How To Think Like A Farmer

"Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience." Ralph Waldo Emerson..

After an appointment late this summer, gardeners are essential workers in Georgia, so far, during the pandemic, I stopped by a friend's home.  We had lunch on the veranda before walking the garden.  Fruit trees to site, and a decision about a pair of dying maples to be made.  

  

Pic, above, here.

As lunch was ending, she began a sentence, stopped, and said, "I must remember to think like a farmer."

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A thought giving statement.  No time to take it further, we had the garden to walk-talk-choices, then schedules separating us.

 

Pic, above, here.  Thrift stores have glass containers, above, and roadsides have plenty of stems.  For your new year or to close out this year, give yourself this bit of happiness, glass pot/stems.  Brought inside, you'll know why.  Trust me.  You'll know.

I don't agree with Emerson's quote, at top.  Nature's secret is deeper/wider than patience.  Nature is a constellation of acts, with myriad more parts, each pivotal, changing by the minute.  Parts needing attention, on Nature's timeline, not ours.  This-Is-How-It's-Done, teaches Nature.  Not an aspect of this, separate from Love.

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As a tree is fully known, across centuries, it is thought sentient by some.  Certainly, wiser, kinder and more productive than people you have known.   With a few instances you'll admit to being in their category too, I do.  No worries, gardens seek, and receive forgiveness.  

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Pic, above, here.   Don't have the vista, above?  Easy, site a hedge behind the bench.  The road, your neighbor's fence, whatever, poof pouf, gone.

Nature goes about her business.  You can partake, on her timeline, but not control.  More, another layer of Nature may take out your every effort, though you've thought-like-a-farmer.

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Siting, How to Think like A Farmer to your career/retirement/parenting/grieving/friendships/etc, "1. Prepare the soil.  2. Intentionally plant seeds.  3. Once you've planted the seeds, let them grow.  4. Remove any weeds.  5. Learn from previous harvests."  Full article in Forbes, by Amy Blaschka, here.

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Pic, above, here.  Showed this pot table, last year this time.  Have you brought any plants inside for winter?  Choose a table to 'ruin'.  No guilt.  Thrift stores have plenty.  For centuries pots brought inside to overwinter, for their useful flowers/foliage/cooking/medicinal, too tender to over winter. 

Nature gives you her pace, if you accept.  Nature's pace gives your thoughts space to percolate, or answers.  Nature's pace will zing you plenty of epiphanies.  Nature's pace will change you more than you change your garden.  Nature's pace is sacred.  Your garden, Nature, gives you all of this in joy, and earnestness of life.

  

Pic, above, here. Garden beyond the windows/doors, above, makes the room.  Makes a life.  A friend's home always has a good balance of live and fake plants/stems inside.  This could be one of her rooms, above.  Can't wait to show her. (GOOD fakes.)

Who's really thinking like a farmer?  After decades gardening, you will realize, if you're fortunate, it is your garden that has been farming you.  Your garden thinking about you.  When you have years of Gardening, your conclusion will be the same.

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Pic, above, here.  Garden, above, is a modern Garden Design course.  Better, this garden is maximum pollinator habitat.  Trees + Shrubs + Meadow = Beautiful Garden

No, I don't just think all this stuff up.  The garden does.  For me.  For you.

A favorite epiphany from across all the decades in my garden, You choose the plants to put in your garden, choose the people to put in your life.

Templates in gardens, abound across centuries, cultures.        

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Thinking like a farmer, carts with it, modesty.  Layers unseen in Nature, layers unseen you've been in your garden.  

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Pic, above, here.  Tasha Tudor, perhaps the best combination of modesty and gardening.  You do want her book, Tasha Tudor's Garden, here.

"For my part, I don't think that modesty has much to do with what you do or don't know......Instead, modesty is about what you care about, and how that changes your experience of the world......Modesty is more like a way of breaking out of the blinders that experiencing life in a self-regarding way can impose." Nicholas Bommarito.

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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Simple Gardens: Love, Relationship, Poyeema

 Garden Design was settled in method centuries before Christ's birth.

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Whether we think so, or not.

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'There are places we can walk the road to ourselves, Nature is one of those roads, rare, meant for all.'

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God first created a garden.  His poyeema.  Sustenance, beauty, teacher, partner to our body microbiomes.  Gardens so love us, we're given the same poyeema to partake, or not.

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Garden Design, below, using Nature's residential Garden Design.  Stay with this.  It is for you, even if your home is atop a high-rise in NYC or you've just downsized to an apartment.  Gardens are a belief system.  A manner of living.  No matter the era or where you live.

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Decades of studying historic gardens across Europe, a pattern emerged early.  Trees, meadow, hedges.  Trinity of abundance.  

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 Trees, meadow, hedges, below.

  

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Our era, we go for flowers, I did, ca. early 80's.  Showy flowers.  Never considering whether native, invasive, or food for wildlife & soil.  That was me.  You'll never get judgment here, how could I?

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"With unexpected turns and a wicked humor, a meandering narrative that nevertheless knows where it's headed......The practicalities mere scaffolding for the good stuff." Aysegul Savas.  Hope you're already  smiling at this.  Putting together your first garden design is a gift of Providence.  Smiling Providence.

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Take the poyeema for your own to wield, see what you get, and what it does.  That's why you're here.  Trying to get there, or you're there, and enjoy the companionship.

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Know what's in the Garden Design, above?  Tree allee, low meadow, tall meadow, house on axis as focal point from gravel drive directly to front door, color trinity green-brown-white.  If oak trees, above, they're a top pollinator habitat, food for other animals, home to beneficial wildlife/fungi.  

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Two layered meadow, above, is another maximum pollinator habitat for wildlife.  A playground for your, viewshed too.  Welcome, is inherent.  No pokey, 'Welcome' sign needed.  Welcome is spoken in the Garden Design.  God's language.    

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"...only the ego can blind an artist to the recognition that all creative work begins with imitation before fermenting into originality under the dual forces of time and consecrating effort." Maria Popova.

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'Surprise', is your tool.  A layer of good Garden Design.  Below, a detailed garden room appears, passing from the tree allee.

 

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Surprise, works at all price points AND size properties.  Share-croppers cottage, mid-century modern, or, above.  Notice the pair of evergreen rounded shrub balls, above, at the entry to the right?  You want that shot too?

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Selfishly, I want this garden, above, shot again in a decade.  Instead, it's in my head, 10 years ahead.  In my head, quite a few plants have been removed.  What remains, maturing beautifully, beyond anticipation.

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"In the course of creative endeavors, artists & scientists join fragments of knowledge into a new unity of understanding."  Vera John-Steiner, Psycholinguist.

 

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Cone shaped conifer, above, if grown into a solid hedge, will create Surprise, and a pair of garden rooms, instead of a single garden room without surprise.

  

Same conifers, above.  Excellent shot, explaining why low hedges enclose precious plantings.  For centuries low hedges have kept chickens and turkeys from eating the family vegetables, herbs, pollinating flowers.

This garden needs no npk fertilizers, chemicals, or irrigation once established.  Less mowing than traditional lawns.

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Trees + Hedges + Meadows + flowers/herbs = Good Garden Design across thousands of years.

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Site layers of the equation on axis from views inside your home.  Place drives & paths on axis from doors, entries from property line, and meeting each other as needed.

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Why does it matter?  We're running out of bees.  There are few bugs of any type killed on our windshields.  Fertilizers are sterilizing soil and toxic to groundwater.  We don't need chemicals in our gardens, we need Natives and near natives  You can bring back what we've killed.

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"Peterson - as did Jung & Hillman - warns that failing to dialogue with Time leads to a forgetting of adaptive modes of human living & thriving: a loss of values or what keepers of indigenous shamanistic traditions call a "Loss of Soul".  

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You've come looking for your Garden.  Instead you've found more.  Congratulations !  It's the result of Nature giving you a personal poyeema.

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' Logoi  =  Codes of an Age '

 

Later in the season, above, the tall meadow has grown.  Not the decade shoot I want to see, but better already in a few weeks.  Imagine a decade.

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These gardens, above, are not about ego.  This garden is about Love, Relationship, Poyeema.  Trinity given to each, from Providence.   Will you trust, and take?

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How does it relate to living in an apartment?  Love, Relationship, Poyeema follow you all the days of your life.  Whether you partake, or not.

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Garden Design is this simple.  Always has been.

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Using Natives...................Trees + Hedges + Meadows + Flowers/Herbs  = Good Garden Design 

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Garden & Be Well,   XO T 

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More, about poyeema.

 

All pics, above, here. 

 

How To Use The Best Garden Design Template

Every garden is the same, below.  Literally, identical.  Spanning centuries these gardens survive, thrive, go invisible, revive.
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Trees + Focal Points + Shrubs + Meadow = A Good Garden
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They're the only type of Garden Design I want to do.  Why?  Each is unique, each is regenerative, each absorbs the personality of its location, architecture, and Gardener.  Though each garden is identical, looking at the map, each garden is green, looking at the terrain each garden is unique in Nature's lush decadences with rooms for you, your family, your friends, and dogs, and cats, and chickens, and.....
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"...combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought --- before there is any connection with logical connection.....in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others." Farnum Street.


Pic, above, here.
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Describe the garden, above, to yourself, in this moment.  How I'd like to know the words you're using.  How quickly you pull your words forth, the pauses you give to certain features.
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Trees, shrubs, meadow, above.  Canopy/Ceiling + Walls + Floor + Art (Furnishings), above.
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At its core this single Garden Design, above/below/below, is pulled from thousands of years of agriculture.  Nothing to spare in farming, a system of collapse without templated sequential attentions, to each layer, seen and unseen. 
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You are one of those layers.  Whether you think so or not.  This Garden Design is the framework to what has given beauty and fed the globe, well before humans arrived.
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"If humility were imagined as a visible thing, it would be soil: quiet, brown soft, maintaining networks underground and feeding the whole of the living world."  Jay Griffiths.  And the air we breath.














Pic, above, here.
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Simpler, above.  What do you see?  Trees, Shrubs, Meadow, Focal Point, above.  Canopy/Ceiling + Walls + Floor + Art (your home), above.
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"Many of us have been wonderstruck at the discovery of mindedness within the Earth and between trees, sensitive, ephoratory, and communicative."  Jay Griffiths
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Definitely, the tree, above, has me.  And you know which one.  


Pic, above, here. 
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A garden to be viewed from birds-eye, above.
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Trees + Shrubs + Meadow + Focal Point, above.  Yet, more-more-more of each.  
Parts of this garden, above, do not please me, "Don't fence me in." Cole Porter.  Pop open the pair of parterres in the foreground, I'm happy again.
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Often, Cole Porter, Frank Sinatra, AC/DC, Crash Test Dummies, Elaine Stritch, Julie Andrews and a few movie soundtracks pop up while I'm in a garden. Always unbidden.  Sometimes lines from books read decades ago.  Amusing. 
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 Pic, above, here.
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Same Garden Design, above, as all of the above, with age to it.
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Little maintenance needed, above, in this area.  Snip, snip, done for the year.
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This Garden Design style, all pics above, adapts to mid-century modern, farmhouse, Monet, Frank Lloyd Wright and etc.
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At the front end my gardening included everything above, and perennials, and and and and.
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"For who hath despised the day of small things?"  Zech. 4: 8-10  Makes me laugh every time I read it.
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So.
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At The End of The Day.
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Why this Garden Design style?
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Smallest input, greatest output.
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Forgot to mention, this style Garden Design, is greatest pollinator habitat, and non-toxic to Earth.
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Most important thing to know about this style Garden Design?  A third dimension is brought in.  The Garden, You, and a source of epiphany amongst the air, trees, meadow, birds, nurturing, caressing, loving.  Loving.
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In these gardens you will live wider, and know it, in addition to the arc of living long.
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These gardens give answers to questions you've found impossible to put words to.
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These gardens are your revival.  Go ahead, laugh.  Yet, put in this style Garden Design, revival will arrive.  "A sense of the numinous."  C.S. Lewis.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Each of you has been touched by 2020.  Cannot imagine the myriad layers.  Hope you have a garden, a botanical garden, a park, nature reserve, a neighborhood walk, somewhere to think, and hear, and be strong.
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Beloved's health has been caught up with hospitals shutting down for patients with cancer etc.  Testing was finally done a month ago, they found 2 new, serious issues.  Surgery for one went well last week, he's back at work.  Scheduling for the 2nd issue is in September.  His doctor said, "Immediately."  .   
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2020 has us, we have God.
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"If we are to live and have something to live for, let us remember, all of us, that we are the servants as well as the masters of our fields."  Henry Beston
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Because of the Garden Design template, above, I know fully, to this moment, what being masters-of-our-fields gives, harbors, teaches.

How to Site Urns on Stone Walls & Simplicity of Garden Design

Stone Wall & Finials.
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What will you use?  As a finial?
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Pic, above, here.
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Pic, above, here.
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Pic, above, in my garden last weekend.
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Sited at end of stone retaining wall, above.  In case you were wondering how I chose 'exactly' where to site the urn.  Siting, in addition, for top of the urn to be 100% level.   
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Notice what's special about the urn?
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Subtle color, and no planting needed.  It's cast stone, and will be someone's delight at my estate sale.  Remember: When Choosing a Focal Point it Must Be So Wonderful it Will Be Fought Over at Your Estate Sale.
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Something else is beyond special about this garden, above. 
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If you want to be regenerative, which is far superior to sustainable, you must know the key ingredient to the garden, above.
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Tara Turf.  No lawn.  Total low meadow with clovers, violet, dandelion, pink sorrel and what the wind blows in.
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In addition, the shrub, above, is the native Buckeye.  It will get 10' tall x 12 ' wide, sun/shade, moist or not. 
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Gardening became so easy when I got out of the way.  When I listened.  When I copied Providence, and centuries of European landscapes studied across Europe.
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Stone Walls & Urns.................made for each other.
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Garden Design Question.  How much can you take away from a Garden Design and it holds together?
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It's the last question I ask myself when designing. 
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Do you dare be this simple, above?
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Why be this simple?  I want my garden to give beauty & joy for aging into my 80's, causing no stress, only grace.
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My style of gardening is not popular with Garden Design/Build Firms.  Can you see why?  Their staff is gauged successful by the quantities of plants, lawn, mulch, stone, irrigation installed, gaining the yearly maintenance contract for mowing, annuals, pruning, chemicals, fertilizers.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Best Mental Model Ever: What Does This Mean To Me?

Mental Models, how to think about things, schema.
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Began, January 2020, a new Sunday School class, Pastor is instructor, reading the Bible in a year.  Never done it.  No clue how to 'think' about Bible passages, stories.
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With assigned workbook, study bible inherited from my dad, educated/wise instructor, a small start, for my new Mental Model: What Does This Mean To Me?.  Ha ha ha, sick with flu for weeks, slow recovery, Sunday School classes/Church Covid cancelled, behind in reading. 
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Before the world stopped for Covid, in bed on Sunday nites, I would think, What Does This Mean To Me? 
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Best Mental Model ever, this lone question, What Does This Mean To Me?  Any topic, combined with serious inquiry.
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Did you already know to ask this question?     
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Gardening.  Why didn't I know this Mental Model at the front end of Gardening?  Instead, it was full passion for all that was loved, disdain for gardens whose style I did not like.  Taking everything, in the order passions reigned.  No regrets for those decades, blessed they passed away, and, like Elaine Stritch, I'm Still Here.
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At the front end, I did not like this style Garden Design, below.
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Now?  Understand its layers of being.  Contrasting shapes bring drama, romance, interest.  Cone shapes draw eyes to the sky.  Wise choices within the shapes give year round interest, deer proof, no disease, drought tolerance, wet tolerant, no chemicals, less maintenance, lowered HVAC bills, higher property values, more pollinators, scent, backdrop to your life, with your family, friends, pets.
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When love has run out.  When energy is lost for anger.  When fear topples away.  When you'll never get what you've most wanted and the moment of realization is clear.  You know your story, the inner dialogue, was too small.
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Aren't those the best moments ever?  Freedom.  How many times, being Icarus, do we each have?
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Pic, above, here.
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I began gardening with Top Down thinking.  A small Mental Model to bring into adulthood.
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Bottom Up thinking.  "The most vivid part of the mind bubbles up through sensation and new experience when unencumbered by analytical thought."  Daniel Siegal. 
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Pic, above, here.
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Shapes not just of plants, are important, below.  Shape of your entire property, home, Garden Design.  Mount Vernon, below, a painting done not long after Washington died.  This shape, low meadow with wild wood, creates maximum pollinator habitat.  Important why?  Increase crop yields by 80%
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Food to survive, and thrive.
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Pic, above, here.
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Shapes creating architecture, below.  Rooms, doorway, enfilade, hallway, walls, ceiling, floor, thresholds, art on the walls.
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Pic, above, here.
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Bottom up thinking, is new thinking, gifting grace, beauty, and transcendence.
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"I know the world is bruised and bleeding and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence."  Toni Morrison
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After the grand you-do-you, what then?  What plinths to use, mental models for the most serious journey of your life?  Tilting at windmills is the gift.  Choose your windmills wisely, What Does This Mean To Me?, then, tilt with everything in you.  There be your transcendence.
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Fortunately, John Muir asked, What Does This Mean To Me?  And wrote his answers.  "“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine into trees.” Muir, who came to California seeking the solitude of nature, decided to stay—dabbling as a glaciologist, a wilderness activist, and a writer who published persuasive ecological articles with a quill made from a golden eagle feather found on Yosemite’s Mount Hoffmann."  From National Park Service, here.
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For every person reading, "Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine into trees.", asking themselves, What Does This Mean To Me?, will be unique answers, no matter the millions asking.
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT

How to Stage Small Potted Plants With Your 'Sacred Fire'

In 1781, Thomas Jefferson wrote,

"Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth."

Thomas Jefferson
Quote, from, Here.
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Hadn't seen this particular quote, above, until today.  I think we're all born with that 'sacred fire', a few in any given century, keep & stoke that 'sacred fire'.  You are one, reading this far.
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Jefferson's belief, above, quite dangerous, still, to world governments.  (Why think small?)  Taking the privilege of toiling, poyeema, with the Earth, provides more than food for the body.  Working with the soil, feeds epiphanies to the soul.  Each era garners this truth; we each have the gift of inalienable rights, from Providence.
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Filthy lucre is not part of this transaction.  Free to all; for the taking.  Tasha Tudor signed off many of her letters with a part of this 'sacred fire', Take Joy.  She knew, Joy is always present.  It's our job to 'take'.
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Pic, above, here.
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Painted, above, by Rembrandt Peal, ca. 1801, there is no loss of desire, for this geranium, and its pot, ca. 2020.  Why is that?  I must have both.  Oddly, the geranium, tall, does not look staked.  How is it not weeping over?  Ironically, the pot looks artisan made, ca. 2020.  How I want to know the pot by touch, the geranium too.  What is the fragrance of this geranium?  May I lightly touch its leaves, and their scent remains on my hands?
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What is their soil mix, how does it smell?
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Pic, above, here.
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What happens without 'sacred fire' ?  This, at a museum, above.  (Macro thoughts about 'sacred fire' in the opening, taking it to micro thoughts for the closing.  Sacred-fire-cares-not, large/small, it burns bright, in love.)
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No soul, above, with Jefferson's 'sacred fire' to make the pots/flowers a setting for the art on the wall.  Somewhere along the way to the museum, these poor bulbs were smashed sideways.  Grocery stores are better at display.
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Further, what's with those sticks/string, above ?
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Sticks should be dark twigs from tree or shrub, and string a dark jute twine.  Hyacinths don't need staking, and if staking is done, it should be created with as much 'sacred fire' as the paintings were created, and hung, on the wall.
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Are those pots, above, set bare on the table?
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Pots could be placed on terra cotta saucers, or a pair of Chinese plates, from the museum collections, creating a scene to partake with the art on the wall.  They are definitely not positioned properly.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO T
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One of my mentor's, Mary Kistner, had her memorial service at a museum.  It was standing room only.  An artist, several mediums, Mary had a special talent for hanging/displaying other artists work, for many museums across USA.  Hence my thinking museum art displays are quite-a-thing.
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How quickly did you realize the potted flowers had been smashed in a mishap?  Before, or after, you looked in amazed curiosity at the sticks/string?  Did neither register, only part?  Now that it's pointed out, do you realize why it is important to point out?  "...men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely as if gardening were the greater perfection."  Alexander Pope, ca. 17th century.
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How I would love to see what Mary would do with this art display, above.
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Mary was about 4 decades older than me, and from first meeting I was moth to her Sacred Flame. 

12 Steps to Create a Patio You'll Want to Use

Garden Design in a single photo, below.
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Pic, above, here.
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Don't be fooled by the beautiful home, stone terrace, vintage table/chairs, classic urn on a low brick column.  This isn't a high-end Garden Design course.  It's Garden Design for all.  Every price point.
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Do pay attention to form, function, simplicity, color.
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Ease of maintenance.
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Access to house for easy transport of tableware/meals.
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The urn, at front, so fabulous, it remains a beauty, empty.
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They chose a color trinity, green/black/white.
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Does it answer the question, "Is the garden so amazing I want to see inside the house?"  Yes.
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This Garden Design is for any starter home, no matter its era.  Found/rescued brick/stone for the terrace, laid in soil with groundcover.  Perhaps gravel, with a few stones set at main path into house.  Don't want to track gravel inside.
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Choose your Color Trinity.  Green/Brown/White the historic classic.  For a reason.  But, choose whatever you want, it's your garden, your life.  You love it, results will be great.
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No vintage table/chairs?  Field gathered is fabulous.  Table, chairs, none match, all painted the same color.  What color?  One of your chosen Color Trinity.   
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No classic urn?  Old galvanized pot.  Horrid plastic pot, fine, if painted from your Color Trinity.
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Be simple.  At the end of a Garden Design, ask yourself, "What can I take out, and it still holds together?"  Simplicity is good Garden Design.  Never, do I want to look out a window, and think, "Oh, I must go do....."  I must look out my windows and think, "Oh WOW."
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Make sure your choices flow from inside your home.  Same brain waves creating your interior, are the same to use outside. 
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Garden Design begins inside the house.  This patio flows from inside the house. 
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Bugs?  Outdoor ceiling fans.  Not happening?  Paint a box fan, aim it toward table at proper distance, spray it a color from your trinity.  Once my arbor with ceiling fans rotted, at my 30 year garden, I went the box fan route nestled in the foliage of a large potted plant.  Not too inconvenient, it was mostly off exhibit, in the garage.   
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Garden & Be Well,  XOT 
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Front porch at our ca. 1900 home is amazing, it faces east, usually has a slight breeze from the pastures surrounding us.  It's deep, we can eat meals during storms, without getting wet.  Often, when bad weather blows in I go to the front porch to sit and enjoy the drama.  During the few weeks a year it's not too hot, or too cold, when friends come to dinner, we eat on the front porch. 
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Last nite, heading out to dinner, it was the last of oddly warm temperatures the past week.  Told Beloved to stop, lets sit on the front porch a few minutes before leaving.  "Why?", he asked, "So we can talk." I said.  "We can talk in the truck.", he said.  "I want to enjoy the last of this warm weather in January with you.", I said.  We sat.  Talked.  Quite a bit.  Sweet.
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Doubt Beloved would convey this story similarly.  Men.

Truth: Where Your Garden Design Begins

"......the facial feathers fanned into a sonic satellite dish dispersing sound to unlevel ears, one positioned higher than the other to help the owl locate its prey in three dimensions."  Maria Popova.
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Makes perfect sense.  Truth.

 
Pic, above, here. 
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Too often, truth is not our starting point, instead, we settle for facts.  Facts comfortably turned into information.  Worse, information elevated to wisdom.     
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I knew the garden, above, had a truth.  What?  I could not articulate it, nor create it.  Too busy using that American Horticulture degree, with its starting point a pure 180 from the truth, above.   Off to the historic gardens across Europe for 2 decades.  Truth was intuited in the first garden the first trip.  How could I not go back so often.  Now?  The imperative is to design gardens.

Garden Design is not a voodoo, let me make this up, oh I love plants x--y--z......, I must adhere to the HOA, these plants are on sale so they're perfect, let me do what my neighbors do and other such 'wisdom' without a base in truth.
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Each layer of Garden Design flows from a truth.  Great news, it means you've got this.  Better, you're working with Providence and centuries of the greatest Garden Design minds Earth has known. 
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In America, a Garden Design truth, above, most often not 'seen'.  How can you begin your Garden Design if you don't know the ears must be unlevel?   
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Truth, above, Garden Design begins inside your home, looking out.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

Flow: First Layer of Design

In college, Garden Design taught flow, flow of turf, and flow of beds.
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Pitiful.
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Pic, above, here.
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At the time, I knew the education received was no good, for me.
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Flow was not on my radar, up front.  Intuitively knew, turf and beds with their in-curves and out-curves were aliens.  To me.
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Decades of touring historic gardens across Europe, with a horticultural guide, taught the methods of designing a true Garden.  If you want turf, foundation plantings, in-curves/out-curves, mow-blow-go, annuals, don't stop at this blog, keep moving.  Plenty of resources want your business, and happy to have you sign their contract.  I'm not for you.
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Historic gardens flow from your home, historic gardens flow from your life, historic gardens flow richly, adding layers of joy, grace, beauty to the site, more importantly to your life. 
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Seeing the quote, above, made me smile.  First thing I do, designing any garden, is consider Flow.  Not plants.  Flow.
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Is Flow in your quiver of Garden Design arrows? 
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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What would be best, to teach flow, is have a real garden, put it on paper, begin its Garden Design.  And talk you thru it as you watch, in a seminar format, no more than 20 students.  Of course, doing this after power points on each layer of Garden Design.  Your first assignment?  Entire class must design a garden, the same garden.  No peeking at each others work.  No worries, anyone wildly out of flow, I will nudge in proper direction.
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No names on any design.  All designs go on the wall.  We walk/talk them all.  What you learn from wrong choices in the works as important as what is correct/magic in the designs on the wall.
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Heads-up, the hardest garden to design?  Your own.

18 Garden Design Rules You Need to Use: All in This Seemingly Simple Garden

Get 'the' Garden Design memo, below?  Aside from 'the' memo, what are the bullet points for the memo in macro, not merely micro?
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Garden Design course in a single photo, below.  Not the entire curriculum, but enough for major memo about Garden Design.
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Seriously, if you were teaching this Garden Design course today, what bullet points are in this photo, below?
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Wish I had you in a real classroom, no more than 20 of you.
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I was a fully fledged adult arriving to Garden Design, the engineering degree not-so-much help.  Aside from intuitively knowing Garden Design was a process, its machinations were so magic in effect, layers remained indecipherable.  No words, no language to process a good Garden Design.
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Worse, went to get another degree, this time horticulture, and the same thing happened, zero language or understanding of historic Garden Design principles were taught.  But , baby I had 'credentials'.  Junk in the trunk.  Monster junk, harmful to Earth, body, spirit.  That's another book/article/lecture/post.
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Off to Europe, late 80's, studying historic Garden Design 20+ years.
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This garden, below, made me smile at first site.
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Why do you think it made me smile?


Pic, above, here.
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Pair of stone animals, (are they cows or horses?), at the entry, above.  At a distance, even, performing their duties.  Sentinels announcing, "Yes, come this way, enter, you're welcome, we want you to walk this way."  In their wordlessness of welcome, and direction, a benediction, grace.  Remember, if you need words in your garden, it's a fail.
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Already, you're getting a Garden Design bullet point from the garden, above.
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Imagine the same pic, above, yet a small sign placed at the front of the steps, Entry.  Oh dear, that would be banal, gauche, worse, lacking in grace.
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Walking a garden with a kindred spirit, seeing such a sign, 'entry', in an otherwise beautiful setting, we'd merely make eye contact, make a face, move on.  Pure understanding.  However, walking in this garden with a kindred spirit, our feet would not be touching the ground.  Looks between us, total joy & grace, move on, hungry to see more, time & reality have ceased to exist, life is only the garden at hand, and perhaps a good cup of tea with a scone, or such, when we alight on a chair.  Perhaps a glass of wine, cheese/crackers, freshly quartered blood oranges?  Exactly what happened with friends while visiting a private garden in Alabama last week.  Another post, promise.
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Notice the world's most historic Garden Design Color Trinity?  Green-Brown-White.
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Contrasting foliage, above, large leaves next to small leaves.
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Foliage at the far right column following the Garden Design Rule: Just Let It Touch.  Especially love that rule, made it up myself, one of many, noticed across Europe yet never put into words anywhere I've read, or heard in conversation, lectures.
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Garden Design Layers: Canopy, Walls, Floors, each designed & executed.  Better, purest simplicity.
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Crunch of gravel underfoot, Sound in the garden, in addition to wind thru foliage, and hopefully the sound of water is in this garden, above, too.
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Subsidiary color to the main Color Trinity?  Noticed already?  Lead color for pots, bench, windows/doors, railing.
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Pruning shape, rounded, for plants in pots, contrasting formal with the informal of canopy tree foliage at far right.  Furthermore, choosing to prune potted plants rounded, in contrast to the square columns.
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White chosen is creamy.  Bright white would jump forward, making the space feel smaller, especially the terrace.
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Repetition of pots and their plantings.  Repetition of Green.  All Green gardens are the fastest to achieve their goal, and the most serene.  A simple plant selection, not too much diversity, calm, and tough plants too, less maintenance/disease/watering/bugs.
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What did I miss for this Garden Design course in a single photo?  What shouts to you?  What makes you smile?
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Garden Design Rules Executed in the Garden Above:

1.  Pair of focal points announcing an entryway.
2.  Color Trinity chosen: green-brown-white.
3.  Canopy-Walls-Floor designed, executed.
4.  Contrasting foliage sizes, large leaves next to small leaves.
5.  Contrasting foliage pruning, formal & informal.
6.  Sound designed, wind thru foliage, crunch of gravel underfoot.
7.  Subsidiary Color chosen, lead, for pots, furniture, windows/doors, rails.
8.  Creamy white chosen instead of bright white, creating a large space for a smallish front porch.
9.  Small variety of plants chosen, simplicity, greater visual impact.
10. Tough plantings chosen for ease of maintenance, no bugs/fungus/watering.
11.  Repetition of pots chosen, and their scale, color, shape.
12. Repetition of green.  All green gardens are the fastest to achieve their goal, and serene.
13. Last column, foliage barely touching, Just Let It Touch.
14. Needing words in your garden a 'fail'.
15. Hospitality a layer of expectation good Garden Design provides.
16. Using grace as a design layer.
17. Big impact Garden Design visually, yet simple ingredients, few ingredients, easy to maintain.
18. Keep it simple sweetie.  This garden's simplicity is its super power.  Intellect oozes from this
      Garden Design.
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Up front, I bristled at Garden Design Rules.  What would I tell that girl now?  Get over it, waste of time, you won't reinvent the wheel, better, your originality lies within every Garden Design rule.  Promise.  Most importantly, learn how to break any Garden Design rule, that's a bit tougher, yet necessary.  Pay attention.  Pay more attention.  Pay closer attention.  See all.  See what's not there.

Edward Slingerland: Wu-Wei in the Garden

Most requested by clients/students?  "I don't want to spend a lot of money, it must have little maintenance."  This is what I know for sure.  Replying in detailed response to that pair of demands, via Gardenese language, no one accepts, no one.  From those who have asked, of course.
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"Wonder, and its expression in poetry and the arts, are among the most important things which seem to distinguish men from other animals, and intelligent and sensitive people from morons."  Alan Watts, The Way of Zen.
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"Things become complicated only when we think about them."  Alan Watts.



Pic, above, here.
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"Trying to force a lock bends the key.  For which reason a truly intelligent man never forces an issue."  Alan Watts.  (I must try harder to prevent bent-key-thinking.  Better, when bent-key-thinking intrudes into my life, from another, "I'm not listening to your bent-key-thinking.")
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"To have faith is to trust yourself to the water.  When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown.  Instead you relax and float."  Alan Watts.
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Wielding this style Garden Design, above, rich, humorous, humbling.  Further along the Garden Design archetype than whence begun.  Few immune to the Garden Design archetypes path.  Nothing new, existed well before cuneiform records.
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Humorous?  Simplicity, above, gives you, you.  Richest construct in your life, you.
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"We have allowed brain thinking to develop and dominate our lives.  As a consequence, we are at war within ourselves.  The brain desiring things which the body does not want, and the body desiring things which the brain does not allow; the brain giving directions which the body will not follow, and the body giving impulses which the brain cannot "  Alan Watts.
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Funny?  In my garden, there is no 'me'.  In my garden, my body hears what my brain cannot.  In my garden, I am gone, with the body remaining present.  Follow your bliss, find where you experience eternity here, Joseph Campbell truths.  In my garden there is no me, no time, no hunger, no tiredness, no awareness of bruising/bleeding, no sense of want, no fear, expansive joy.  Deeper, at the conclusion of being in my garden, answers arrived to questions known, and unknown, ahead of being in my garden.  Epiphanies from spirit, without fear.
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Seek presence over productivity.  Gaining maximum productivity, though not sought.  .
"All to easily, we confuse the world as we symbolize it with the world as it is."  Alan Watts. 
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Before I had a language describing being in my garden I labeled it, "The best selfishness ever."  After a few years realized it is grace.  How could it not be grace?  Epiphanies too many, too potent, life changing.  Bounty of resources, from garden epiphanies, beyond measure.  Into the realm of E.M.Forster describing a multi-millionaire woman, one of his characters, as having no 'resources'.  Interesting.  Letting go, giving up control, is a resource. 
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"The brainy modern loves not matter but measures, no solids but surfaces."  Alan Watts. 
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There are places to "Transcend our futile strategies for controlling life and surrender to its living essence."  In the garden, merely one. 
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"We have been taught to believe that the best way to achieve our goals is to reason about them carefully and strive consciously to reach them. Unfortunately, in many areas of life this is terrible advice. Many desirable states — happiness, attractiveness, spontaneity — are best pursued indirectly, and conscious thought and effortful striving can actually interfere with their attainment."  Edward Slingerland
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Your act of choice, is my Garden Design writing.  Write an article about how to dig a hole?  No longer do I confuse the map for the territory, noise for signal.  Though I'm wicked good about digging a hole with a shovel or auger attached to a Caterpillar.  Pure noise, how to dig a hole if you're wanting a good garden, you in your Garden is signal territory.
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" For the early Chinese thinkers … the culmination of knowledge is understood, not in terms of grasping a set of abstract principles, but rather as entering a state of wu-wei. The goal is to acquire the ability to move through the physical and social world in a manner that is completely spontaneous and yet fully in harmony with the proper order of the natural and human worlds (the Dao or “Way”). Because of this focus on knowing how rather than knowing this or that, the Chinese tradition has spent a great deal of energy over the past two thousand years exploring the interior, psychological feel of wu-wei, worrying about the paradox at the heart of it, and developing a variety of behavioral techniques to get around it. The ideal person in early China is more like a well-trained athlete or cultivated artist than a dispassionate cost-benefit analyzer."  Edward Slinglerland     
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"Our excessive focus in the modern world on the power of conscious thought and the benefits of willpower and self-control causes us to overlook the pervasive importance of what might be called “body thinking”: tacit, fast, and semiautomatic behavior that flows from the unconscious with little or no conscious interference. The result is that we too often devote ourselves to pushing harder or moving faster in areas of our life where effort and striving are, in fact, profoundly counterproductive."  Edward Slingerland. 
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Clients with gardens getting-there the fastest?  All women, ages 40+, and a gay couple who travel the globe for their work, and are 30+/50+. 
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"Some of the most elusive objects of our incessant pursuits are happiness and spontaneity, both of which are strikingly resistant to conscious pursuit."  Maria Popova
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" Wu-wei literally translates as “no trying” or “no doing,” but it’s not at all about dull inaction. In fact, it refers to the dynamic, effortless, and unselfconscious state of mind of a person who is optimally active and effective. People in wu-wei feel as if they are doing nothing, while at the same time they might be creating a brilliant work of art, smoothly negotiating a complex social situation, or even bringing the entire world into harmonious order. For a person in wu-wei, proper and effective conduct follows as automatically as the body gives in to the seductive rhythm of a song. This state of harmony is both complex and holistic, involving as it does the integration of the body, the emotions, and the mind. If we have to translate it, wu-wei is probably best rendered as something like “effortless action” or “spontaneous action.” Being in wu-wei is relaxing and enjoyable, but in a deeply rewarding way that distinguishes it from cruder or more mundane pleasures."  Edward Slingerland.
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"We’re drawn to people with wu-wei, Slingerland argues, because we inherently trust the automatic, unconscious mind due to a simple fact from the psychology of trust — because spontaneity is hard to fake, we intuit that spontaneous people are authentic and thus trustworthy. But Western thought has suffered from centuries of oppressive dualism, treating intuition and the intellect as separate and often conflicting faculties — a toxic myth that limits us as a culture and as individuals. Fortunately, Slingerland points out, recent decades have brought a more embodied view of cognition acknowledging the inextricable link between thought and feeling and debunking, as Ray Bradbury so eloquently did, the false divide between emotion and rationality. (We’ve seen, too, that metaphorical thinking is central to our cognitive development, and metaphor is itself rooted in emotion.) The Chinese tradition, on the other hand, has a millennia-long history of cultivating a more integrated model of the human experience..."  Maria Popova .
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If you haven't discovered Maria Popova yet, you're going to be glad you have now.
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Letting go, and finding eternity, in the garden, has made my life.  Those in my tribe, share this joy.  This is your garden.  Not me writing about when to deadhead your peonies. 
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Within each Garden Design, from a historic template, wu-wei/grace/abiding, is the bonus.  Guaranteed. 
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

A New Trinity: With Grasses?

If you ask me, Do you like ornamental grasses?  Long pause.  Then a bit of internal rumination, Don't think I want to know this person.  My verbal response, Depends on how they're used.
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This garden, below, creates a new trinity, its own world.  Nothing hodge-podge-lodge or dinky-is-stinky about these ornamental grasses.  More, hydrangeas and trees too ?  Cup runneth over.
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Trees, hydrangeas & ornamental grasses.  Wicked.


Pic, above, here.
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Exciting to see a 'new' garden.  I'm all in.
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Interesting tree stakes.  Lots of wind.  Zero protection against deer.  Greatly protective.  I once lost a large sasanqua after transplanting.  Winds.  Rocked too often by wind, new roots continually ripped from the soil.  Loved that sansanqua.  Once dead, called my mentor Margaret Moseley, told her the story of my terrible deed against the sasanqua.  "Taaaaara, (in her great southern accent), I know exactly what happened.  When I move a plant like that I always place a few large rocks atop its roots."
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT
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Oil portrait, above, Margaret Moseley.
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Margaret has been gone since 2015, she lived to 98 .  Miss her terribly.  She is a great story in my life, will tell it another day.  Many hours I walked her garden with her.  The stone bench she's seated upon, has a great history.  A pair of slave cabins, mostly rotted, not entirely, were near her property.  Small, both slave cabins had a fireplace with large hearth stone.  With permission, she moved both hearthstones into her garden for benches, using stones from their flues for legs.

Marital Counseling

For 3 decades I've had the honor of being hired to design residential gardens.  Included is the privilege of being asked into my clients homes.
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Aside from noticing the transition across the years, "Do you want iced tea?", to, "Do you want mosquito repellent?", to, "Do you want a bottled water?", I've noticed how people live their lives, their relationships, children, responses to life not in what they say but how they pattern their home.
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Then there are the babies.  Many of those babies are out of college & their mom/dad have hired me as a gift to design their first home.  How can this be?  I'm already wondering 'when' will I design a garden for my 'first grandchild'?
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Of course there are the divorces.  One particular divorce I kept both ex-spouses, when each remarried, I designed those pair of homes.



During one Garden Design, over a decade ago, 'mom' & I were talking the garden while her children and their friends were playing a theatrical dress-up, swords & crowns included, performing across the backyard with whirls through the kitchen where we were talking.  The family dogs were part of the theater too.  One of the funnest, enriching homes I've been in.
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Last weekend this particular 'mom' called me back.  Time to enclose a front porch, change some windows into doors, turn a patch of Earth into a stone terrace, and lastly, remodel the kitchen.  We'll be doing it all in layers.
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Life is still percolating richly in their home.  In their early 20's both children still live at home.  This time it's mom whirling and performing.  She's mere years away from retiring, a French teacher at the local school, and just finished licensing for being a yoga instructor.
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Here's the deal with their happy home.  All are thriving, and mom/dad are going to a marital therapist learning how to get their children to move out.  I get it.  Both sides.  Their home is a love fest.
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This theatrical will end well, interesting, but well.  


Pics, above, Garden & Gun.
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Even happy stories may include therapy.
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT
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Recognize Bunny Mellon in the pics, above?  Cannot get enough of that woman.  Looking forward to visiting Oak Spring library, have already ordered several books from there.  Road trip in my future to Oak Spring.  Anticipation.  Life is good.

3 Layer Garden Design

An excursion, below, that should be a destination in Garden Design.



Pic, above, here.
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Using the 3 elements, above, of garden design, plan your garden.  A serious landscape, in vanishing threshold with interiors of your home, expanding lifestyle, all with ease, beauty, joy while amplifying your personal aesthetic.
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Don't know the 3 elements, above?
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Ceilings, walls, floors.  Put another way, trees, shrubs, groundcovers.  Another description, foyer, dining room, living room.  Yes, now you are seeing the trinity of elements in the design, above.
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Two types of ceiling, above.  Can you label both?  Sky & trees.  Three types of flooring, above, low meadow, gravel, a chevron pattern.  Three types of walls, tall shrubs, medium shrubs, contrasting texture shrubs.
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Pond is a nice focal point viewed from the foyer, yet equal in use to both living room & dining room.  .
Focal point on plinth, on axis with don't-know-from-this-pic.
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Never thought about a garden like this for your home?  This garden will take your further, faster, lasting longer, than most other types of gardens.
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Starting and ending points for this garden remain 180 from a garden beginning, "I want hydrangeas, peonies and..."
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T

Vanishing Threshold: House & Garden

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



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.