Fake Geometry

Revelation came slowly, below.The balance is real, below.
Symmetry, below, only an illusion. Do you see?
Slow down, look closely, below.
Fake Geometry; looking real. The columns are not symmetrical.

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Poppets, when the revelation about the columns arrived I knew I was in the presence of genius. Have known about Fake Geometry in Landscape Design but this was my first encounter when it was the columns.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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More pics from my client's home in Macon, GA last weekend. Notice the enfilade from parking court/patio/room/frontyard in the 3rd pic? Taking pics in my gown/robe by early morning lite the scrumptious dogs did not rouse from their beds. Their daddy was making coffee, I was only a guest & you know who they were awaiting, mommy. When she arrived those dogs exploded in joy !!!!

Double Axis: House & Landscape

On the patio, below, looking into the backyard.
On the patio, without moving my feet, below, looking into the house. A room overlooking: frontyard, sideyard, backyard. 3 walls of windows & a fireplace wall with 2 doors. I doubt there is a smaller, more delicious room.
Incredibly exciting Double Axis. Do you have a Double Axis point like this? Get one. Then, get more!

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Tara Questions to answer about Double Axis at your home & garden. 2 pictures taken from 1 spot. Does this picture make me want to see the garden? Does this picture make me want to see inside the home?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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More pics from my jobsite in Macon, Ga last weekend.

Shotgun Lot

Only a few feet from this window, below, are the neighbors, below.

From a front room view, below, see the brick chimney? It's where this antebellum home was 1st located. As family fortune increased they built a new antebellum home on the same site, moving this home to its current location.

In the same room, as above, another view, below, on a different wall.

With a smile & sparkle she proclaimed her home the "first mobile home in Athens, GA."

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Yes, poppets, this is the same home as in the previous post.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken last month in Athens, GA. Stay tuned for more interior shots. Beautiful views from shotgun lots are among the hardest achieved.

Double Axis

Looking along a path, below, in one direction. Looking along the same path, below, in its opposite direction.

DOUBLE AXIS. (Same garden as yesterday's post.)

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Double Axis, my landscape design invention (la-ti-da). I noticed the best gardens have beautiful axis, and when you turn around they are beautiful along the opposite axis, DOUBLE AXIS.

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So, dear poppets, it's not merely good enough to have a beautiful view. You must have a beautiful view in 2 directions along the same line.

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Of course you can throw a roundabout into your Double Axis and create a Double Double Axis. Life is good when these are your musings.

Create Seductive Doorways

Invite people thru your garden with doorways. Use a pair of pots, pair of vertical stones, pair of plinths, pair evergreen shrubs, arbor & etc. Drama of a step, narrowing to the path, above, less than 3' wide, lines of boxwood creating a hallway. Focal point on axis, creating a foyer and

beyond is another fabulous living room.

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Doorway, top pic, leads from the terrace in yesterday's post.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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It is this simple. Doorway, landing, hallway, foyer, living room. Gorgeous & low maintenance too.

Foyer, Hallway, Doorway

Welcome to the foyer, below. Beyond the terra cotta urn on a plinth is a hall leading to a frontdoor (iron gate). Ah, creation of mystery & privacy.
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MORE, poppets, if you can stand it !!! Gate & terra cotta urn are on axis with the bronze hatted girl in the previous post.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Enfilade

More windows than shown, below, view the patio. From the windows, thru the patio, across the lawn, and into

the woods. A complete view, an enfilade.

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Imagine, sitting on your couch, enjoying views of the patio, lawn & woodland.

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Nice, indeed.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken last week in Athens.

Increase Your Welcome

See, below, the front door? I didn't think so. 'Landscape Design Trick: Increase Your Welcome' should be in your quiver of tools. Boulder steps, above, seen from the parking court. A few days ago there were no boulder steps.

Same steps, above, seen from the home.

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If you can extend the welcome of your front door, into the garden. DO IT.

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Increasing your welcome, & function, creates enfilades too.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics from the woodland hilltop of Rooster Cogburn, Katharine Hepburn & Handy Man. I created a landscape design for them early last month. Landscape Design Trick: Increase Your Welcome, ha, should be a new lecture title. It's a trick I use a lot.

