Showing posts with label Focal Point. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Focal Point. Show all posts

Monday, October 3, 2016

Design: Changing Narrative

A 'simple' Garden Design, below, all the layers dramatically in place.  Starting at the top of the picture, now, in your mind, label each layer of the Garden Design, below.
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If you've come to Garden Design, age 50 up, this type of Garden Design holds significant charms vs. coming to Garden Design in your 20's.
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But I'm getting ahead of my story, most of us come to gardening, if we do come to gardening, as the song noted, 'In a heated rush'.  And, 'Seeing what you wanted to see'.
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Until Seth Godin a few days ago I taught garden design for beginners at the Atlanta Botanical Garden and local college, knowing my students needed to unlearn most of what they already knew about Garden Design, as beginners.
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Garden Design appears easy, we try it, and the results prove Garden Design has a lot of elements not readily apparent, though beautifully designed gardens hide nothing.  Excepting. how can you 'see' the process of designing a good garden, how can you 'see' what was left out of the beautiful Garden Design?  Time to switch the narrative from what you thought you knew about Garden Design, as rank novice, to learning the nuts/bolts of real Garden Design.
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Garden Design is not voodoo or feelings about what will work, it is science and art, a historical process, unchanged, since well before the birth of Christ.
 

hedge
Pic, above, here.
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"Narrating our lives, the little play-by-play we can't help carrying around, that's a survival mechanism. But it also hotwires our feelings, changes our posture, limits our possibilities.

The narrative is useful as long as it's useful, helping you solve problems and move forward. But when it reinforces bad habits or makes things smaller, we can drop it and merely be present, right here, right now."  Seth Godin
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Exactly, the narrative we have as beginning gardeners, total novices, is our own narrative.  Limiting our possibilities, doesn't move us forward, literally makes our lives smaller.
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Every historic layer of Garden Design, thousands of years worth, is, above.  Though it appears quite modern.  Bless good Garden Design for that.  It allows playfulness with abandon.
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Thank you Seth Godin, now I know it's not the unlearning of our beginning Garden Design ideas we need to do, it's literally changing the narrative.  When we change the narrative, we change our lives.
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Live a smaller life, never move forward, limit possibilities?  What's not to like about changing the narrative?
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More than gaining a new narrative and ability to create an extraordinary Garden Design, the garden once built/planted will continually renew itself, with abandon.  What does that mean?  Once you've put the effort into building a beautiful Garden Design, the garden rewards you, no effort on your part, with a larger life, forward momentum, and limitless possibility.  And with some brownie points included, again without effort, raised property value, lower heating/cooling expense, easier maintenance & lifestyle.  Not bad, for changing your narrative about Garden Design.  
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So, have you named all the layers of the Garden Design, above?  Sky-ceiling, tall trees-canopy, small trees-understory, pruned hedge-walls, low meadow-floor, urn-focal point.  A garden room.  Plant it and you'll have a moat of grace around your home.  And life.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Subsidiary Focal Points

Exactly why gardens should be simple, below.  Let Nature speak, play, sing, work, be in companionship to your life.

A Fiddlehead and A Fledgling | Content in a Cottage:

Pic, above, here.

 Cat with a Georgia Gerber cat bronze statue:

Pic, above, here.

Did you know your garden is a proscenium for spectacle?  I love the small moments, the never imagined, unbidden.  Perfect.  Tear drops of laughter, amongst time & galaxies.  
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Creating these moments, name it to claim it.  Macro rule, 1 focal point per area.  Micro rule, subsidiary focal points allowed.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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Will never forget the years of lunches in my previous garden, during summer, and hearing the hummingbirds zoom over my head.  Do you really think I knew to design my garden for that to happen?  My best Garden Design learning was finally understanding classical Garden Design rules, FINALLY copying them.  Once accomplished, Nature arrived.  Nature more like Tinker Bell than can be explained, excepting through letting Nature reign.

Friday, July 8, 2016

Picture: Garden Design Course

Pulling the gate/columns forward, below, welcomes you from the wide world into their private world, elongates the entry, and adds a foyer to the front door.  Painting the columns same as the house adds them to the footprint of the home, enlarging the home's territory.
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Painting the columns a different color, or if they were stone, still adds good features, excepting they become part of the garden, not the house.
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Great wisdom leaving the tops of the columns empty.
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Front door & light fixtures chosen well, they make the house seem taller.
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Note the gutters, below.  Copper color, not the brick color.  Well done.
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Roof, below, is like jewelry for the house.
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Repetition of square shapes, below, highlights the fabulousity of the tall round urns at the windows.  Super contrast.
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This garden design has been done for centuries.  Have seen it on several continents, and at all price points.  Done it myself, more than once.  Looks fresh & new with each reincarnation.
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Even the front door handle was chosen with care.  Drapes vs. blinds, again, well done.

/\ /\ . D. Keeley:

Pic, above, here.
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Copy, enfilade, axis, cross-axis, color, contrast, repetition, flow, welcome, focal points, ceiling, walls, floor, simplicity, has all the right Garden Design rules checked.
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I have a weakness for Garden- Design- Course in a single picture.
Garden & Be Well,   XOT

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Versatility: French Rain Barrel

When Smith & Hawken had its going-out-of-business sale at its Atlanta store, I had the good fortune to be there shopping with a client.  Little realizing ahead of time, I'd be purchasing things too.
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Ahead of moving from my 30 year home/garden I took 18 van loads to the thrift store.  My house sold within 24 hrs of listing and there was zero time for another choice.  Once in our new home, ca. 1900 American farmhouse, it became apparent much of my cottage garden 'stuff', thought to be so worthy ahead of the move, would not 'work' in the new setting.  Yep, that was a 'moment'.
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A couple of months in the new house, Beloved had his largest work truck, large bed/tall sides, and team of men on site.  Unexpectedly he said I could have the men/truck for a couple of hours.  Code language, get rid of your stuff.  Now.
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Six work ready men, felt like I had just stepped into a fire ant pile, and could not point to stuff fast enough as they were scurrying and pulling things for the truck.  2 rounded loads taken to the thrift store.  I did manage to think quickly enough for one of my clients, and saved some things for her.
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Everything purchased that day at Smith & Hawken remained.  Not a conscious choice, the clearing of stuff was too fast for proper editing.  One of the Smith & Hawken items, a galvanized French rain barrel.
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In my cottage garden I used it as a rain barrel, and later, turned upside down, a table.
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In our farmhouse, currently, the French rain barrel is on it side, wedged not to roll in the seat of a teak bench, used as a Cat House at the back door.  With a cushion inside they love it in winter, and it's a shelter against the rain the rest of the year.   Not a use anticipated when purchased.
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Amazed at the versatility of the French rain barrel, have yet to use it as a planter, below.  More, it made the aesthetic transition from Cottage Garden to Historic Farmhouse garden.
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Why didn't I buy more than one ?

My French Country Home, French Living - Page 8 of 311 - Sharon SANTONI:

Pic, above, here.
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Great enfilade, above.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Smith & Hawken currently sells online via Target.  Hardly a hint of their 1st incarnation yet they may have that perfect xyz for you too.  No, this is not a paid endorsement.

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Copying a Simple Historic Garden

Great minds, or, so much for original thinking?
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First, below, I noticed the rusticity, my oeuvre.
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Then searched the enfilade, how far can the eye travel?  Are there cross axis, below?
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Oddly, I sense the loss of canopy, below.  Seeing what isn't there, but had been there for many years.
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Do you see the missing trees too?
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Finally, oh my gosh, design plan, almost exactly, for my new home, a ca. 1900 American farmhouse.
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Ironic, at the front end of my career I was far too 'good/smart/unique' for a design like this, below. Me be ubiquitous, by choice?
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3 decades later, humble enough, and excited, to copy what has worked since before Christ's era, BCE.
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My iteration, George Lindsey Tabor azaleas, deer don't seem to bother Southern Indica azaleas so very much, and fruit trees, along with yet-to-be-determined trees.  Of course I could go ahead and choose all the trees, but what fun, contemplating choices.
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Instead of the water feature focal point, below, a harvest table/chairs, under an arbor, gobsmacked with white roses, 4 huge pots exploding with hydrangea, and 4 sentinels, camellias, at the far corners, beyond the Tabors.  Coming home to my first trinity, created 3 decades ago, Tara's Trinity of the Southern Garden: Azaleas, Hydrangeas, Camellias.
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Paths will be #89 granite gravel, the quarry a mile from home.
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Why so simple?  Age.  Preparing to be elderly in this home, wanting this garden to see-me-out.  Deer proof, drought proof, bug/fungal proof, unskilled labor proof, enjoyment vs. labor percentage totally in my favor, most importantly, beautiful.  A garden to be viewed from the house, and to be enjoyed within.
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More amazing, date of the garden, below, is the era of our farmhouse.
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Boxwood not included in my garden, alas the killing fungus.

Colonial Gardens full ,nypl.digitalcollections.510d47d9-a7ba-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.001.w-3

Pic, above, here.
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Do not be afraid to copy.  Fact, copying is unique at each site.  Another fact, if it's pretty in another garden, it will be pretty in yours.  Last fact, gardening is recorded in written form for over 11,000 years, you will not recreate the wheel, roll with it.  Cheaper, faster, prettier to roll with it.  I got the memo, go me.  Younger, that memo was stupid & not meant for fabulous me.  How do you think I became a Garden Expert?  Made all the mistakes bigger & more thoroughly than you could ever imagine.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Designing the Faux Path

Many times I've used a bit of woodland, buffer between neighbors, as a faux focal point. Occasionally, space allows for this much meandering path, below.  Most of the time, the path is a few steps leading to a faux gate.  In each interpretation the path is 'real'.
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In the moment, below, Nature's yearly leaf fall.  Took me an ancient amount of time to realize, the trees are fed and enriched by letting go.  And the same is true for us, if we'll let go.  During senescens the color of photosynthesis is lost, and the true leaf colors appear.  Another story written in plain view, by Nature, another metaphor.  Beauty in letting go.  

Василий Поленов - Женщина, идущая по лесной тропинке:
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Pic, above, here.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Vanishing Threshold: House & Garden

Vanishing Threshold, below.  Interior & exterior, married.  The full monty.

The Devoted Classicist:

When a client hires me for the garden, if needed & it's within my scope, I design interior spaces too.  What does that mean?  I know my scope.  Outside, my scope has no restrictions.  Inside, my scope is sourced off-the-shelf, antique shops, thrift stores.  Inside, if special order stone, textiles, furnishings, removing/adding walls, are the playing field, I have an incredible interior decorator on my team.
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Yesterday's jobsite, 60 of the most beautiful acres, streams, meadows, woodlands, gracious sloping views, in the last of the Piedmont before turning into Coastal Plain, are not a challenge in the least to Garden Design.  Thorn on the acreage?  The house.  A ca. 1980's ode the Bee Gee's named aptly, Stayin Alive.  Who wants to merely stay alive?  Thriving is the choice.
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Working with the interior decorator on this project and the homeowner has been quite a team.  There was an obvious wall removed inside, then magic, the interior decorator added a wall to an area I would have never 'seen', yet once designed, of-course-the-wall-must-be-added.  In return, I knew the front porch had to wrap the house, creating a new heart to the home.  Interior decorator never 'saw' wrapping the porch.  Indeed, we are a happy team of cheerleaders for each other.  In addition to giving/teaching each other a new 'eye'.
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Drawing, above, sums up having a home.  Vanishing threshold.  House & Garden.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Pic, above, drawn by John Tackett.

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Just Let It Touch

From the 80's, I've noticed, this focal point conceit, below, used in magazines & books.
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Just let it touch.

