Doorway Repurposed

Charming courtyard, below, created when an addition was added to their home. An original doorway, top at left, no longer needed.

Repurposed as a staging area for annuals.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Alas, poppets, I was there the day the annuals were ripped out. With drought, heat & the gardener just returned from vacation it was still fabulous. What fun choosing new annuals, new colors-textures-heights.

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This was the 3rd repurposed doorway I've seen like this. Mrs. Whaley's garden in Charleston, SC. A private garden in Greensboro, NC. And now this Athens, GA garden.

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Did you notice the color themes?

* Black shutters, furniture, doormat, windowboxes, plinth

* Terra cotta pots

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Pics taken last week in the same garden as yesterdays post.

Details in Simplicity

Simplicities: trim color is not a bright white, no window screens, interior window treatments are elegant, lights on inside, contrasting foliage textures, contrasting foliage colors, espaliered lushness upon home, well maintained, easy to maintain, urn is fabulous enough to be empty, urn is not hugging wall of home or frontdoor, classic template of centuries copied, design is elegant in winter, makes me want to see the interior, makes me want to see the rest of the garden, the landscape describes the owners. Front of home, above, and its backyard, below.

Shown in yesterday's post too.

A retired couple lives here. They maintain the garden.

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Two important questions to ask yourself about a pic of your home.

1. Is it so wonderful I must see inside?
2. Is it so wonderful I must see the entire landscape?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken last week in Athens, GA

Your Frontdoor

Creamy color taken from bricks. Window box & hare, a still life. Shutters rich, not builder grade. Thought went into this Frontdoor welcome. My Dear Lady is pulling thru to health after months. Her garden oblivious to her inattention. Instead, her garden enriching the healing process.
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Does your landscape work for you or do you work for it?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken this week, same garden as previous post. Your interiors may be fabulous but their first impression is at your Frontdoor.

Ranchburger: Beauty Without Stress

Lining the foundation of this ranch, below, were the obligatory-neatly-in-a-row, evergreen meatballs. Between the house & frontdoor sidewalk I removed the line of meatballs,

put in a flagstone terrace with teak bench/coffee table, low evergreen shrubs, groundcover, understory tree, & pots. Voila, ta-da, but of course.

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My Dear Lady has been slowed by multiple health issues for over a year. Yet her garden has never been a worry for maintenance, even during this 5 weeks without rain.

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This is the point of good Landscape Design: can you work a million hours, travel, caretake a loved one, or have health issues & still maintain a beautiful landscape?

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A beautiul landscape not allowing for real-life is not a beautiful landscape, it's stress.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken earlier this week in the same garden as previous blog post. Poppets, "I" did not literally perform labor in this sweet garden my contractor did. Wish I could rip out mature shrubs, install flagstone terraces & etc.... !

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.