Garden Overlook

Taken years ago, below, in England. Who wouldn't want their desk overlooking the garden? Amazing, lovely, delightful (hearing Cole Porter yet?) when life conspires to, indeed, give you one of your desires. Unbidden.
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I forgot about this pic; stumbling upon it only last week.
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Must get the azaleas pruned to show you my desk-with-garden-overlook. Why tell you about it now, without the pic? Because, dahlings, it's the ANTICIPATION.
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These little excitements of anticipation in the garden are a sweetness of life.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Stealing the View

View, below, from the Garden Room earlier this year. Same view, below, last week.

My tiny property lives large because I own the sky. How? Canopy & understory trees, walls of evergreens, floors of groundcovers/stone on axis from window views inside my home. Vanishing Threshold.

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And, Dahlings, this is big, I stole the view, above. Those aren't my trees. La-Ti-Da.

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Azalea 'George Tabor' is the pink flower you see. Soon blue mophead hydrangeas will be blooming. Later, rosy pink Sasanqua's will bloom.

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By December I'll have the 4 Seasons view from this window.

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(Tara's Trinity of the Southern Garden: Azalea, Hydrangea, Camellia. Plant my trinity and you won't go a day in the year without blooms. Included are oakleaf-Anna Belle-mophead-PG-Tardiva hydangeas & C. Japonica.)

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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23 years in my home & these are the first pics from this view. Why? Since January interiors have been painted, kitchen & master bath remodeled, furnishings redecorated. Odd, new interiors creating new views of the garden. Susanne Hudson was hired to choose colors. Ha, that flowed into other changes. Love everything she's done. Salient fact, I gave her free reign. Total control. A blessing to get out of my own way and let Susanne create magic.

JOHN SALADINO

Saladino's work is in full measure. Garden & house. Vanishing Threshold. The pruning of his canopy & understory trees, above, tell me more about the man than his interiors.

His VERTICAL LAWN (vine on wall) & lidded urn on the shelf melt my heart.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Found the pics yesterday via Period Homes.

JULIA CHILD & RACHEL RAY

Cookbooks. None by Rachel Ray. Not surprising PECAN ORCHARD isn't hesitant to begin her landscape with its bones. Evergreen hedges near the house, working outward. Ah, yes, Julia Child. Truck & outbuildings, below, viewed from the kitchen, above. Soon, hedges. Poof Gone!

PECAN ORCHARD returned from 2 decades of expat living recently. Determined to live a gardening lifestyle with chickens, honeybees, potager, fruitery, nuttery, & more.

Around the corner from her kitchen, above, a guest alcove. PECAN ORCHARD is already hosting events for honeybee & chicken groups.

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A few Garden Ingredients: Hollies, camellias, Pee Gee hydrangea, red bud, crape myrtles, abelia, forsythia, viburnum, boxwood, meadows, bulbs, branch wattles, urns, plinths, paths, gravel, flagstones.

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When PECAN ORCHARD is over 90, decades away, she wants a landscape grown more beautiful AND easier to maintain.

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Combining Rachel Ray ease & Julia Child delectability.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Took pics yesterday at PECAN ORCHARD'S home.

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.

STUDIED INSOUCIANCE

Charming insouciance. But not enough. If this were MY wood the gate stays, posts are replaced with split locust & the hideous new wire replaced with rescued old wire.
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Dahlings. Really. Indeed. Informal wildwood landscape design is as serious as a designed formal potagere.
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From Mirram-Webster, INSOUCIANCE: lighthearted unconcern.
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You think an INSOUCIANT woodland walk in my garden is serendipitous?
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Garden design is pairings: ying/yang, formal/informal, & etc..............
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic from House & Garden magazine via Brabourne Farm.

EXPANDING ARCHITECTURE

Welcome, below, begins at the gate. Imagine the landscape, above, without the gate/arbor/fence. Much smaller. Expand your architecture, leverage your welcome.
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Resist temptation to use a property line for fencing.
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The more entries a landscape has the better a landscape is.
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Placing a gate on axis with your frontdoor creates an enfilade, a view thru to a view. Most desirable.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic on Lane Realty, via, Hooked on Houses.

DESIGNED FRONT GARDEN: BEFORE + AFTER

We began over 2 years ago. He had already begun remodeling their older home. With children & 2 careers in full blossom construction slowed, and the garden almost halted.

Overwhelmed, he hired me to design the landscape. Loving gardens he was doing the work himself. Until,

his wife, in very serious tones, let him know the projects did, INDEED, have a completion date.Do you know what love is? He hired a personal organizer. He also began subcontracting some of the landscape labor. Another gift of love for his wife; working in his garden is a joy to him, not labor. Alas, time.

Instead of an arbor for shade, crape myrtle's will soon cover the terrace. Flow & axis dictated the terrace have 2 entries.

A GARDEN PACK RAT he had a stash of Stone Mountain granite curbstones. They now step you down into a woodland garden, on axis from the stone terrace.

The garden is young and all areas are not this far along. Yes, I'll post more about this garden in the future.

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In a note, sent with these pictures, he wrote: A family that gardens together, grows together.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

THE SECRET OF FABULOUS LANDSCAPES

Entering Great Dixter, below, the household drive. Tires crunching along the gravel, scent of meadow.

Passing thru the yew hedge into this, above.

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See the landscape design secret?

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No?

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Back your car down the drive, park it on the road, get out, walk up the gravel drive, slowly, and thru the yew hedge.

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Notice the contrast of meadow to clipped lawn? Formal to informal?

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Ha, the secret tool of the worlds most famous landscapes is

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CONTRASTING FORMAL & INFORMAL GARDEN ROOMS.

Did you think this gravel drive & meadow were 'natural'? Ha, not one inch of this drive or meadow were unconsidered. TOTALLY DESIGNED.
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TARA TURF was born in this meadow over a decade ago. And the epiphany of what the best landscapes create, FORMAL GARDEN ROOMS NEXT TO INFORMAL GARDEN ROOMS.
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CONTRAST.
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Yes, contrast flower shapes/colors, tree forms, foliage colors/shapes & etc. Knowing, contrasting FORMAL/INFORMAL is the most important.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Lucky me, taking the pics at Great Dixter while Christopher Lloyd was alive. Note: In another area of Great Dixter meadow is designed up to, and touching, the house. Ha, remember the Tara Rule of Just Let It Touch?
Oh, meadows have been sustainable-organic-eco-low maintenance-beautiful since before language was invented.

THE SECRET OF GARDEN ENTRIES & HALLWAYS

Did you know, the more entries a garden has the better a garden is? Why?
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Garden Entries are focal points drawing the eye, foot, imagination. Leading to foyers, hallways & living rooms. If you can do it inside, dahlings, you can do it outside.
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Above, Garden Entry with tiny landing leading directly into a hallway. See it? Can you label each section? Spread it farther. See the walls? See the ceiling?
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Creating a garden is no more than creating outdoor rooms.
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My favorite garden hallway is above. I took the pic in the Cotswolds. Don't you want to see where the hallway leads?
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How important are Garden Entries & Garden Hallways????????? Today, I'm off to finish a landscape design for a garden full of living rooms. I will add Entries & Hallways connecting them. La-Ti-Da. One of my favorite things to do.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

DOUBLE AXIS IN YOUR LANDSCAPE

If you have a focal point bench in your landscapeyou must be able to sit in the bench and see another focal point. Double Axis.
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My invention, Double Axis. Realizing all the best gardens have it. And. Yes, dahlings, more. The more axis views a focal point has the better it is.
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From the house, above, you see an Enfilade to the focal point bench. From the bench, above, you see an Enfilade to the focal point house/terrace/urns.
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Isn't it amazing how one line in a garden looks like 2 gardens when viewed in opposite directions?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Thank you Krystol for your English pics.

LANDSCAPE DESIGN WITH A ROUNDABOUT

Roundabouts, below, are the 2nd most common landscape design conceit. After Enfilades. Roundabouts add drama where 2 paths meet. Above, you can walk straight past the urn or make a right/left angle turn.
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Not low maintenance, above? The urn, Queen's Pot, doesn't need to be planted. Perennials? Compost them & plant flowering shrubs. Turf? Create Tara Turf or rip it out & put in flagstones with creeping thyme in the cracks. (Shade? Plant dwarf mondo in the cracks.) Flagstones too expensive? Use #89 granite gravel.
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Turn the Roundabout, above, into an Enfilade? Removed plinth from urn. Place bench or small summer house at far stone wall. Voila, you've made an Enfilade from a Roundabout.

Note: Paths, above, are hallways. Roundabout, above, is a foyer. Enfilade to fictional bench or summer house is a living room.
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Honestly, this landscape design stuff is simply moving the couches & chairs & tables about.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara