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.

..."Remodel Central Park, ca. 1910"

 "It's time," said Mr. Hustler," to remodel Central Park; At present it's as out-of-date as Noah and his ark."  R. H. Titherington in "Life," July 28, 1910.

On March 4, 1891, "Garden & Forest," was quoted as support of the 1910 demand to remodel.  It goes,

"A park such as is now under consideration should be primarily and essentially a rural retreat, . . . its highest purpose is not to furnish instruction, nor pure air, nor a place for exercise on foot or on horseback, but to furnish that relief and repose of mind which natural scenery brings to those who are wearied by city sights and sounds. . . .  Of course, a park designed and constructed with such a leading motive will not fail to furnish pure air and a field for exercise and opportunity for study; but, if it is designed primarily with subordinate uses, its highest purpose will not be reached."
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Landscape Architecture, A Quarterly Magazine, October, 1910.
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Pics from Trees and Shrubs of Central Park
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

Building Your Garden Room: 10 Steps

Think, cha-ching, this isn't for you? Poppets, PUPPET BARBUDA will not let you off easy. That measly excuse of no money? HOW TO build your new GARDEN ROOM:

1. Make decision to build a GARDEN ROOM. (Odd, this is the most important step)

2. Get envelope, label it, GARDEN ROOM. (Leftover paper money 2-3/week goes here.)

3. Tell all your friends, "I'm building a GARDEN ROOM."

4. Look at everything in your path with RESCUE eyes.

5. Bring it home. Old fencing, stone, brick, concrete, wood, house parts.

6. Get paint from the rejects at hardware store.

7. Accessorize from thrift store & sale items: TJMAXX, Marshall's, Ross.

8. Pots/urns from garage sales, big box store sales.

9. Put the right man in your project. (Alas, difficult.)

10. Hire man, & the same day, invite girlfriends to your Garden Tea Party.

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Take step #1 and your GARDEN ROOM will appear.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Charlotte Moss, pic, above. OMG, wonderful, & doable! This pic has come across my path at least a zillion times.

BUILDING A GARDEN ROOM

Susanne Hudson, a year ago, asked me to build a garden with her for the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival. I knew then it must be a Garden Room.
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We Field Gathered over 95% of the Garden Room. The roll, below, know what it is? Jute erosian control fabric. Can you guess how we used it? Disgusting 1980's French doors, from the dump, turned into something fabulous, below.

Our wagon, below, filled with a foray behind the barn.

Pine timbers, below, from a factory torn down in Atlanta, about a century old.

A good man for this project was unspoken, below. Notice, we did not think 'crew of men'. Notice, too, more Field Gathering: old wheelbarrow, bed frame, & altar table on its side. But you already saw that yesterday. Oooh-la-la, notice the old bathroom sink in the Tara Turf?

Poppets, pay attention to the galvanized culvert, below.

How would you use it?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Mission Statement: Oooooooh Wow !

This morning, looking out my bedroom window, below. Over 10 years ago decided I must look out all my windows & Think/See/Feel, "OH WOW."

One of the best LIFE CHOICES I've ever made.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken almost 15 minutes ago out my bedroom window. What's the mission statement for your garden?

JULIA CHILD & RACHEL RAY

Cookbooks. None by Rachel Ray. Not surprising PECAN ORCHARD isn't hesitant to begin her landscape with its bones. Evergreen hedges near the house, working outward. Ah, yes, Julia Child. Truck & outbuildings, below, viewed from the kitchen, above. Soon, hedges. Poof Gone!

PECAN ORCHARD returned from 2 decades of expat living recently. Determined to live a gardening lifestyle with chickens, honeybees, potager, fruitery, nuttery, & more.

Around the corner from her kitchen, above, a guest alcove. PECAN ORCHARD is already hosting events for honeybee & chicken groups.

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A few Garden Ingredients: Hollies, camellias, Pee Gee hydrangea, red bud, crape myrtles, abelia, forsythia, viburnum, boxwood, meadows, bulbs, branch wattles, urns, plinths, paths, gravel, flagstones.

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When PECAN ORCHARD is over 90, decades away, she wants a landscape grown more beautiful AND easier to maintain.

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Combining Rachel Ray ease & Julia Child delectability.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Took pics yesterday at PECAN ORCHARD'S home.

MISSION STATEMENT: Hank Williams

"Can you make people feel what you feel?" Hank Williams, below, asks,

in a song sung by David Allen Coe, below.

Whether you think so, or not, yourlandscape speaks reams about you.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics via Star Pulse

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Hearing Meryl Streep in , Out Of Africa, "If I know a song of Africa, does Africa know a song of me?" Realizing, via Hank Williams, the depth is in knowing a song of yourself.

SOURCE

KARL LAGERFELD is a source for landscape design inspiration. (No, dahlings, I don't ask the gods why. I simply accept the gift.)

Cathy Horyn, New York Times fashion writer, equally inspires my landscapes.

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She wrote of Lagerfeld's work, yesterday, "But at its best, it means a wonderful sense of composition with random bits of history."
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Should any landscape aspire to less?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics via Luxist

THRIFTING GARDEN CANDLES

Lanterns, below, are my newest fetish since visiting Susanne Hudson's garden.Several Smith/Hawken going-out-of-business sale lanterns are awaiting styling in my garden. Candles? Sale candles of course. Thrift store, above, too. For pennies on the dollar I have no shame in unmatched candles. Prices above? Further reduced, 75% off.
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Sure the open garden or garden pic you'll see matched candles. Perhaps melted unmatched wax & an empty wine bottle with a dropped linen napkin.
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A perfect garden isn't my goal. I want a fabulous garden to feed my soul, delight my eye & challenge my intellect.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

A LITTLE WEED PLEASE

Where are the weeds? Gorgeous? Yes, in a Stepford Wife banality (honestly, remove the 'b' from the previous word). Ha, not even garlic chives or marigolds at the edges to repel bugs. PUPPET BARBUDA contemplated deeply about this garden. Conclusion? It lacks ROMANCE. Yet, PUPPET BARBUDA adored the romance of the settings in the rest of the movie, It's Complicated.

Susanne Hudson is using true landscape bamboo fencing for my new window treatments, above. A soft burlap for dust ruffle & chair cushions.

My garden tub, above,

is coming inside, above.

The strength of girlfriends, above. My 2 new gravel terraces? (5 tons, $410) Specifically for more girlfriend action!

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PUPPET BARBUDA has added Hollywood movie garden stylist to her dream job resume. It looks, top pic, like a vegetable garden in a CHEMICAL COMPANY ad circa 1962. Even butterflies, honey bees & lady bugs knew this was a no fly zone. Ugh.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics from the movie, It's Complicated.

FLOWING COLOR

SHE sent this days ago, below, a victory. SHE chose a new door & paint color. We had choices to make about the door surround; opting to keep the original windows. The door was custom made to fit her space. The color chosen to flow from the myriad gray-blues of her interior. When I saw her wreath I had to smile. Can you guess what color she asked me to design the flowering shrubs/trees in her frontyard?
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White.
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SHE has white: azaleas, viburnum, holly, camellias, magnolia, dogwood.
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It's counterintuitive, the more demanding you are of your landscape the easier it is to create.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

A LANDSCAPE WORTHY OF JANE AUSTEN

Pleasure walks, focal points to stimulate conversation, peaceful corners to sit & read, have lunch, write a letter, gossip with a friend, entertain, experience metaphors of nature writ large, a retreat to retire & contemplate, connive perhaps, most importantly it's civilized. Of course it's my garden.

These views taken from my office window this week with my cell phone.

Living within this tiny plot of land in a cluster home subdivision and all the cares of the world; this garden allows me a Jane Austen life.

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Ugh, the matchmaking part? Terrible. Did it once, never again. They divorced.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

LANDSCAPE INSPIRATION BOARD

I always ask for a landscape design mission statement. TRACTOR CHICK wants her home to be an extension of her landscape, not, her landscape an extension of her home. What colors do you have in your home? They will flow into your landscape.

Want an outdoor fireplace, pond, kitchen, etc? Tear out pictures.

Another designer created a mostly fabulous concept plan for TRACTOR CHICK but it had FATAL FLAWS. (That plan had the outdoor kitchen on perfect view from the front door thru the foyer-formal dining room-breakfast room-French doors. The most important view (axis) on the site. And a stream flowing uphill.)

TRACTOR CHICK knew she wanted a 2-sided fireplace & a pizza oven.

Lots of garden rooms.

Little grass.

A compost area, and potting table.

One of TRACTOR CHICK's lists, above.

Laying out strings for garden rooms, flags for trees & the bench will be, ta-da, the bench. This begins the bid phase for the project.

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NOTES: Yesterday TRACTOR CHICK & I met at Smith/Hawken going-out-of-business sale for patio furnishings & urns. Great success. This sale lasts thru Nov. get there if you can.

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PUPPET BARBUDA was stunned at the first design on this property. Sniffing the winds, detecting profit margins. The stream didn't really flow uphill. The concept plan had grand visions for dumploads of dirt, a bobcat & laborers. Worse, to dearest PUPPET was directing the main view of this home onto a refrigerator.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

FEEDING THE MUSE

Designing landscapes is science & poetry. After college I thought science would be enough. Ha. Science is easy. It's the poetry I'm after. When the Muse is not fed what remains is science.
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Feeding the Muse? Books, music, travel, pets, movies, friends, collage, gardening, spirit & serendipity.
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A shortcut, 3-4 seconds by car. This stern building, below, variously abandoned or occupied thru the years, feeds the Muse. Building, meadow, trees, all delight. Its current incarnation redolent of its caretakers.

Many years pass with debris & unkempt trees/bushes. Not now. The motivation is a belief in God.

The delight, in a city of millions, of trees-mosses-broomsedge-more caressing the side of my car at road's edge. This is the extent of the woodland & road.

Taking me back to Europe, each time I travel the road, of the many church's I've seen maintained with sweat equity vs. money.

There are no graves at the Flat Rock Primitive Baptist Church, what a name, but there are sacraments in the ground, below. Perfect atonement of roots-soil-moss-lichens-more.

Taking these pictures and seeing for the 1st time lace curtains. Hung with love.

Someone keeps the grounds clear as has been done in Europe for centuries. Seeing human spirit, not lack of landscape or architecture. Its very lack creating richness.

Seeing, above, in this side of the church another church and its side, below.

Flat Rock Primitive Baptist Church hasn't the provenance of the church, above, but it does.

At its base, a crown of lichens. Atonement: building-man-earth-spirit.

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Exactly the job of a landscape design, atonement of home-garden-earth-life.

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Garden & Be Well, XO T