry is large enough to put a cot in for an emergency guest room, has its own window, door, lighting, with 11' ceiling.  From 1st seeing the pantry, I've wanted to lay on the floor with a comfy pillow and read.  Undisturbed.  Nap a bit, wake, read some more.  While waiting for the garden I must really give myself at least 1 pantry afternoon.
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At this juncture, Beloved would point out a huge gap, no fantasy for stocking the pantry & cooking a great meal.  His point larger than mentioned so far.  Our house has a 2nd kitchen.  My gardening never lessens, merely increases in scope.  That 2nd kitchen will make a fabulous floral arranging stage.
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Books I would bring into the pantry?  GARDEN books.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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We were probably the 1st owner in over 50 years to remove every layer of contact paper lining the pantry shelves.  Two of the boards, once exposed, disintegrated into tiny pulp fibers.  Never seen anything like it.  How had they been holding the previous owner's provisions !  Need to source a wood step ladder, put rarely used things on the top 2 tiers of shelving.  Perhaps the better choice is to leave those shelves empty, take more stuff to thrift store.

Tasha Tudor & Robert E. Smith: Ahead of Their Time, Living in the Past

Tiny historic cottage, in Louisiana, was moved to a new site and given its historic interiors, exterior & garden, below.

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Immediately, moth to flame, I noticed the historic exterior color trinity, green-brown-white, below.

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And, its subsidiary color, golden harvested wheat. 

A complete historic (rare to see overdose-on-a-theme) front porch, below.  Furnishings, lighting, colors, footings are brick piers, probably not a lot of stone in Louisiana delta.  

  

Pigeonnier, below.  

 

Add a run to the pigeonnier, and it's a perfect chicken coop, above/below.

Before/after, above/below.

 The garden, above, Smith copied from another historic site.

Axis view, above.  

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Copying the historic template, Robert E. Smith, Antiquaire, created a world.   More, within the world a manner of making a living.

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Before Robert E. Smith there was Tasha Tudor, Jill Adams-Vancimalano said of Tasha Tudor, "She was ahead of her time, but she lived in the past."  Tudor also copied historic templates of home & garden, then moved in to stay, finding a manner of making a living.

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More amazing they did it without internet.

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More than once I've been told, "Quit living in the past."  I just smile.  Really, someone thinks they can judge another person's relationship to G*d and how they choose to live on this Earth?  That smile?  It's a Cheshire cat smile.  You know the one, it says, Bless your heart, without uttering a word.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO T

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Thank you Joni Webb, Cote de Texas for writing about Robert E. Smith.  If you like this tidbit about Smith's garden, the full article, here.     

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We're still living with a temporary Chicken Coop, focusing on other renovations.  Glad of it.  Pigeonaire, above, gives more scope for the imagination.  Brick piers, above, make me think the vernacular historic brick piers under front porches in rural middle-Georgia, where I live, were chosen as an 'upgrade'.  Why?  The homes are set upon stone piers.  Sadly, our stone piers were painted at some point.  Our stone mason said sandblasting the paint off the stone piers will probably harm the mortar.  

Garden Design Assignment

Oddly, I feel most people hiring me are intuitive about creating a garden.  What they lack is a garden education, a garden vocabulary.  And are smart enough to ask for help.  Which is quite bold.
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This garden, below, perfection.  At the front end of my career, I would not have understood this garden.  Pure architecture.  More than a backhand down the line winner, it is taking the net for an overhead smash, and better than catching your opponent wrong footed, your ball hits them in the solar plexus, knocking the air out of them, they fall backward on their rear, struggling for breath.  You've won the point.  Yes, this garden, below, feels that good.


Pic, above, here.
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However, that's not where I'm going, how-wonderful-it-is, with this garden, above.  Instead, a practice garden design for you.  Mentally remove your entire landscape.  Next, with the garden design style, above, use only this style design to plan your new landscape.  Do not worry about specific plants, put in the shapes.
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Take it a step further, doodle it on paper, with your house & property line drawn.  Go.  Have fun.
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Garden & Be Well,    XOT
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Yes, I was a competitive tennis player, won district singles 4A twice, then skipped my senior year of high school to go to college.  Never played tennis again.  Oddly, I was never a good tennis player, merely competitive.  Yes, I made tennis a contact sport, story above is true.  Gladly, left behind 'competitive'.  Ironically, it's what I love greatly about gardens, there is already a winner, Nature.  She lets me play, by her rules, and happy for my winning, by her rules.  Teamwork.
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Beloved has commented more than once about how I walk.  It's plain, streamlined, calm, the exact walk perfected on tennis courts across Texas, the same walk I used to turn away from a gagging girl, before she got up,  'walking' to the baseline, as if zero had happened, I have a tournament to win, don't slow me down.
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Why not play tennis?  Could never do social tennis, only what I knew.  Love watching Serena Williams play tennis.  Whoa, curtsy to the queen !
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Garden, above, designed by Quincy Hammond.

Gertrude Jekyll: Rusticity & Formality

Rusticity with formality, below.  Gertrude Jekyll, Munstead Wood.  Her reign still informed many gardens I studied across Europe.  And, as a girl, a large garden/home visited ca. 1967, built decades previous, in Augusta, GA, owned by Edison Marshal.


Pic, above, here.

Macro drawings of Jekyll's garden, above/below.  Clearly, rusticity & formality.


Pic, above, here.

Going into the micro garden, below.

 
Pic, above, here.

When I came back from my 1st study tour of historic British gardens, I had to create a manner of drawing them.  College merely taught incurves/outcurves blah-ti-awful-blah.  Amusing to find this drawing, below, today, it's exactly what I've done, drawing garden plans.  With embarrassment, assuming it was too simplistic.  No more.  How to draw this garden, below?  Easy.  Design the house and paths first, then fill in the leftover voids.

 
Pic, above, here.

Layers of a Jekyll garden design, below.  Macro-micro.


Pic, above, here.

Jekyll's garden, below, Munstead Wood.  She would have loved using a drone for her gardening.


Pic, above, here.

Classic Gertrude Jekyll flower border, below.  Amusing.  Great reminder she had 15 acres and 14 experienced gardeners working for her.  Her garden easily copied in style, not content.  Flowers, below, easily switched to flowering shrubs.


Pic, above, here.

A bit of her woodland, below, at Munstead Wood.

 
Pic, above, here.
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During Jekyll's lifetime her home/property was entered on foot, no motor entry concession made to the modern era.  After WWI, she wrote of her altered means in gardening due to the expense of labor.  .
Since 2008 garden labor contracted again.  Plants, finally, caught up to their true value.  Labor expense plus growers/wholesalers going out of business, consolidation.  30 years putting gardens into the ground, last year began putting a 30 day guarantee of plant pricing.  When gas prices go volatile we put gas prices in the bid at a given set rate.  If gas goes up, so does the price, if the price goes down so does the price.  More, we only provide work given in the bid.  No more letting a client ask our men, "Need ya'll to get all the privet taken out behind the stream.", labor too expensive, instead, those requests are a Change Order.  Commercially, currently, each man is billed $40/hour, the going rate.  Multiply that by 5 men for an hour of pulling privet.  Not a price any business wants to absorb. .
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This isn't about money.  Yet, in the end, filthy lucre is involved.  My cottage garden of 30 years, a mix of formal & rustic, had a price.  A price never totaled into dollars.  Why would I?  My hunt wasn't the bill, it was my life.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Garden Design: Life Happens in the Margins

The trinity that remains, below.  Noticed decades ago, what remains of a good garden.  Can you label the remnant layers?
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Pic, above, here.
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Open, wooded, stone focal point.
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Pasture/meadow, woodland, stone focal point.
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What I haven't known for decades, about that trinity, is its place in the hierarchy of Nature.  Had to serendipitously  learn its role.
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Did you know there is a function of meadow next to woodland?
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High density next to low density.
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Do you know where this is leading?
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 Maximum pollinator habitat.
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All roads lead back to, Life happens in the margins.
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No accidents.
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With a garden, the trinity is literal.  Not psycho babble, life-happens-in-the-margins, about creating more space in your life for calm.  Don't understand?  Create & live in a historically designed garden.  You'll get the memo.  
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT

Front Yard: Simple, More Simple

Seems so simple, below.


Pic, above, here.

More simple, below.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Austerity of great depth.
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Richness in choosing 'no'.
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A garden must say who you are from the curb.  A garden must say you really do want to come inside.
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Amazing array of good choices, that list is not short, made for both houses & gardens.
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How simple can you make your landscape while giving it, and your home, deep riches ?
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T

Tara Template: The Potted Grid

The potted grid, below, created centuries ago.  We have the good fortune of drip irrigation.
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A statement piece, easy, big impact, little input.
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Melds historically, and modern.
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No matter your Potted Grid, it will be unique.








Pics, above, here.
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Decades, I had a belief about copying gardens.  Only a failure would copy a garden.  My ideas are better & new, (quite a precious trite youth, bless her for getting me here).  Garden Design is COUNTER INTUITIVE.  A copied garden is unique and fresh, EVERY TIME.
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Promise.
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Every site is unique, your application choices are unique, every day's weather is unique, each day's passage is unique by the split second.  Garden Design is following the best recipes.  Same script, different results, each time.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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Went to a famous rosarian's garden, Anna Davis, used her garden in one of the books I've written.  On her deck, off her kitchen, Anna did a riff on the Potted Grid.  Over a dozen large terra cotta pots, stuffed with roses, not in a grid, but a Mosh Pit of the Potted Grid Template.  Yep, it worked.  Apologies no pic, it's not online, and my pics of her Rose Garden Mosh Pit are amongst thousands of slides I've taken.
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Anna's Garden, above.
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Hot, humid day we 1st visited Anna, she was welcoming with her time in touring us thru her garden, and refreshments in the kitchen afterward.  Ice water and glasses were waiting for us on a tray, the ice water pitcher a classic fat bellied silhouette made of sterling.  Beads of sweating dripping along its sides.  Looking at it made the heat/humidity go away.  Guess what I did?  Yes, you know I did.  Began the hunt.  Took a few years, found almost her exact pitcher to use in same situations.  Mine, plated, but a good plate, it had been a golf trophy in the 50's from a course in Massachusetts.  The engraving gorgeous.  Fond memories of Anna's garden each time it's used.
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For longtime friends reading, of course it was Penny McHenry with me in Anna's garden.  Better, we all knew it was a 'lifetime' good day.  My good fortune in those, quite deep.

Tara Template: The Table

Following historic Garden Design rules, creates wildly unique gardens from the same templates. Every time.
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Sure, ignore historic Garden Design rules, go commando, walk off the reservation, reinvent the wheel, hello ubiquity.  Worse, aside from frittering money.  Time.  Life's precious commodity.
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Who have I become?  What happened to that young woman?  The one who needed perennial borders, shocking amounts of hydrangeas & gee gaws galore, first?  No longer a young woman, joyful victory, fully bloomed woman, humbly remaining a young gardener.  My life, To Sir With Love, lived into, Thomas Jefferson.  Hungering for more.  More, than the young woman who merely thought she hungered.
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Tara Template: The Table
















All pics, above, here.
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On August 20, 1811 Thomas Jefferson wrote to Charles Willson Peale, “I have often thought that if heaven had given me choice of my position & calling, it should have been on a rich spot of earth, well watered, and near a good market for the productions of the garden.  “no occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, & no culture comparable to that of the garden. such a variety of subjects, some one always coming to perfection, the failure of one thing repaired by the success of another, & instead of one harvest a continued one thro’ the year. under a total want of demand except for our family table I am still devoted to the garden. but tho’ an old man, I am but a young gardener.”  Monticello Blog.  
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To Sir with Love

Lulu

Those schoolgirl days of telling tales and biting nails are gone
But in my mind
I know they will still live on and on
But how do you thank someone, who has taken you from crayons to perfume?
It isn't easy, but I'll try

If you wanted the sky I would write across the sky in letters,
That would soar a thousand feet high,
To Sir, with Love

The time has come
For closing books and long last looks must end
And as I leave
I know that I am leaving my best friend
A friend who taught me right from wrong
And weak from strong
That's a lot to learn
What, what can I give you in return?

If you wanted the moon I would try to make a start
But I, would rather you let me give my heart
To Sir, with Love

Songwriters: Don Black / Mark London

To Sir with Love lyrics © EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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To Sir With Love, the movie, made quite an impression watching the first time as a teen.  More amazing is the source my life was given, as mentor, my Garden.  To Garden, with Love.

