Following & Breaking Rules

Green-brown-white is the top historic exterior color trinity for gardens.  Who, ever, likes/wants rules?
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Late to the game, me, once I learned the trick to garden design rules.  I hadn't known or trusted garden rules deeply enough to wisely break them.  That's all there is too it.  Trust the rules, follow the rules, break the rules wisely.  Why the bother?
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Knowing the rules, breaking the rules, creates a garden & exterior more deeply 'you'.  Rules don't make every garden the same.  Rules make every garden potently different.
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Adored, seeing this garden, below.  In the pink.  I want to know this person.  Just from this pic, a tiny portion of their exterior.  More, I want to see the owner's interior.



Pic, above, here.
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Hope you realize that's what you're patio/deck must do, too.  Others must see it, and want to come inside.  Others must see it and 'know' who you are.  Those are garden design rules !
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T

How to Choose & Site Pots in the Landscape

300 acres, 3 'mostly' matching pots totaling 3 centuries of age and no pots placed on the property, yet.  

(Does the pot, below, tell you, "Touch me."?  If it does it means you are an old soul & kindred spirit.)

Pots must be so wonderful they can remain empty, if desired.  Here, they needed to match the history of the home & be within a certain size range.

Perfect, above, they do not draw attention to themselves.  And still allow seating on the low stone-capped columns.

2 men/pot setting them in place.  My general contractor said, as the pot, above, went up, "...That's a ballsy spot."  As if he earned a response.

3 years getting to this layer, placing pots.  Best part?  Looks like they've always been there.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken at jobsite last month.  Found the pots, plus several more, at Scott Antique Market a couple of months ago.
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Did you pick up on the major component of getting the right pot in the right spot in your landscape?  Something few are good at, patience.
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Knowing to choose pots that can remain empty is such an important 'discovery'  I claim it as one of my inventions.  If you think through the carbon footprint of 'annuals & potting soil & fertilizer' for container plantings along with your time & money you'll understand beautiful empty pots.
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Of course planting sublime pots is a layer of fun in the right season of a busy life.

Is Your Garden 'Art' on the Wall?

Every garden view should be 'art' on the wall.

2+ decades ago I visited a garden in Greensboro, NC with every window view taken into consideration.  Every window.
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Again, something learned from an 'uncredentialed' gardener changing the direction, forever, of how I design landscapes.  Not once during college did any instructor mention being inside a client's home to design a garden correctly.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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pic via Castles, Crowns & Cottages.

Double Axis & Before/After

With a view, below, you must be able to turn around

and have an equally fabulous view, below.  Double Axis.

Had the good fortune to visit Susanne Hudson's garden again a few days after this pic, below, was shot.

Without the roses peaking, below, the arbor resumed its status as Focal Point.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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All pics shot this month.  Created a garden this weekend and put in one of these arbors, above.  With pendant lite.  We'll use a historic fence template too but one with a bit more privacy.  We won't use white, they already have a delicious dark putty color on their home.

Foyer & Front Porch

Foyer, below, with garden light.

Window, above, from the front porch, below.

It's my job, vanishing threshold, getting it right.
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This project  uses my entire team: interior decorator, general contractor, foreman, crew team & equipment, carpenter + team, mason+team, pruner+team & of course the homeowner.  We are 3 centuries of experience.
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With no weak links.  Communication flows.  Every ego wanting to know what is not right or not working, how else to get it right?
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And we all love getting dirty.  Homeowner too.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken at jobsite yesterday.

Retaining Wall Lust

Have your eyes & brain accepted this, below? 

 Aside from lust pure astonishment.  This retaining wall is hidden away in the family parking court.  That murdering Roman thing with stone building slaves ca. 1 BCE, then the poverty cycle with the bricks.  Later, much later.  But here it all is, in narrative.  Mine.

 Another chapter to the story, below, at the end of the retaining wall.  Tuscan hillside, fieldstone steps are Jane Austen rusticities.

Framing my lust, below,  relative to the house.  Steps & hillside look as if they were there, leftover from some ancient Roman volcano.  Vesuvius, 79 ad?

 She, the owner, waylayed me.  Oh no, ick.   Grabbing my right arm in both her hands saying, "I'm taking you to the Bellsouth room."  I had no time for this, so deeply involved in my lust for the retaining wall, fieldstone steps, & garden.  Outwardly nice, inwardly thinking how to get away.  Get back to her garden. 

 She marched straight here, above, my arm still in her hands.  "Isn't this the greatest spot?  I love looking at it and go to the bench often, have you ever seen steps like this,  &....."

 My attitude went 180.  Couldn't get enough of her.  That bench?  Of course I hadn't seen it from terrace level.  The bench overlooks the 18th hole of a PGA yearly stop.  

Portion of the Bellsouth room, above.  We paid it 'no mind' as Neil Diamond would sing.  I was in girl-crush as we walked the rest of her house & grounds spilling life stories, work, men, spirit. 
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken at my lecture venue last weekend.  Love how conversations flow with women amongst my tribe.  How did EM Forster know us so well?

Double Axis: House of Turquoise

Sandra Espinet, designed a perfect Double Axis.  From inside the living room, below, looking out to the pavilion.

 From the garden, below, looking into the pavilion.

 In the pavilion, below,

looking into the living room.
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Sandra owns the interior & exterior.  A rare interior decorator knowing her work ends at the property line not the walls of the house.
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Double Axis is an easy concept.  Quit reading this and figure yours out !
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Garden & Be Well,               XO Tara
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Penelope Bianchi is the rarest.  Interior Decorator doing Vanishing Threshold, Double Axis & la-ti-da multiple axis to a single focal point & etc....
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When you realize these concepts are easy, historically correct, necessary to happiness/joy/grace, & affordable you will stop thinking in terms of what Garden Centers & Testosterone-On-Wheels-Mow-Blow-Go want to SELL you.  Foundation plantings & lawn & seasonal annuals?  OMG, worse than boring.  Stupid, environmentally harmful, terrible for property value, & worst of all devastating to your inner muse.  No, don't ask me what I really think, because I can go there too.  And there waits the fabulous Puppet Barbuda.
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Pics via House of Turquoise with more about Sandra Espinet, here.

Formalities & Rusticities

A woodland entry was added to their property, alleviating traffic issues at the family entry.  Formal aspects abound elsewhere.  Keeping RUSTICITIES balances the whole.  Don't know about Formalities & Rusticities?  Read your Jane Austen again, she certainly understood.  Her sanctimonious characters were certainly of the formalities-only-school.

 I used cedars, enlarging a natural drift.  Stone from the site & fallen tree debris, above.

 What you won't see along the lovely Woodland Entry, below,

is what I've hidden.  Modern necessities: satellite, power box & etc. 
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Since we've created this entry & completed the Landscape Design, amplifying Rusticities, she told me it's now her favorite way to enter her property.  A new way of seeing her home.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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pics taken last month.  This is a large area and I adore using the potency of Rusticities in a manner learned from my mentor Mary Kistner, who said, "It's what we do with what we have."  And thankful for a client trusting me with a few rocks, tree debris & her own wild cedar trees.  Rumpelstiltskin was conjuring the wrong form of gold.  This is the gold.

Creating, & Living, In Still Life

Decades old, below, the Camellia japonica doesn't require care.  Though it does take your energy.

 The energy of appreciating beauty, picking flowers, knowing whether it's native/non-native honey bees at the stamens, giving blossoms away, floating blossoms in water & etc.

People, and plants, are energy in or energy out.
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I choose people to keep in my life who are energy in.  Plants too.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Last week with a client, above.  She chose her trug well knowing it would create a Still Life and be functional.    Notice the leaf litter mulch and a few weeds?  Jane Austen wrote of this type garden, it has RUSTICITIES.  Ironic to write of Landscape Design as Still Life.  They change by the split second.

Richness In Simplicity

Simplicities in my house, below, intensify

 my garden view.

Landscapes & interiors are double axis.
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How does your landscape look from inside your home?  It is art on the wall at every window.  Whether you think so or not.
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How does your home look from your landscape?  It is the focal point of your landscape.  Whether you think so or not.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken yesterday, a gray day with rain.  No flash for the pics.  Light streaming in, indirectly, from the garden.  My floor, banister, stairs, and me, each bathed in garden light.

Talk About It

Garden Design Rule: Talk about what you want to do in your garden with friends. You'll be surprised how much FREE stuff you'll get.
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Plants, stone, furniture, wood, windows, iron, leftover paint, light fixtures, & etc..... What?
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Shipman said, "Take the windows I have", after I described the conservatory I want to build.
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Harbor an attitude of FREE. It works.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Shipman & I heard Fergus Garrett of Great Dixter at Atlanta Botanical Garden recently. Afterward we shared a bottle of champagne & selection of appetizers & deserts at www.EmpireStateSouth.com. Newly opened in downtown Atlanta, it's a Hugh Acheson restaurant. His other, 5&10, in Athens, GA is the top rated in the state.
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Fergus, ABG, Champagne, Shipman, & FREE WINDOWS........a Cinderella evening for this garden girl.
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Don't know Fergus Garrett or Great Dixter...........Christo????? Ok poppets, I'll fill you in tomorrow!
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Shipman rescued the circa 1940 windows, above, months ago from a huge dumpster as a nearby home was renovated. If I don't use all of them they will go to Susanne Hudson's barn......

Tara Turf & A Big Mouth

Tara Turf, below. Meadow of whatever the wind blows in & bulbs-clover-herbs-whatever you want, mown at different heights. (Discovered during my first garden study tour in Europe almost 2 decades ago.) Sunday, a client's soiree. She invited dozens. Meeting a delightful man & describing to him Tara Turf. Further,

telling him 'some locals' did not want her to have Tara Turf, aka meadow. Too many problems with tall meadows 'they' said. Full sail, go Tara Go, describing Tara Turf's fabulousity.

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Tara Talk personified, fully Tara'izing.

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Dahlings, you KNOW what's coming.

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That man? Quietly said, "I cut these fields for decades."

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Hmm. THE local. Hmm. Exit quickly. Silly girl, into another social pickle. Find Rabbit Hole in the meadow quickly....

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken last Sunday at Hedgerow Farm. I adore Tara Turf: pollinator garden, no irrigation, no chemicals, fragrant, little mowing, gorgeous, fabulous. Tara Turf has worked for centuries throughout the globe. I adore history.

Best Lawn: TARA TURF

Moss & lichens are wornas jewelry upon this bench.

TARA TURF is its carpet.

Discovered over a decade ago during a study tour of Scotland TARA TURF is obvious.

TARA TURF: moss, lichens, mondo, clover, bulbs, dandelion, violets, fragrance, dwarf chamomile, scilla, muscari, dwarf daffodils, honeybees, ladybugs, fescue, what the wind blows in, 50%-75% less mowing, formal or informal depending upon mowing pattern & heights, zero fertilizer, zero chemicals, zero irrigation Mother Nature's rain only, unique to each zone & region world wide.

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TARA TURF, luxurient decadence. Earth poetry.

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Poetry of Man? Weekly mowing, insecticides, fungicides, their fumes passing thru your skin, stench, fertilizers, irrigation systems, poisoned ground water, dead mychorizal fungi, dead earthworms, dead lady bugs, dead honeybees, lawn cats/dogs/children must be protected from walking upon once treated, well, dahlings you get the idea.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken last week in CORPORATE WOMAN's garden. Pics of her POTTING COTTAGE soon.

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Sod manufacturers, heads-up. Many people have inquired where to purchase TARA TURF.

THE SECRET OF FABULOUS LANDSCAPES

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

Passing thru the yew hedge into this, above.

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See the landscape design secret?

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No?

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

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

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

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CONTRASTING FORMAL & INFORMAL GARDEN ROOMS.

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

TRIPLE AXIS FROM THIS BENCH

A landscape where you might see a, "disheveled wood nymph after a night carousing with satyrs." as N. Singer wrote. Oops, digressing. Sitting in the bench, above, you'll see the house, below, a double axis.

Sitting in the bench, and looking right,you'll see this axis, above.

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The more axis a focal point has the better a focal point is.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Krystol, thanks for your pics.

NOT PLANTING CONTAINERS

Serious about low maintenance landscaping? Soil & flowers require watering. I adore Susanne Hudson's visual pun, below.


My birdhouse, below, went up when I tired of watering the wall planter. One year of the wall planter darlings. More than 10 years of the birdhouse. Lots of chirping & many fledglings later it still makes me happy.
My covered container, below, connects me to centuries of gardeners tired of planting.

A category I own, The Queen's Pot, below. Discovered at Glamis Castle.

Every pot you own should be so fabulous it can remain empty. Because, of course, you will eventually want your pots empty.
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How will you not plant a garden container?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

SHOOTING HYDRANGEAS & LOVING LEGS

How did the hydrangeas KNOW where to grow? This is not a 'styled' picture. It's viewed thru my kitchen & bedroom windows.
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When it comes to focal points, just-let-it-touch. What bench, statue, urn, birdbath isn't improved with a hint of foliage just touching?
Shooting hydrangeas and seeing the table legs from a new angle, below. The legs have a slight curve from top to bottom, reeking of the 1950's. Aside from being a diminutive rectangular shape, perfection, I had to have those legs.

And the glass top with more hydrangea blossoms underneath. A hydrangea carpet!!!

And the blue/white ginger jar? It's a traditional Chinese wedding gift. The writing says, 'Double Happiness'. Of course I didn't know that when I bought it at the thrift store for $3.
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Notes: Square or rectangular patio tables are the best, round tables aren't as flexible in usage. A pair of square tables can be used separately or pulled together for larger gatherings. If you find an old iron patio table, as above, don't worry that it doesn't have chairs. Find comfortable chairs or benches of wood or metal and paint them all the same color. The French have been doing this for centuries. Place an arbor over your table with a ceiling fan to keep mosquitoes away. ENJOY.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

COPYING & MAKING IT NEW IN THE LANDSCAPE

A century old, at least, I copied it in my landscape. Outside. (Thank you Pigtown*Design, it was your idea.) And I don't like to collect things nor stray from simplicity. So why am I enjoying this blue/white Chaos Display?
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Maybe I'll keep it for a month or years. Doesn't matter, I'm enjoying it now. 3 RULES FOR LANDSCAPES:

COPY + SIMPLICITY + REPETITION
No matter how many times it's been done before, if it's beautiful elsewhere it will be beautiful & unique in your landscape.

What is the saying? Non-fiction is a true story, myths are stories that happen over & over & over.... Landscapes are myths, at least mine is to me. How else to explain the grace my garden exudes? Using the 3 rules: copy, simplicity, repetition will give you mythical grace in your landscape.

Setting up the blue/white CHAOS DISPLAY, below.

Intentionally design your landscape to create impromptu Still Life, above.

Went to my favorite junk shop to complete the blue/white collection last Friday. I would tell you where but the friend who shared the shop with me did so with a demand, Do not tell anyone about this shop.

Pic, above, is not styled. The box was awkwardly heavy & I set it on my patio table to begin arranging the Chaos Display. Magazine shoots are fine but I delight, especially, in good pics not styled. The impromptu of life creating still life.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara