Diminutive

Historic light fixtures were

often diminutive. Keeping the original says a lot.

This original light fixture, above, told me volumes about my client before meeting her. Of course the entire entry reeks of quiet elegance, intellect, narrative & confidence. What do you want your entry to say about you?

Had to share Peaches, (she lives here) a rescue, above, with you. Intellect? Ha, Peaches has her owner firmly under control.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Doormat

I first saw this type of doormat, below, in a centuries old French garden (cobblestones set in gravel). As perfect as this entry, below, is I want to take it back

further. Do you know what I mean?

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Do you know how?

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The container. Fabulous, but too new for this landscape.

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We have already sourced a new container, almost a century old, in Birmingham, AL.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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When the new container arrives the current era will be blended across the past.

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Timelessness, a grace in every landscape fortunate enough to wear it.

Details of a Garden Room

Rescued sink, "champagne is on ice in the conservatory", & stand made from leftover structural pieces, century old rescued pine. Rescued culvert, above, has a new life, & the rescued chest, windows, shutter.

How calm the shutter looks, above, hiding the sink. Carpet, #89 granite gravel.

Nap, above, on the daybed in the Garden Room? Notice its pot feet? Having a chandelier & lamps is of utter importance.

Chandelier, for sale, alas borrowed from Le Jardin Blanc, hanging from the tin roof. Ugh, we had to buy the roof. Curtains? Jute erosion control fabric. Bedding borrowed from Susanne Hudson's home, & mine.

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Hydrangea welcome, above. After all it's the garden Susanne Hudson & I created for the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival on the grounds of Le Jardin Blanc.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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You will not believe what this Garden Room looks like. Can't wait to show you the money shot, soon poppets ! Alert, this garden room built solely with the labor of 1 man & 2 women. None labeled 'young' in contemporary culture. Ha, young in what we create. Please, let us create a Garden Room for YOU. It's all we wanna do. Oh dear, this snippet is turning into the lines of a country song......... ta-ta before it gets worse.

Small Space Gardening

Small space gardening has it all. Seasons, evergreens, deciduous, focal points, ceilings, walls, floors, doors, details. Aaah, details. Details are intensified in small spaces.
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Under 150 square feet, below, this little frontyard lives big. In the garden & from inside the house. A backdrop hedge creates walls of the room & blocks views of the street. A gate, door to the room, opens the space and extends the architecture of the house. Urn/plinth are focal point & create an enfilade (view thru to a view) in 2 directions, double axis.

Holding up thru the seasons is imperative in small space gardening. No down time allowed.

Potted herbs during summer are gilding. The house & a pair of boxwoods are another wall in this tiny garden room, above. Gravel is the flooring.

Variegated boxwood, above, echoes, those planted in the ground. Raking the gravel is detailing of the carpet. Adding the interest of an oriental rug.

Cat tucked into a boxwood, above, is a hint of what you'll find inside. The urn/plinth were clues or was it the iron gate painted robin's egg blue? Subsidiary pots are all terra cotta. Repetition creates impact in any size landscape.

No big surprise, the classic ginger jar inside, below, when everything outside is classic. Vanishing Threshold, bring your inside out and your outside in.

How do you want to use your small space? A lovely view, a place to lunch, read or invite girlfriends for wine/canapes?

A season's detail. Chinese snowball blossoms coat furnishings & carpeting in this tiny garden room.

Use height in small spaces to reach for the sky. Vines, espaliered shrubs, understory trees. Pull the eye up. The sky creates limitless space in small gardens.

After the Chinese snowball blooms, above, an espalier oakleaf hydrangea blooms, below. Both are draperies when viewed from inside. Outside they add lushness to the wall of the house, draw the eyes up, harbor birds/butterflies, provide 4 seasons of interest.

Small space gardens, abutting your house, include the views into your house. No backsides of pictures, tv & etc.

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I adore the challenge of creating small gardens. Especially those abutting the house. They harbor our gaze. And they gaze back, with grace.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics from my front yard the past several months.

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Garden Designer's Roundtable: Small Space Gardening, more articles by the experts.


Small Spaces, Big Ideas!
June 22, 2010 by Scott

Today we focus on the challenges and opportunities of gardening in a small space. Small space gardening has its limits, but it doesn’t have to be limiting. Regardless of whether you are creating an intimate space within a larger garden or simply utilizing every available inch on your balcony, there is no reason your small space garden can’t be a well-designed masterpiece.

A small space garden lends itself to personal expression in a way a larger garden simply cannot. It’s easy to let your personality shine through in a small space garden. But the limited space means you are going to have to make some tough choices, every plant or design feature will need to do double duty. Of course the principles of garden design still apply, you just might need to tweak them a bit to make them fit your space.

Below you will find links to the Roundtablers who are participating in this month’s topic. Please feel free to join in with a comment here, on our Facebook Page, or on the individual blogs themselves. Your thoughts and experiences are always encouraged and welcomed and really do help us broaden our knowledge of this not-so-small topic.

Carolyn Gail Choi : Sweet Home and Garden Chicago : Chicao IL

Jenny Petersen: J Petersen Garden Design : Austin TX

Laura Livengood Schaub : Interleafings : San Jose, CA

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK

Shirley Bovshow : Eden Makers : Los Angeles, CA

Susan Morrison : Blue Planet Garden Blog : East Bay, CA

Susan Schlenger : Landscape Design Advice : Hampton, NJ

Outside & Inside A Hedge

Standing in the street, below, at my front gate this morning. Inside the hedge, below, is my Bay Terrace.

Oakleaf Hydrangea blossoms unfurling, below, in the Bay Terrace.

The subtlety of my rule "Just Let It Touch", blossoms caressing, below, the adirondack chair.

Oakleaf Hydrangeas espaliered, below, at the bay window. Learned this trick in Italy at Lake Maggiori.

Did my garden make you curious about seeing, below, inside?

My go-to spot, above, for working on projects, lunch, dinner with a girlfriend.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Bottom pic taken weeks ago, rest of the pics taken less than 15 minutes ago.

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Love English hedgerows and copied. Mine: dwarf abelia, climbing rose 'Dortmund', hydrangeas, boxwood, palm, rosemary, lavender, liriope, clematis, hollyhocks.

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Breakfast yesterday morning, in my gown, sitting in the adirondack chair caressed with oakleaf hydrangea blossoms. Neighbors in my tiny subdivision, surrounding my tiny property, well hidden behind my hedge.

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The antique gateleg table had been in my office for a decade until last January. I hired Susanne Hudson to choose paint colors, somehow, ALL my furniture moved !

STORIES YOUR EYES CREATE

A beautiful lake view, below? A new home made to look old? An old home finished with rehab? The porch of a newly discovered B&B?

Is the porch completed or just begun?

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What is the story your eye has created for this porch?

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Did you know landscape photography manipulates your "story eyes" to this degree?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken this week at Pecan Orchard's. Do you want the REAL story of this porch or should I let you keep the story YOUR eyes have created?

OWN YOUR SKY

Chinese snowball, Kwansan cherry, cypress + dwarf abelia hedge, below. Ha, now the dwarf abelia hedge is apparent, below. You see my gate.

Glimpses, below, of the Bay Terrace. Shot pea gravel, adirondack chairs, terra cotta pots.

The street view, above, of my tiny sweet garden. Excepting the sky. As designed; I own the sky. Nothing tiny or sweet about that.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken 3 days ago. Wish I could say all of the above is original. Nope. Historical landscape design: ceiling (trees), walls (shrubs), floors (gravel), hedge, gate, axis, pots, furniture, bloom sequencing, scale, flow, color, focal point, textures.

