Showing posts with label Furniture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Furniture. Show all posts

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Place Focal Points Like Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst

You must see the table + 2 chairs the way I first saw them, below.  Hidden amongst the boxwood parterre.



Walking a bit further, along the front garden's main central axis, below, a hint.


Walking toward this wickedly sited subsidiary focal point, below.



  Walking toward the home and old millstone table, below.


 Walking away from the home, the impromptu trinity of furniture in the garden, below.


Here's the deal with well sited focal  focal points.
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The more axis a focal point has, the better the focal point.
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There is more detail about this in one of my books.
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This isn't something you learn in school or a symposium lecture.
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You learn it studying the best historic gardens across the globe.
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For decades.
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I have a favorite, easy, multiple axis design.
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Works every time.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken this week.  Same garden as previous post.   Remember, the more axis a focal point has the better the focal point.
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Sissinghurst has a naked man statue, on plinth, with 5 axis.
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Hello, I was awake & got the epiphany.
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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.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Pinterest: Furniture in the Garden

Still glowing & fragrant, Southern for sweaty-from-the-day, 48 hr whirlwind with Susanne Hudson in good gardens.
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Had to share at least 1 pic from our jaunts, below.
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Acreage, antebellum, private home of _____________.
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How have I not known/met this man, or heard his name?
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Unavailable, he gave us access to his gardens & barns.
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A garden design class is in this pic, above, but for now it is merely enough to know Furniture in the Garden.
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Pinterest, at present, is a joy to eye & intellect.  Adore intuitive learning from good pics.  Since childhood I've been attracted to British shows on PBS and furniture-in-the-garden.  OF COURSE I titled one of my Pinterest boards, Furniture in the Garden.  Click, here, to see it.
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Local interest, Martha Tate owner of HGTV's Gardener's Diary, and Liz Tedder, 19 times (so far) in Southern Living magazine were with Susanne/me.  Met Martha in my early 20's professionally and sadly only recently met Liz Tedder, she came to the Conservatory Susanne & I built for a Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival display 3 years ago, which is now fronting editor's letter of Better Home's Gardens magazine this month.  1st time in Tedder's garden.  How does that possibly happen, should have been 76th time.  Best news?  Liz is writing a book.  And, I was demanding of what it should have.  Don't you do that?  Why not ask for what you want to see pics of and know about?  This doesn't begin to cover spending the nite in Susanne's world famous garden, again.  Luff, luff Susanne's mom.  Asked her if I could call her, MiMi, today, she's 80's & I'm 50's.  Hugs & kisses in both directions.
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Drawing a garden for a Federal style home tomorrow.  Life is rushed, and good.
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Notice Tara Turf, above?  How could I not adore this 'new' friend?  Will post more pics, and his name/link once I meet him and get permission.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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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.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

The Unmentioned Design Element in the Garden



Yesterday, blowing my conservatory, I realized no one mentions a salient fact, lamps/sofas/tables/etc must be blower proof.


Pruning/blowing/digging/etc in the garden is my chance, on Earth, to experience in metaphor,
"When Jesus rose from the table and began to wash the feet of the disciples (John 13:4), He was doing the work of the lowliest of servants. "



Intuitively I know if I stop honoring/practicing Servant layers in my garden there is great chance I shall never do those layers again.
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Atonement.  The shining word, above all others, I feel in my garden.
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A friend's word, Abiding.


Never do I wish to stop dropping to knees, feeling Earth on my skin, or sweat begin to drip, nor forgo the bruising/scrapes gifting my soul.
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And, oh my, the engagement of intellect.
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Nature always wins.  Me win?  Decades past that embarrassingly small desire.  At times my garden lets me flow pure with Nature.  (What does that mean?  Experiencing, as "Joseph Campbell wrote " with a quote from Ovid's Metamorposes, " ... And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life.")
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If someone else is paid to do the work of my garden, where then is my atonement?  The delight of eye-hand-mind-spirit.  More, where to gain the epiphanies, friends, career..........


Many layers of good garden design, above.  A garden design class, almost, in a single picture.
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Yes, this garden room can be blown without destroying how it looks.
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Yet, a broom is always at hand.  At present broom & fallen crape myrtle blossoms are the soliloquy of atonement.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics Penelope Bianchi.
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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.