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Pic, above, Here.
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If you can't just-let-it-touch, perhaps add a small leafed ivy to clamber your focal point a bit.  Though it could easily be a clematis too.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Face Heads Correctly in Your Garden

Dogs, horses, lions, mostly, are the heads I have the joy of placing properly in gardens.  Don't I have the best career ever?
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Heads-up, these dogs, are looking in the correct direction.  

3:

If you have a pair of heads in your garden, their correct placement is most often, above.
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Oddly, irritates me no end driving thru neighborhoods and seeing heads facing that grand morass-muddle-chaos of the great beyond termed The Public.  Wouldn't you rather give a lion's ass to the public?  Don't give the power of your garden away, facing heads the wrong way.  It's your life, joy, beauty.  Beauty.  There is a garden design secret I discovered about Beauty.  Designing your garden to be beautiful from every window of your home, yes every window, creates beauty in the opposite directions too.
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Got heads?  Getting heads?  Think it thru.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic via here.

Monday, February 8, 2016

Design: Speak Volumes With No Words

Live - Love - Laugh blares a painted garden sign, on the shelf, with price tag.  Next time you see any garden sign/plaque for sale think, "Danger Will Robinson.", while asking yourself the Dante'sque question, Does this path enlarge, or diminish, my thought?
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Mostly, if words are put into a garden Alexis de Tocqueville has been given another arrow to release at USA.  Mostly.  And that's one of the joys of designing your garden, knowing when to use your tiny percentage allowed, to break rules.
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In a garden it is important no matter the joys & sorrows amongst your days/years, you know you have a place actively nurturing sorrows and increasing joys.  Without effort.  This layer of garden design is rarely mentioned, but inherent.

Fun hedge idea:

Made me laugh, above.  No words.  Is it whimsy, or a pun?
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Doesn't matter.
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Secondary smile, above, at the height of the evergreen wall.  Noticed decades ago the economics of gardens and hedges.  The 4' hedge easily maintained by the owner.  The 6' hedge, still maintained by the owner, but a ladder is involved, or hired gardener.  8' + hedges pruned with scaffolding or cherry picker for hired gardener to reach.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Found pic on Pinterest, and it had no link to provenance other than what is stamped on the picture, Getty Images.
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"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.", Alexis de Tocqueville.

Friday, July 24, 2015

Best Garden Design Rule for 'Eyesores'

Yesterday's surprise, below.
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We didn't know the wedding tent would have 2 sides filled with equipment.  Southern summer wedding, air conditioning happily wanted.  
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3 hay bales had been sourced for power box/satellite dish.  Those 'eyesores' no longer mattered, once a/c was set up.
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Game changer.
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Early in the day my contractor said there was no reason for me to stop by the jobsite, he could site the hay.  You know I was coming to the site.  Once there, I knew he wasn't about to let me leave, or site the hay himself.  Adore this type of horticultural humor.  180, not needing me to needing me, oh so rich.
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What you must know about eyesores in a landscape and focal points.  Easy garden design rule.  Basic.  One of the first I learned in college.
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If you have an eyesore, place a focal point nearby to draw the eye.



Every wedding guest will look at this view, above/below, walking from ceremony at the lake, to the barn.


Great serendipity, the hay bales are round, greater contrast with straight lines of tent/barn.


 More than hiding eyesore of a/c, I had the good fortune of pretending the hay bales had been left in the field, as they are across several counties at present.  Timing was good.


Seen from the barn, above, another axis for the hay bales to look 'natural'.


Contractor, above, leaving field after siting last hay bale, happily thinking, If mother of the bride is unhappy with hay placement, Tara gets-the-talkin'-to.  Better, he only had to site each bale once.
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Take away? If you have an eyesore in the garden, put a focal point nearby to draw the eye.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pics taken at jobsite yesterday.  Could not get out of the field fast enough, and it wasn't because of heat/humidity.  With each step, looking down, making sure no fire ants or timber rattler !

Friday, February 27, 2015

Front Door: Before & After


Lovely home, below, builder-special landscaping.


Page Duke: Before the landscape design

What, below, happened?

Page Duke: A Strong Landscape Focal Point

Adjusting eyeballs back into sockets, the before/after leave only questions.  Did new owners move in?  How much property for the site, for the front yard?  What does the backyard look like, too small, slope, etc?  Who's brilliant idea to treat the front yard as a back yard?  Painting the brick, yes.
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Every penny of this hardscape goes into house value.  Wooooowzzzzzza.
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Views from inside the home changed.  Lifestyle of the home changed.
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Historic garden design, nothing new.  However, totally new here.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics Page/Duke.

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Free Garden Design

Modern 2,000+ years ago.  Modern today.
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No need to be an expert, to understand why garden centers are not 'on board'.



Calm.  Facade, bench, pots, gravel, fade their colors into each other.  I see the silhouette of branches in winter striking the house, and gravel.  I hear the leaves, wind rustled, see their fall colors.  Gravel crunching underfoot.
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This house doesn't make the Garden Design special, instead, the choice to have this Garden Design is special.
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Free Garden Design.  Equally at home with a brick ranchburger ca. 1963, pioneer cabin, starter home, $2 million home in a gated community.
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Myriad choices made with this Garden Design.  Especially adore all of the 'no' choices.
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Why is this Garden Design harder to choose than keeping foundation plantings, installed by the builder, and a pocked lawn needing mow/blow/go, fertilizers poisoning groundwater, zero aesthetics to increase property value, no choices for plantings to reduce hvac expenses, no thought for color, or pulling the foot outside to enjoy Nature?
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Picture from here.

Monday, December 15, 2014

Design Rule for Cute

One is not in control of which pictures will grasp the heart.
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Did owner of the apartment or building decide life could go no further without a bee skep at its corner?
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Totally sexist, was it a man or woman who originated this idea?
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What inspired, specifically, the bee skep and its placement?
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How was the artist chosen to create the bee skep?
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What is the bee skep made of?
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How was the scale of the bee skep chosen?
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4 bees, is there significance with '4' bees?
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How is the bee skep attached?
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How many people did it take to attach the bee skep?
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How much did the bee skep cost, how much was the labor to attach the bee skep?
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What era & country of origin is this particular bee skep based upon?
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What type of bees were chosen for the bee skep, what are they made of?

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Cute?
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Hardly.
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Whimsical. 
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Totally.
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Beyond whimsical, a statement.
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What statement does the owner intend?  Literal, metaphor, reality, spiritual, a mix...
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Remember, the more you go inward, the more you outwardly connect.
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Garden design rule for cute,  
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Cute Kills.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Have enjoyed the shrinking of the aisles of cute garden resin products at Wal-Mart as the economy readjusts.  
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.
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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon
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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.
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Construction by Award Winning
Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.
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NOTE to my gardening friends... look for changes to come. 
Knew before computers/cell phones, sitting in Atlanta traffic on way to a client, 'I must reach a larger audience with the same amount of effort.'   Soon after that epiphany I signed my CBS-TV, and, books contracts on the same day.
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Then I read an article in the NYTimes about something called 'blogging'.  Saved the article for a year before reading it.  Studied all the blogs they mentioned, hired a computer expert they quoted, and attended a blogging seminar.
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Blogging 2.0 has arrived, my knowledge is 1.0.  A believer in copying the best historic gardens across the globe it flows into every arena of life.  Watching Maria Killam grow her career/blog/life over the past 3 years made its impact.  Signed up  for a year's course with her blogging expert, Jon Morrow
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Changes will be slow, plodding is my adored method.  Pulling triggers here/there is spice in the mix.
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What do YOU want?
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Nothing is too small, too big, or too ego crushing to mention.
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Passion lies in sharing what has filled me to the depths of grace, joy & atonement, the best landscapes created over the last 2,000+ years.

Just so you know... 

 I  welcome your input.

Friday, September 5, 2014

The Best Garden Design Ideas

The best garden design ideas are simple.  And have been done for thousands of years.
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No worries, ever, about copying them.
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Each site is unique.
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Any garden design idea you choose to copy will be original and fresh in your garden.
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Focal point on axis with backdrop, below.
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With greater surprise as the garden is walked, there are more axis on this focal point, below.



Same table, above/below, as yesterday's post.
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Except shot from different axis.



Backdrop hedges are as important as the focal point and axis.
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Without the backdrop hedges you would see a mash-up of other garden rooms.
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Gardens must have mystery.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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I didn't want to copy pretty gardens when I got out of college.  I wanted to be unique.  Those unique efforts created cringe worthy gardens.  Aside from ugly, they cost money, and the worst loss, TIME.  No one can buy more time.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.
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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon
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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.
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Construction by Award Winning
Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.


Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Garden Design Ideas: Double Axis

Garden Design is almost a features game.  A template of features show up in every good garden for over 10,000 years.  Literally.
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Focal point on axis, below.



Focal point on axis, below.


When the same focal point is viewed in 2 axis you have a Double Axis.
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You must have Double Axis with your Garden Design.
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At a minimum.
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But don't stop there.  Sissinghurst Castle has a male nude statue on axis from 5 main views.
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Do the math, that's 10 axis views.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Slow down, go back to the 10,000 year remark.  Why did I put it in?
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A little point made, you will not recreate the wheel.  Instead drive the known wheel, make it travel where you want.  That, alone, is enough to keep you occupied for a lifetime.  
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I shot the pics last month.  

For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.
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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon
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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.
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Construction by Award Winning
Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Warning: Strawberry House

Viewed from the front of the house, below, the Strawberry House sits calmly at the side of his antebellum home.


Viewed from the back of his antebellum home, below.




When told it is his 'Strawberry House' the game changed.
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My life must include being able to say, "Let's walk to the Strawberry House."
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Until yesterday I was clueless about the lack of a Strawberry House in my garden & vocabulary.
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Adore anyone forcing me to up my game.  
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These are the moments keeping me in gardens across the globe.  
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The hunt. For delight.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pics taken yesterday in the same garden as previous post.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.
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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon
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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.
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Construction by Award Winning
Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.


Friday, August 1, 2014

5 Ways to Get Subsidiary Focal Points Right

Not a focal point, below, but a grand subsidiary focal point.
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Garden Design Rule: One Focal Point per Area.
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Not my rule, but agreed to.
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What to do?  Invent another rule.
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Focal Points are allowed subsidiary focal points nearby if they recede, touch foliage, don't draw attention.   Can be numerous if properly chosen & sited.
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Focal Points & Subsidiary Focal Points must both be so wonderful they will be fought over at your estate sale.


Pots must be so wonderful they can remain empty.  This young man, above, has dead plantings and he's fabulous.
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More, he flows with the style of the home's interior.
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Dogs, 3 young children, parents each own a business, they have farm property nearby, and a lake house.
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Get the picture?  Zero time for the garden.

Designing for women 80+, taught me how to truly design with tough love.  A huge honor, and weight.  They demand beauty, must have unskilled labor to maintain & little of it, something coming into bloom every 2 weeks, focal points on axis from inside views into the garden.  Nothing can go wrong with the garden.  Nothing.  Health issues arise, the house needs a new roof, a toilet floods.  If the garden has issues, they may decide to move.  It is my goal, their garden gives strength & joy to carry on in their home.  
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic this week in a client garden.
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 For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.
.
Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon
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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.
.
Construction by Award Winning
Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Friday, July 25, 2014

Garden Design Rule for Eyesores & Terrible Garden Gifts


This client was not home at the start of my work.
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I lasted an hour before I HAD to Move-The-Duck.
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Wish they had hired me before the new concrete walkway, and electrical outlet.
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Not much to do, if the dressed duck must stay.  Did you know there is a Garden Design Rule for this situation?  If you have an eyesore, place a focal point nearby.
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Doubt my professor imagined this dressed duck as a focal point.
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However, when children, grandchildren, or the toughest, a bit too prickly daughter-in-law are involved, the fill-in-the-blank must be 'displayed'.


Now, the dressed duck is drawing the eye away from the electrical box and providing welcome at the steps.
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A mentor said, "It's what we do with what we have."
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This garden has a child.  The duck will happily stay as long as the dressed duck magic is needed for her.
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The prickly daughter-in-law?  Easy, use her gift prominently in the garden for a few months then it has an 'accident'.  Tree limb, wind, ice, when it is safely taken to the thrift store.  In one garden the offensive item, a resin dollar store birdbath, could not be easily 'lost', that daughter-in-law had prickles of toxic steel.  The birdbath was horrendous.  Epiphany !  I designed a creeping fig at the base to engulf the offensive birdbath turning it into something lovely.
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Knocking at a friend's door for a lunch date I locked eyes on her new wind chime, melted glass beer bottles hanging from fishing line on a bit of tree root, then her.  She merely said, "My step-daughter."  I replied, "It fell and broke into shards."  Now you know the story of that thrift store item.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken at a jobsite this spring.  In the South terrible garden gifts are received with a smiling exclamation, "You shouldn't have, bless your heart."

For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.
.
Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon
.
Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.
.
Construction by Award Winning
Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Elements of Simplicity in Garden Design


Plain?  No, totally designed.
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 Embellishment?  Why?  What is that about?  Lack of confidence, knowledge of the wrong sort, arrogance against Providence?

 Tara Turf.  Gravel from the local river.
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Century old bricks made in Milledgeville, GA, an hour's drive.
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I designed the buttress copying an antebellum cotton warehouse seen near Atlanta.
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The walled garden was the client's idea.  
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It was my good fortune to design & site it.
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Oddly, with total confidence.
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Whence does that come?  Truly, a subdivision child ca. 1960, living in a subdivision still.
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Degreed in USA horticulture, not taught how to  design a good garden to save anyone's soul.  Much less my own.
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Off I went, $20 bills stuffed singly & slowly, somehow paying for 2+ decades of studying the best historic gardens across Europe.
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With this project, 300 acres, I learned what the real focus of those decades had been. 


Garden design working with land & home.
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More, mind/body/spirit.
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Land & home, team members with the garden design.  Literally, the best performers with the most talent.
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That college degree in horticulture?  Training to work against the land, ignore every gift of Providence.


Doubt any of my college professors could give a concise sentence about the style of Henry Repton.  In, "Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Repton wrote:
“The perfection of landscape gardening consists in the four following requisites. First, it must display the natural beauties and hide the defects of every situation. Secondly, it should give the appearance of extent and freedom by carefully disguising or hiding the boundary. Thirdly, it must studiously conceal every interference of art. However expensive by which the natural scenery is improved; making the whole appear the production of nature only; and fourthly, all objects of mere convenience or comfort, if incapable of being made ornamental, or of becoming proper parts of the general scenery, must be removed or concealed”.
The garden views, above/below, totally designed.  Providence reigns, human arrogance replaced with a pride in unveiling Nature's gifts.


Henry would know this garden.
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Beyond the Tara Turf, above, is my best design work.  Views across a Natural pasture into woodland.  .
Curiously, this type of gardening is perfect for the starter home on a postage stamp with little budget.  Instead, that type of home is built with an expensive landscape.  Lawn with mowing/chemicals/fertilizers, bushes needing regular pruning & mulching, nothing to shade the house reducing hvac, nor fruit trees to feed the household, certainly not any focal points on axis with the house to feed the spirit.
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Truth, with your full intellect, if you demand more from your landscape you will have it.
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By the time anyone hires me, that choice has been made.  Incredible to work for people who have engaged with their own lives.  Same, when I lecture.  Every chair filled with people who have engaged with their life.  They aren't there for me, nor am I, we are there for the same reason as Henry.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Pics taken at a jobsite earlier this year.
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The capitalized words? Used in the vintage sense.  Underlined sentence at the top?  Describing myself on the front end.  This has not been a boring ride !
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.
.
Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon
.
Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.
.
Construction by Award Winning
Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.