SUBSIDIARY FOCAL POINT

Tucked into a boxwood, below, hidden from most views. Meow. Bamboo rake bought for aesthetics.

A neighbor, retired NAVY, taught me how to do the rake/gravel thing.

A new pleasure, dragging a bamboo rake thru gravel. Aaaah, the sound, the feel of rake thru gravel, new body movements, making swirls, curves, lines, intersections, mindlessness; but not.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

GRAVEL AT THE DOOR

The sound, view, warmth, welcome, ease, history, joy, affordability, aesthetics. Gravel at the door.
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"He who is born with a silver spoon in his mouth is generally considered a fortunate person, but his good fortune is small compared to that of the happy mortal who enters this world with a passion for flowers in his soul." Celia Thaxter, in, An Island Garden.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic via Greige Design. Pics soon of my new chandelier in the Butler's Pantry (aka mudroom) & gravel to my front door.

NOT ALWAYS PRETTY: Free Design Fix

"What can I do?", below, in my email last week. In winter a wasteland, above/below.

A few ideas to fix this landscape: evergreen shrub/s, evergreen groundcover/s, hydrangeas, espalier evergreen shrub at blank wall, keep & rearrange perennials, bench (need the curve of a Giverny bench)at base of espalier evergreen shrub with flagstone leading to it, stain board under rail same color as shutters, use a darker shade of white on trim/rails/posts/windows creating sense of space, climber up corner post & along top of porch. Treat entire space like a window box. Prepare the soil and pack your goodies in. (Note: Cheaper than annuals, above, less maintenance, & pretty all year.)

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More ideas to fix this landscape (phase II from piggy bank): all of the above plus remove rail at end of porch & add a stone step creating a new entryway to porch with stepping stone from drive to porch. Pair of evergreens at each end of this new path. Match same evergreens with a pair at front steps.

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Let's spend some money to fix this landscape (fat piggy bank): Remove front/side rails & add stone curbstones for steps where each rail section is removed. Add flagstone terrace between concrete/house with space for the evergreens/climber/espalier/bench, surface sidewalk in same stone as new flagstone terrace, remove large section of turf in front of house abutting the sidewalk creating a courtyard space with same plantings used at house plus an understory flowering tree with clematis growing thru it. Create entryway in this new courtyard space on axis with the front steps to house. Voila, an enfilade to the front door. Depth, drama, curb appeal.

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Old money fix: evergreen groundcover, pairs of evergreens at entries, evergreen climber, evergreen espalier at blank wall & bench. (Gotta love the old money fix!)

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Eccentric garden fix: is the owner in love with Warhol, Monet, Frank Lloyd Wright, Jekyll, mid-century modern, MOMA, natives, topiaries, conifers, roses, herbs, dahlias, fragrance, pollinators and etc? Fun in each direction.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

MAGIC from the MUNDANE

Meeting a client yesterday, below. Why the Christmas wreath? Upon inspection, below.

GARDENING: Magic from the Mundane

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

SASSY ATTRACTION

PUPPET BARBUDA adores sassy. Especially these poodle-puff-on-a-tail topiaries. Though plinths would be nice. Antique cobblestones, dear ones? The evergreen hedge? ODG. Improper pruning & voila a scraggly hideous dreadful ugly ridiculous base.
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Perhaps the pruner wears a polyester white leisure suit, a lightening bolt & TCB symbol on its back? PUPPET BARBUDA hears Elvis...."we're caught in a trap...." Exactly, the hedge is trapping this gorgous home.
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PUPPET BARBUDA would keep the hedge, moving it of course, pruning it properly creating dense evergreen lushness top to bottom.
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It's one thing to prune your own hedge, and screw it up, but PUPPET BARBUDA holds great contempt for anyone paid to prune this badly. It harms the reputation of her BELOVED LANDSCAPE INDUSTRY.
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Of course more but gotta go, PUPPET BARBUDA is busy this morning.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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ODG? Unbidden from the soul. PUPPET BARBUDA loves this house, in fact wants to live in it, yet the hedge, oh dear God.

4 ENFILADES + 4 AXIS

Simple at 1st glance, below, looking at the sundial on axis with the frontdoor.

From the frontdoor, below, looking at the sundial.

From the side of the house, below, looking at the sundial.

From the other side of the house, below, looking at the sundial.

At first glance simple. Haaaaaaaaaaa. Can you use 1 sundial & create 4 enfilades + 4 axis?

Elizabeth Barnhill Clarkson, a childless matriarch, makes it seem easy. Her garden, Wing Haven, is now a public garden in Charlotte, NC.

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I lectured at Wing Haven yesterday morning. Elizabeth Lawrence, another childless matriarch, wrote, A Southern Garden, lived a few houses away from Wing Haven. Wing Haven acquired Elizabeth Lawrence's garden & it's open to the public.

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Katie Mullen is in charge of restoring Elizabeth Lawrence's garden & is blogging, Elizabeth Lawrence Garden, about it.

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Oooooooh yes, dahlings, more about these 2 women, their gardens, their homes......

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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I took the pics yesterday.

WOMEN'S KNOCKERS

A century ago, in Turkey, these hands were the women's knockers of a household. Attached to a door possessing a much larger knocker. You know, the man's knocker.
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Knocker sounds let a household know who should answer the door.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken in Birmingham, AL this week. Stay tuned, more from this delicious location, above, soon.

VANISHING THRESHOLD: Lighting

When it moves outside it's a trend. Fabulous lanterns. First Rules of Landscape Design: copy, simplicity, repetition.
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SENSUOUS, above. Crunch of gravel, trilling water, warmth of candle light, hearing refreshments poured from a pretty pitcher, feel of foliage upon your arm, repetition of color house-furniture-shutters-arbor-fountain-gravel, scale, flow, texture, vanishing threshold.
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Beauty w/Low Maintenance in the garden is sensuous & feng shui.
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Design, above, for yourself. Grace IS a destination.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic, Michael Partino via Brabourne Farms

LUSH WITHOUT SPACE

Want to add lushness without taking up space? Put a vine on your house. Or espalier a woody shrub. Not much, above, but loads of lushness. And little maintenance. Rich, welcoming. Don't you want to know what the inside looks like? And the garden? Already sense you would like the owner?
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Slow down, dahlings. 3 questions, above, are quite serious. And part of designing your landscape.
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Ask those questions of your frontdoor & back patio area.
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Color, empty pots, scale, path, axis, light fixture, bell pull, enfilade each play a role too. But I'm only speaking of the vine today. Isn't it amazing how the simplest of garden pictures is, in reality, a full landscape design course?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic from Kathryn Ireland

LANDSCAPE APPROACH. GOT ONE?

Approaching each landscape design one of the first things I know, before getting out of my car, is the MAIN VIEW TO THE HOUSE.

Some homes are approached from both directions along the street. Many are approached from mainly ONE direction. Design to the main direction.

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Is the main direction of your house a side with air-conditioner? Garage with garbage cans stored outside? Ha, you've got serious landscape design issues.

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The main approach above? The top pic.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

NO SPACE TO GARDEN

When there is no space to garden, yet there is, indeed, a garden it speaks of the gardener not the garden.
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Passed this little garden, above, during an open garden scheme in the Cotswolds.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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PUPPET BARBUDA sees: charm (remember CUTE KILLS), perfection of scale, field gathered plants, rescued hardscape items, sharp eye for color on the door, Vanishing Threshold, contrasting foliage texture & color, stone softened with plantings (my rule of JUST LET IT TOUCH), fabulous maintenance, low maintenance, modesty of checkbook (PUPPET BARBUDA is disgusted when someone says, "I don't have money to garden"), joy in the gardeners hand-heart-eye (ha, mind-body-spirit).