Monday, May 12, 2014

Front Porch: Foundation Plantings or Steps?

Easy knowing they use their front porch, below.  Mosquito repellent sitting at the French doors on the right.
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Their front yard is large & they have children.
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Foundation plantings here are an interesting choice.
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Of course, they have a fabulous large back yard too.


Privacy isn't needed otherwise the foundation plantings would be a bit taller.


Would you, if this were your home, keep the foundation plantings or move them & replace with steps?
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Plant selection is perfecto.  Large house & garden, 2 careers, children, dogs, and a yard easy to maintain.
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Always ask questions.  Makes you an instant garden designer.
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If this were a town home front porch it's amazing how a bit of height on the foundation plantings provide a sitting area with privacy.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics at a soiree last weekend.  This house is close-in Atlanta.  A pocket of woodland in the city.    
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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.

Friday, May 2, 2014

Design: How to Decorate a Big Blank Wall

Copy, is a rule of Garden Design I did not agree with for years.
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Now?  How could I have been so ridiculous?
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Facts.  If it's pretty in another garden it will be pretty in yours AND unique.
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That crazy 'terminally unique' illness.  We all have it & life is blessed once that disease is eradicated.

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A lot of houses have the grand blank wall, somewhere.
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Place 3 pair of closed door shutters, with mirrored transoms, add door knobs, hang lanterns, plant a vine, put in a few tons of #89 granite gravel, add furnishings.
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Done.
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Unique.
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Would love this at a flower show.  5 entries, each given the same size wall, copy the inspiration, above.
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Would love to see this in Italian rustic, French provincial, desert southwest.
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Whatever !
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Easy.
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COPY
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken yesterday in a local 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
.
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.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Design: Intentions more Powerful than Money

Where you put your attentions you will create your life.
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Yesterday, below, in my bower.
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With no money in a blue-collar working class neighborhood squarely within the prototypical demographics of today's suburbia near a major USA city.
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AKA my starter home, 3 decades later, with the alcoholic spouse during those decades gone.
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Where I put my attentions I created my life.
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Beautiful garden, beautiful life.  A thought, now my truth.
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Gratitude for that long marriage.  Forced into creating a life that was dream, until the plodding-plodding-plodding made it real.
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No regrets about any of my choices. 


Flowers falling on flowers yesterday, below.  Foetid & exhilarating.


My brain is repulsed by the foetidness of these composting flowers, yet the DNA thrives on its highest plain in the foetidness of my garden.  Life itself.
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Bower- Mirriam-Webster:     1:  an attractive dwelling or retreat



2
:  a lady's private apartment in a medieval hall or castle
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:  a shelter (as in a garden) made with tree boughs or vines twined together
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Odd, but the foetidness of yesterday's flowers made me want to take off my clothes and roll-baby-roll !  Laughing & shouting of course.
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Now, tell me about street/prescription happy drugs?  Poor unfortunate souls needing those.  
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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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.

Friday, April 11, 2014

Views In: Conservatory at Dusk

 Looking into my Conservatory at dusk this week, below.  Your home is the backdrop to the garden.  Views in must be seductive.  Inviting.  Every view in must tell me who you are.


Returning from a lecture I gave in Chicago/Moline Wednesday there was a little pile of cards & gifts on the harvest table in the kitchen.
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The best present was working, aka lecturing, on my birthday.  Adore a job on my birthday every year.  Gift to myself, loving what I do.
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Back to the little treasure trove.  Had Beloved gather everything, I grabbed the champagne, and we trotted off to the Conservatory.  Fine way to spend a late afternoon.
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This morning, and the Conservatory pic, I realize pics must be made for every window of my home, from the garden, at dusk.
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Game on.
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Tick Tock
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Deadline, Dec. 2014.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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First time to Chicago/Moline, far too short, grand hospitality, will go back.  
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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.

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Sofas: Backed vs. Facing

Pairs of sofas 'backed' began intriguing me a couple of years ago, after decades of adoring pairs of sofas facing each other, which is, of course, what I've had for a-very-long-time.


Cote de Texas posted this pic, above, the same day Laura, below, lept to the balcony in a smash/crash.


Once I get-me-a-man the French commode with urn on plinth will be between newly backed sofas.
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Laura, from that distance, cannot leap to the balcony.
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Decorating or catorating?
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Top pic Architectural Digest, a Mario Buatta room.  Bottom pic, apparently Laura's room, and soon to be mine again.  With pleasure my sofas need new fabric, and studying Buatta's room I will be getting a few extra pieces of furniture too.  Fine thoughts, indeed.
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If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.
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Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

Monday, March 31, 2014

Heirloom Decorating

Boxes of dishes, glasses, flotsam/jetsam arrived with the Hoosier, table/chairs.  Everything passed from grandparents/parents to him and quite emotional.  


He asked me to decorate.  Keep it pure & functional, heirlooms only, I thought.  For this little corner, everything must speak of beloved family.  Fostoria & Haviland beckoning from the Hoosier, Use me (don't keep me pristine/barely used like your mom did!)   And the satisfaction of knowing these 'things' are in the continuum of his life, going to children.


Off topic, love the fan vase, seems to arrange flowers on its own.


Justine Cushing decorated with heirlooms above/below.  After 3 decades I divorced a great Lake House with heirloom decorating.  Attached to heirloom decorating since the first time seeing that Lake House.


Would be fun to see these things, above, in their previous incarnation, then into their future incarnation.
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I didn't see the Hoosier 'decorated' before.  But I did get a wonderful hug as he said his mom had it completely different.
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Appropriately, he had friends to dinner and his parents were toasted at their table with their dishes!
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Top 2 pics from jobsite.  Bottom 2 pics Justine Cushing on Cote de Texas.
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Forsythia cut from the garden.  Cannot believe I was TOO GOOD to design with Forsythia when my horticulture degree was new.  Glad those days are long gone.
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If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.
.
Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

Friday, March 28, 2014

Get Your Layers of Design Right

Every home needs a desk, every barn needs a desk, every garden needs a desk.


Every design project has its layers.  Completed layers, above.  Beginning layers, below.


I will always have a job.  Always.  Why?  It's DNA to put the wrong layers in first, in a garden.
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What are the wrong first layers of a garden design?  Pretty flowers.  All roses.  Mostly perennials.  Tons of hosta.  Yes, that list will keep me in a job, forever (forevah).  So, Tara, what's wrong with roses, perennials...., easy, no evergreen structure, zero relationship with the house & you've begun with high maintenance.
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Desk, above, is already years in the making.  Why?  We've been creating paths, drives, focal points on axis with the interiors, planting evergreen hedges, then flowering shrubs......
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Ironically, nurseries conspire to keep me working hard.  How?  They push annuals, lawns with needy chemicals-watering-mowing, blah blah blah & blah (are we even in the same industry?  Passed a nursery sign last week, "Kill your weeds now."  Yes, I will always have a job.)
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What is the first layer of a Garden Design to consider?  Views, main axis, from inside your home into the garden.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Top pic Susanne Hudson's garden, bottom pic at a client garden last weekend.
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If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.
.
Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Leverage: Make it Work for YOU

Leverage yourself, and your garden.


A place to put on/take off shoes, set packages & etc....
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Most landscapes require work from you, or a crew, without ever (EVAH) being beautiful or helpful.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic at jobsite last weekend.
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If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.
.
Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

Friday, February 28, 2014

Drop-Leaf Table

More than interiors, drop-leaf tables


are perfect for covered porches & patios.
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Have often placed a drop-leaf table, cut in half, at each side of a front door.
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Primed, & painted with outdoor paint.
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Amazingly, vintage drop-leaf tables seem to always be low priced in metro Atlanta.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.
.
Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Edna St. Vincent Millay: Burn Your Light

Light from the garden, below.


Interesting legs, garden light a few of my favorite things.
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Oh my the criticisms, for decades, for leaning inward, to seemingly insignificant small joys.
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Edna St. Vincent Millay, "My candle burns at both ends; / It will not last the night; / But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends — / It gives a lovely light!"
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I met Peter Pan yesterday, and he wasn't lost.  With a bigger life I doubt I would have known.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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My bedroom, above, renovation still needs yellow/white French check draperies a la Charles Faudree.   Walls, Benjamin Moore - Sundress.  Hence you won't see more till then!  Painting by, Christine Gholson.  Truly, the light in my home is enriched by the garden.
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A quote in NYTimes long ago, "The more you go inward the more you outwardly connect." Pure permission, be-who-you-are.
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If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.
.
Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon