COMING HOME: VANISHING THRESHOLD

Often when I'm hired, during the initial phone conversation, a client will say, I hate coming home. A sentiment understood. I, too, used to hate coming home. What changed? Jung, Life is about getting our outside to match our inside.
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It's literal & metaphorical.
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CHOOSE TO LIVE A CERTAIN WAY. Garden & home flowing in a Vanishing Threshold of beauty-energy-grace with life.
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Above, so rare. A magazine shot of an interior in vanishing threshold with its landscape. Peek out windows & doors of interior magazine shoots. Closely. You'll notice they've airbrushed the outside view.
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Vanishing Threshold begins in thought, then inside your home, then outside in the landscape. In that order.
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Landscapes begin inside the home. Not outside.
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Photo, above, is a masters class in Vanishing Threshold. It didn't happen by accident. The owner CHOSE to make it happen. Why don't you?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Thank you La Dolce Vita for posting this pic from Traditional Home.

TUB: A PREDILECTION

Found online this pic has seared itself into my brain. Seared with further design. In my mind's eye there are 5 claw foot tubs under the tree. A small table, with dinner-wine, at each tub. I'm in one of the tubs & girlfriends are in the rest.

We are talking-sharing-savoring: the tree, the art, night, fireflies, fragrance, sound of bats, each other, floating, comfort, nurturing, laughter, ideas, joys, lessening of sorrows, epiphanies, being silly, gathering strength, being tender, knowing we will leave the evening enriched-changed-more completely ourselves.

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Top pic anonymous at the moment. Anyone know? Send it to me.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

MENTORING: LUNCH

Mentors & lunch have been a pair in my life for decades. Lunches at their homes, inside and in the garden. Paying it forward is so rich it feels selfish. Last Friday I invited CLOWN to lunch. A stressful career explains her hobby donning a clown outfit and visiting local children's hospitals. She asked for a circus theme.

CLOWN has a swimming pool she uses in her backyard but she's not interacting with her landscape. CLOWN plays drums & clarinet too. Yet her personality and lifestyle aren't stamped into her landscape.

CLOWN commented about the 'drama' I bring to the smallest details. Laughing because she said it came out wrong. Meaning it is happy drama I've touched things with.

Tara Landscape Design Rule: Overdose on a Theme.

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Each of my mentors had overdosed on a theme. I'm shameless about taking ideas where I can get them.

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What's your passion. Is it strange, weird? That's what your theme is. Don't hide your passions.

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That's what mentors gave me, PERMISSION, to be me.

Cooking for CLOWN, a pleasure. Lemons, above, in the antique pitcher before heading outside to the compost pile. Wanting my compost pitcher to be as pretty as the Spode dishes on my table, the camellias blooming outside and more.

CLOWN did laugh at my happy little dramas. She got it. I can't wait to be invited to lunch in her circus themed landscape. When that invitation comes, and it will, I know CLOWN will be interacting with her landscape. Her home-garden-life, finally, together.

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What are your passions? Would I know it by looking at your landscape?

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How are you using your passions and landscape to nurture yourself?

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Why is this stuff important? A vanishing threshold of life-home-landscape will diminish sorrow & increase joy.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

A LANDSCAPE TO MAKE HER CRY

"The Renaissance had a word for it: sprezzatura, the quality of apparent ease that the perfect courtier brought to all his high-wire acts: swordplay, flute-playing, poetry-writing, singing, love-making." Willard Spiegelman

SHE called me to design her landscape. Her sprezzatura lost momentarily with a previous designer.
At the frontdoor natural light and her books. SHE, "When the Barefoot Contessa sashays into her garden I swoon."

SHE called me to fix what others created.

SHE & my contractors, don't you love the body language? In her hand is my plan, fixing those walls.

String & flags to make the plan come alive. Below, SHE has a potager to sashay into.

Yellow string, above, being measured for the stone to create raised beds for her potager. Paths of small gray granite gravel to match her bluestone terrace.

SHE had boots ready to walk in the mud. SHE recently rescued Sam, below. Can you tell he already has her heart?

Talk went to wine & scotch.

SHE was dubious about the Giardino Segretto garden room. Until I said, It's where you'll drink scotch & wine with your girlfriends. Sold!

Colors, furnishings, books, lighting. SHE chose them all.

One of my landscape design secrets is to see which cookbooks are in the house. Why? They are a window into the soul. How you eat is how you live, and how you garden.

Interesting. SHE has 2 glass/metal tables. I copied the idea for enclosing a portion of her bluestone terrace. Using a mid-century modern greenhouse glass roof & folding door idea used at Callaway Gardens, Sibley Center.

An entire closet is devoted to dishes.

When I made the 2nd appointment, to draw en plein aire, I requested lunch.

Another landscape design secret, talking life. Knowing there will be a defining thought.

SHE went back to the Barefoot Contessa. "Every recipe of hers is foolproof. No matter how I forget to do something, don't quite beat the egg whites correctly, anything. Nothing I've cooked of hers, through the years, has failed."

Can there possibly be a better description for the type of landscape SHE wants? SHE's not afraid of wit. SHE's never cute.

Beautiful, foolproof, light & shadows, traditional spiced with mid-century modern, flavored with the Barefoot Contessa & the great works of literature. That was the landscape I had to design.

LANDSCAPES BEGIN IN THE IMAGINATION

A plain chair with a pop of fringe tells me more about designing her landscape.

SHE's not afraid of sunlight on her floor & furnishings. Telling me SHE's sensual.

And another landscape design secret, the guest bathroom.

SHE has drama with color, textiles, art from her travels and junking. A directive for any landscape.

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SHE's ready for her landscape to be DONE. Troubles with her 1st designer weigh heavily in time & money.

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Wish I could have an 18-wheeler show up today with everything in my plan. I know I've created a landscape to make her cry.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

THE QUEEN'S POT

Do you think this is an empty pot? At Glamis Castle, Scotland I wandered away from the group in the garden. A meadow & copse beckoned. Honestly, I thought it was off limits. Raising the siren call.
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Of course I went. Stopping first and investigating an area labeled, DO NOT ENTER. More about that happy adventure another day. On to the copse.
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In the frisson of meadow & copse, a pot. Tall, on a plinth. Big, you could bathe in it. Old, mortals could never afford it. Royalty? Obviously. And, GLORIOUSLY EMPTY.
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The pot was permission, YES, COME INTO MY LOVELY WOOD. I discovered an arboretum with every tree labeled and mature. I was walking in the pages of a picture book.
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No one from my group ventured into the copse. Those elegant trees were mine alone. One of the happiest moments of my life. This is when/where I invented, THE QUEEN'S POT.
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Tara's landscape design rule: your pots must be so incredible they can remain empty.
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Yesterday's snow & my Queen's Pot out the bay window.
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You can't bathe in her but she's bruised some men !
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara