Tree Arbor

Have never understood the concept, "I can't afford a nice garden."

Can't afford an arbor?  You can afford a few trees.  Contact your Extension Service and discover myriad trees available for pennies on the dollar.
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Site the trees along the western exposure of your home and save money each warm month on a/c.
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Trees raise property value.
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Choose native trees as butterfly hosts in addition to bird habitat.
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Mary Sarton is wrong, gardens aren't silent.  Who can live without the sound of wind thru leaves?
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Trees teach me every fall, trust Providence, let go & be enriched.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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pic via Bumble at Home.  In a small garden, for above, I would use #89 granite gravel instead of lawn less maintenance.
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
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Details about online design services.
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Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
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Details about lecture titles here.
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I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Create Enfilades

My childhood home was built around an open courtyard, many were during that decade on Galveston Bay.

When the courtyard is designed to be part of the interior an Enfilade, a view into a view, is created.
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Enfilades are the most common photograph of gardens to be chosen for hardcover books & magazines.
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A fact I noticed decades ago, and began then, creating as many enfilades as possible.
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Why should YOU create enfilades?  Copy what the best garden designers & photographers do.  Enfilades are historic for a reason.  Great impact with little input.
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Garden & Be Well,            XO Tara
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Pics  of Pablo Paniagua's work.

Pot Planting

A bit of clipping, drip irrigation, enjoy.

                               Oh my, the dappled light.
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I haven't put an annual in my pots for decades.  Magazines & nurseries push-push-push annuals.  And I listen to what I'm asked for EVERY design, 'my landscape must be low maintenance & not expensive.'
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Gravel to the house, bushes in pots, necessity furnishings for meals, entertaining, relaxing.  Why are so many Americans afraid, above, of this?  "Let's build a deck, make it too small, add built-in seating with the rail which won't ever see use......"  "We'll pour a cement patio barely big enough for a mop, Weber grill, round table + 4 chairs."
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Pic via Desde My Ventana

Vanishing Threshold with Color Theme

Modern addition with classic architecture, as if THAT is often successful.  More deeply sublime are the accouterments.  Garden focal points placed on perfect axis with interior doors, secondary focal points placed on angled axis.  A perfect square with the planters & a circle in stone.  

Layers of green, lean-green-serene.  Statuary & planters color themed to echo house.
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It's obvious this is a tight collaboration between owner & landscape designer.
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Vanishing threshold is magnificent here.
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Garden & Be Well,         XO Tara
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pic via Pinterest.  Which part of your vanishing threshold is 'magnificent'?

Gertrude Jekyll: Munstead Wood

Christopher Lloyd said, "The garden dies when the gardener dies." Gertrude Jekyll's beloved home, Munstead Wood, above.

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Technically correct, but dead.

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I see a garden needing its mistress. Missing her. Aching for her.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic above, Charlotte Wehychan.

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I also see maximum pollinator habitat: canopy/understory trees, walls, groundcovers, high density, low density. When Jekyll designed landscapes was she aware of her interface with pollinator habitat?

How To Place Beautiful Things

My beautiful pot on plinth, below, placed on axis with the middle window pane of my bay window at the drawing room. Thus sited, it's part of my drawing room. Not separate.How to place, below, a beautiful summer house?
On axis with a main pair of windows from the home, of course !

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Oops. No pic of the view seen while in the summerhouse above. Ha, must get back to the Cotswolds for it.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Top pic in my sweet garden, in the Bay Terrace, aka front yard. I took the bottom pic in the Cotswolds at Sir Hardy Amies garden.

Killing Me Softly With His Words

I do it to other people almost daily, "Your, (insert plant name), must go." What goes is as important as what stays.Yesterday, in my garden, several big projects. My guy suddenly standing in front of me, in my space, mirroring my body language. Not good.

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"Your cedar really needs to go." "Let me take those boxwoods to the compost."

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Boxwoods still here, cedar met the chainsaw.

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This is so hard.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Hard AND personal.

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Pic from the new Laura Ashley catalogue. Gotta love a company selling curtains using an enfilade to the garden.

Enfilades Increase Drama

Enfilade, a view thru to a view. In gardens or homes, I adore an Enfilade.
Standing outside the conservatory this week (in gown/robe/bedroom slippers) in the snow
I discovered a new Enfilade.
Oh yes, sublime.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Good accidents, without waiting 3-7 years for discovery, in the garden are verification you've done it RIGHT. Mostly, gardens take time.

Why Was I Hired?

A beautiful garden, below. Why was I hired? Above, is EXACTLY why I was hired. Mystery & Surprise & Anticipation are missing.
From the garden, above, looking into the patio, it's the same story. Mystery & Surprise & Anticipation are missing.

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Do you know how to create Mystery & Surprise & Anticipation here?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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They thought they hired me for a backhand corner of their landscape. Ha, that was easy. I put in a conservatory, gravel & a table under the pecan tree with a pair of chandeliers hanging from a large branch. Materials are already being sourced from a ca. 1830 home recently condemned. And I didn't mention a huge THORN in the pictures above. For today, I'll let you be the Garden Designer. My Garden Design solution tomorrow.

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.