Garden Design Class in a Single Pic

Hello gorgeous, below.
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You got me with your almost brutally modern architecture, smashed into historic Garden Design.
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Then you dropped those orbs with a glint of art nouveau reverie taking a ride with Tinkerbell.
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Your furniture borders on cliche excepting it's an ode to cubism.
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Well do I appreciate the hands & intent pruning, a cocky marvel, to those who know.
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Finally, ending with how lush can you be with the smallest amount of input.
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You're darn tooting I want to see the rest of the garden.
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Pic, above, here.
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Adore garden pics telling a story, and teaching a Garden Design class.
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What do you see, above?
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T

Brain Pickings: Rachel Carson & Dorothy Freeman

Most of the historic gardens I've studied across Europe for 2+ decades are farms.  Never anticipating I would be designing a single farm garden.  Majority of my work, to date, has been in subdivisions attached to large cities.  Learning at the historic farms, best ever choice.
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Farm, below, quite typical of gardens I've studied.  Great dividing line of farm & formal at the ha-ha.
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Pic, above, here.

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, published when I was a small girl, made the tv news.  That black/white screen bearing witness to MLK's murder, Vietnam, a President shot, the Texas Tower Shooting, and race riots.  Well before the age of 10, all this stuff plastered tv news.  Nope, in the wisdom of a 6'ish year old, Rachel Carson, was just another bitter story.      

 
Pic, above, here.

Time passes.  Of course I learn she's done something quite wonderful.  And I had to study at those historic farms, learning how to insert Nature into subdivison landscapes.  Nature, my great love.

 
Pic, above, here.

Until this year, Rachel Carson remained a 'persona'.


Pic, above, here.
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Following a short rabbit hole of diversion, I discovered Rachel Carson the person, today.  A dear friend, at lunch yesterday, Brio on Peachtree, shared with me something wondrous that had happened to her.  Before the sharing I knew something was different, she was luminous in her beauty, radiating peace.  A terrible bitterness she had carried, over 2 decades, lifted.  Gone.  Whew.  What a lunch we had and I don't mean the food (wedge salad &lobster bisque).  
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I don't see my friend often enough, at least once a year we try to spend the nite, sharing the same bed, not wanting to miss a moment of time with each other, talking till way too late.  This friendship quite important to both of us.  And it has had its moments of angst, nevah you doubt, but never an option to part.
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Brain Pickings had an intriguing link about a friendship, a deep friendship between a pair of grown women.  With memories of yesterday's lunch still glowing today, you know I took the click bait.
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Rachel Carson is one of the women.  This article about deep friendship, turned Rachel Carson the persona, into Rachel-the-person.  A nice read of depth, as only Brain Pickings does, I finished the article with moist eyes.  And, clicked afterward to buy her books.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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If you don't take my click bait, above, here's an excerpt:

"In September of 1963, shortly after her testimony before President John F. Kennedy’s Science Advisory Committee became instrumental in the first regulatory policies on pesticides, Carson wrote a stunning letter to Freeman. It contained a contemplation of her own mortality so profound, so poignant, so tenderhearted and transcendent that it could only be articulated to the person who knew her heart most intimately. She writes:

Dear One,

This is a postscript to our morning at Newagen, something I think I can write better than say. For me it was one of the loveliest of the summer’s hours, and all the details will remain in my memory: that blue September sky, the sounds of the wind in the spruces and surf on the rocks, the gulls busy with their foraging, alighting with deliberate grace, the distant views of Griffiths Head and Todd Point, today so clearly etched, though once half seen in swirling fog. But most of all I shall remember the monarchs, that unhurried westward drift of one small winged form after another, each drawn by some invisible force. We talked a little about their migration, their life history. Did they return? We thought not; for most, at least, this was the closing journey of their lives.

But it occurred to me this afternoon, remembering, that it had been a happy spectacle, that we had felt no sadness when we spoke of the fact that there would be no return. And rightly — for when any living thing has come to the end of its life cycle we accept that end as natural.

For the Monarch, that cycle is measured in a known span of months. For ourselves, the measure is something else, the span of which we cannot know. But the thought is the same: when that intangible cycle has run its course it is a natural and not unhappy thing that a life comes to an end.

That is what those brightly fluttering bits of life taught me this morning. I found a deep happiness in it — so I hope, may you. Thank you for this morning.

Rachel  "

Saul Zaik: Integrated Indoor & Outdoor Spaces

Zipping with speed thru pics, this deck, below, stopped me.
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A hearty bravo to the brainwave.  Then, overdose-on-a-theme, the roof !
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Another bravo to whoever designed the interior of this home, from my favorite vantage point, the garden.  Landscaping along the windows is a bit odd, glass rectangle edged with ferns, creating a terrarium'ish style.  What to do instead?  (First, replace sofa with a pair of similar styled chairs, that turn 360.  Why the fortification of sofa only looking in?)  Remove ferns & existing path, replace with bluestone rectangles, sized in width from outer edge of deck, fully to the house, scaled in length to each window, spaced the same distance apart as the window frames.


Pic, above, here.
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Color of patio chair, echoed inside with the bowl, and dark gray from chimney top to foundation.
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Next.  Axis looking into the home is marvelous.  What is its opposite axis?  Double axis.  If you have a focal point in one direction you must have another in the opposite.  Has me curious.
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Lawn & large shrub at corner are thriving, sculptural.
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Almost a Garden Design course in a single pic.
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Garden & Be Well,    XOT
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Notice the gutters at the roof line?  Great example of darkish color rising up into the roof.  Too often, gutters are painted much lighter than a roof, pulling the height of the roof lower.  Another counterintuitive Garden Design layer.

Furniture in the Garden

In the garden.  That's my magnet.  If you've read for any time, you've noticed there is no 'working' in the garden, of the macro-world's vernacular entrenched meaning of working-in-the-garden.
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This I know for sure.  If you're working in your garden, and it's easy, you're doing it wrong.  If you're working in your garden, and it's hard, you're doing it wrong.
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So.  Which is more true?  Both are deeply true.
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Truth?  True work in the garden is an intellectual delight.  Best game invented.  Toughest competitor ever, yourself.  Rules change each second, weather is friend and foe, no one will ever have the pocket book for what they want to do in their garden, raising the bar, do it anyway, you are compelled, use cunning and smarts, get the garden you want. along the way realize to your core, G*d almighty first created a garden, and 'men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely, as if gardening were the greater perfection', and in the best metaphor, the game of creating your garden is realizing it is truly the gift of washing the servant's feet, Nature, or perhaps you have a notion, still, you're above the pollinating desires of a mere lady bug, or honey bee?
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Here's the deal, bottom line, it's important to be in your garden.  Comfortably.  Must begin somewhere.
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My clients know I'm far more interested in how their garden furniture is used during a soiree, where it's placed the morning after, than being at the soiree.  If it was a large soiree with myriad age groups I want to know how the various groups interacted with the garden.  But this is jumping ahead of the story.  About you.  And being in your garden.
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Furniture In The Garden, is my Pinterest board, over 800 pics.
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Bottom line, below, these folding chairs at a minimum.  Whatever it takes.  Most recent pic saved, below, yet one of the richest.


Pic, above, here.

Have written about preferring square/rectangular garden tables over round, on deck/patio.  They are more useful, can be pushed together or against a rail or the house.  Round table, below, is perfect.  Each seat, a lush view.  Great Garden Design too.

 
Pic, above, here.

This story, below, is rich.  Wish I knew what it was.

 
Pic, above, here.

Hope this table, below, sails a thousand ships.  Repurposed everything.  And a mix of seating.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Very nice, below, go buy it.  If it's not in your budget, easy too.  Do what the French do.  One of the best things I learned while studying historic gardens across France is about furniture in the garden.  If garden chairs are field gathered, paint them all the same color.


Pic, above, here.
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Am field gathering garden chairs now for my harvest table.  A crush of hodge-podge-lodge at present.  Some chairs I had, I know will go away, once field gathering anew is successful.
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Once 10 chairs are bagged, I know exactly what color they will be painted.  If you've read for any length of time, you know every garden must have an exterior color trinity.  A centuries old concept.  For our ca. 1900 American farmhouse I chose the classic, green-brown-white.  The white & green have already been specified, still working on the brown.  The chairs will be green.
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Field gathering targeted items is one of my favorite things to do.  Mostly, they are sourced at thrift stores, yard sales, Goodwill, or Habitat Restore.  The hunt is like cocaine, if I knew what that was like, but imagine the garden hunt to be far superior.  Oddly, garden hunts of my pack of garden gals, equally rich to enjoy, as much as my own.
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There is a proper way to share garden hunt finds.  Text a pic or call and describe, then the most wicked part, something to the tune of, It Was Three Dollars.
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Garden & Be Well,    XOT
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Something happened with the cheap folding chairs.  I've kept too many.  On purpose.  Beloved wants to toss over half of what we have.  Nope.  When we go to a pool party, picnic, concert, fireworks, etc. I always bring extra chairs.  They always get used.  My personal Garden Chair Ministry.