Picture: Garden Design Course

Pulling the gate/columns forward, below, welcomes you from the wide world into their private world, elongates the entry, and adds a foyer to the front door.  Painting the columns same as the house adds them to the footprint of the home, enlarging the home's territory.
.
Painting the columns a different color, or if they were stone, still adds good features, excepting they become part of the garden, not the house.
.
Great wisdom leaving the tops of the columns empty.
.
Front door & light fixtures chosen well, they make the house seem taller.
.
Note the gutters, below.  Copper color, not the brick color.  Well done.
.
Roof, below, is like jewelry for the house.
.
Repetition of square shapes, below, highlights the fabulousity of the tall round urns at the windows.  Super contrast.
.
This garden design has been done for centuries.  Have seen it on several continents, and at all price points.  Done it myself, more than once.  Looks fresh & new with each reincarnation.
.
Even the front door handle was chosen with care.  Drapes vs. blinds, again, well done.



Pic, above, here.
.
Copy, enfilade, axis, cross-axis, color, contrast, repetition, flow, welcome, focal points, ceiling, walls, floor, simplicity, has all the right Garden Design rules checked.
.
I have a weakness for Garden- Design- Course in a single picture.
Garden & Be Well,   XOT

The Language of a Garden's Entry: Not What You Think

Are you aware there is a classic repertoire of garden design language?  You know, the one without words.

A witty welcome, below, shouting, 'Come in'.  Restraint, grandeur, provincial, elegant, color, while informing reams of information about the house and its owner/s.



The language of garden design is quite simple, contrasts.  Simplicity with decadence, rustic with formal.



Designing an orchard next to this garden room, above, is obvious or at least it should be.
.
I've known this fact for decades, since 1st studying historic gardens across Europe.  Only later, much later, an embarrassing slug's pace, did the epiphany arrive, Providence never separated agriculture from ornamental horticulture.  They are entwined, they are one.
.
Amusing, and sad, how many elementary school gardens are planted with vegetables & herbs, without their contrasting ornamental garden.  Why sad?  It is the ornamental garden adding up to 80% increases to agricultural yields.  How?  Pollinators.  Worse, the full language of a garden is not passed to the elementary school students, nor their teachers.
.
Another way to look at the top pic and garden design?  Most often, in USA, a stone wall leading to an estate or high-end gated neighborhood is fabulously planted with a cornucopia of ornamental plants & monoculture lawn, everything irrigated, chemicaled, maintained.  Ironically, copying the best high-end apartment complexes.  Often, also, a piece of farm acreage purchased to construct a fine home, builds a couple of stone plinths connected with a gate then a few plantings tossed in.  Their new neighbors wondering, "Did that land sell-out to build a starter home subdivision?"  
.
Oh my, the language of garden entry ways.
.
Garden & Be Well, XO T
.
Pics from NaramataBlend.

A.S. Byatt: Le Jardin Rustique

 "You must learn now, that the important lesson – as long as you have your health – is that the divide is not between the servants and the served, between the leisured and the workers, but between those who are interested in the world and its multiplicity of forms and forces, and those who merely subsist,  ......."  A.S. Byatt

Before computers & cell phones, handouts at my lectures had the quote, above, at their top or bottom.   USA landscaping is broken, knew this decades ago.  My big discovery, above, Le Jardin Rustique.  Blessedly discovered, in Europe, decades ago.  Created from thousands of years of refinements.  Le jardin rustique's have created, & refined me.
.
Never tire of experiencing another's awakening to le jardin rustique.
.
High, medium & low meadows, above.  Came home with Tara Turf at first siting.  A well known blogger, saw similar and said, "they even have daisies in the grass."  He saw, without comprehension.  And, he's a degreed residential architect, USA of course.
.
What is this enfilade, above, to le jardin rustique?  Survival of mind-body-spirit.  Literally, and metaphorically.  
.
Aside from beauty, unskilled labor to maintain, no chemicals or n-p-k poisoning groundwater/killing pollinators, no irrigation system, canopy-understory-walls-groundcover plantings to increase pollinator habitat & shade/sun the house as needed thru the years/seasons, increased property value/decreased HVAC, increase of crop yields by 80%, scientifically proven need of our bodies to harbor beneficial bacteria given to us from these habitats reducing auto-immune diseases, ADD, depression & more, there is a simplicity of relationship with Earth, as we intellectually engage, Earth provides & sustains beyond what we know we need.  
.
We all need a-room-of-our-own, Virginia Woolf, “When a subject is highly controversial, one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold.” 
.
If you have read this far, and have a mow-blow-go-testosterone-on-wheels-commodify-all-I-touch-landscape, why?  Rejection with those landscapes was upfront with me, without knowledge of their replacement.  Decades have been spent finding the answer.  More than resonate, hope your inner core, from your gut, feels the words, above.
.
Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
.
Jung knew, "Our lives are about getting the outside to match the inside."  The time this takes & riches to be found are, indeed, our life.
.
Links to scientific studies meander in previous posts, no time to look them up today.
.
Pic via Pinterest. 
.
" ‘Like life,’ said the painter. ‘We eat and are eaten, and we are very lucky if we reach our three score years and ten, which is less than a flash in the eyes of an angel. The understanding persists, for a time. In your craft and mine.'” – from “Christ in the House of Martha and Mary”, by A.S. Byatt
.
For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

.

NOTE to my gardening friends... look for changes to come. 

Knew before computers/cell phones, sitting in Atlanta traffic on way to a client, 'I must reach a larger audience with the same amount of effort.'   Soon after that epiphany I signed my CBS-TV, and, books contracts on the same day.

.

Then I read an article in the NYTimes about something called 'blogging'.  Saved the article for a year before reading it.  Studied all the blogs they mentioned, hired a computer expert they quoted, and attended a blogging seminar.

.

Blogging 2.0 has arrived, my knowledge is 1.0.  A believer in copying the best historic gardens across the globe it flows into every arena of life.  Watching Maria Killam grow her career/blog/life over the past 3 years made its impact.  Signed up  for a year's course with her blogging expert, Jon Morrow. 

.

Changes will be slow, plodding is my adored method.  Pulling triggers here/there is spice in the mix.
.

What do YOU want?

.

Nothing is too small, too big, or too ego crushing to mention.

.

Passion lies in sharing what has filled me to the depths of grace, joy & atonement, the best landscapes created over the last 2,000+ years.

Just so you know... 
 I  welcome your input.

Simple Manipulations: How Many Do You See?

Do you see the manipulations, below?

Seating to create a gathering spot, figs for summer shade/winter sun over the benches, drystack stone wall cut into a slight slope forcing foot traffic into defined directions, formal boxwood framing pastoral views, tapering stone wall allowing only small machinery into the pasture from this direction, gravel terrace ready for men-trucks-heavy equipment, horses, or a catered soiree for 100.
.
And, of course, it must all look a century old, be easy to maintain, and provide interest 24/7.
.
When something appears simple, it rarely is.  Same is true of people.
.
Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
.
Pic at a jobsite last week.
.
Do you know the maximum pollinator habitat, above?  Seriously, can you verbalize what creates the best pollinator habitat above?  Answer at bottom.
.
Being simple requires each of the decades I've been learning about gardens.  Better, being simple in a garden, takes me where Joseph Campbell says our eternity is.  Ironic, in this American life/era, to have found my bliss in work.
.

1. Joseph Campbell - Wikiquote

   en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell‎

   Where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own .... And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life.
2. More, being simple connects me to the message/life work of Wendell Berry & E.M. Forster.  

3. Wendell Berry Earns Highest Humanities Award, Lectures on ...

   sojo.net/.../wendell-berry-earns-highest-humanities-award-lectures-econo...‎

   Apr 24, 2012 - On Monday evening, Wendell Berry delivered the 41st annual ... The title hinges on E.M. Forster's 1910 novel Howards End, which Berry said, ...
4. .
5.  If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.
   

   .

   Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.

                                                                                    .

   Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon.
6. Answer to question, above,  High density/low density, open meadow/dense woodland.

Penelope Bianchi Asked

Merely pretty?  Think again, this is serious business.  Without pollinator habitat we die.  

What is pollinator habitat?  Macro description, you want high density & low density in your garden.  Micro details,  trees-shrubs-groundcovers and open meadow/gravel terrace, water.  With plant selection mixed for something coming into bloom all year.

Penelope thinks she's merely standing in her beloved garden.  More, she's bathing in maximum pollinator habitat.
.
Why care about pollinators?  Increasing pollinators can increase crop yields almost 80%.
.
Wendell Berry has been writing agricultural essays for decades about big agriculture with machines-chemicals-devastation of communities (every pun intended) vs. small farms, mostly organic, producing more/acre than big agriculture.
.
Have had a crush on Penelope Bianchi since first seeing her gardens & interiors.  Loved her before I knew she existed.
.
Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
.
Both pics in Penelope's garden.

On the Porch: Table Toppers

The clay in her county is well known for its pottery.

Her bouquet of comfrey reminds me I've never once planted it myself.

The wicker arrived from a local junk shop a couple of summers ago.
.
Her childhood and most of adulthood were in subdivisions yet on acreage she wields latent powers, including the placing of livestock fencing.
.
Profoundly miserable in the subdivision, what if she didn't follow her soul to this acreage, instead going to a therapist?
.
Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
.
Pics taken at jobsite this month.  Watching her is to bear witness.  Providence in action.  Humbling.    

Covershot Garden Design

Gardens must have rooms which includes halls, foyers, parlors, and the roundabout, below.

Leaning left, below, at the roundabout.

Leaning right at the roundabout, below.

In the roundabout, below, turned & shooting back.  What is this called?  Double Axis.

Same hydrangea, above/below, a few days apart.

Same roundabout, below, different axis.

See your garden thru the camera.  More, see your garden in February thru the camera.
.
Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
.
Pics this month in Susanne Hudson's garden.
.
Where today, in your garden, can you take covershot pics?  No?   Why live that way?  
.
Yesterday, late afternoon, fuse to my Conservatory blew.  Tried all the breakers, no go.  Immediate call to 'my guys'.  One will be here today.  It is not too much to ask that Conservatory chandelier & lamps light my days & nites on view from every angle I live. 

Japanese

Invitation.  

 "...eternals as applicable in the smallest of spaces as in the vast acres of a country house garden." Sir Roy Strong.  Above, vast as a mountain range.

Water Mirror, miroir d'eau, above.

Water breaks the footprint of the Tea House, above.  Small touch, huge impact.

Looking outward, above, from the bamboo window seen coming in the entry, top pic.

Framing the view, above, for centuries this has been done.  Is a brick ca. 1960 ranch less worthy?

Hidden, then meandering, above, then spilling into the pond, below.

Why, above, do we like walking on water?

 At the minimum, 2 stones.  Male & female.  Earth & sky.  Ying & yang.  Even the shadows are benevolent.

Leaving the Japanese garden from its other side, above, into a pecan orchard.
.
Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
.
Pics taken Massee Lane Garden last weekend.

Orchard Wall & Gate

Credentials.  Every element designed.  My general contractor had the audacity to ask if I sited the daffodils.
Receiving my gimlet eye, no words, he quickly backed away a couple of feet.  Literally.

I was at the jobsite this month siting the newest layer of plantings.  The guys loaded them from the grower, above, early in the morning.  My contractor spent over a week sourcing them.

Caterpillar had to be used to move each plant.  Planting holes had to be dug by hand due to electric/gas/water.

.

I staked location flags for the load of plants then zipped the acreage shooting the pics you've seen the past several days.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

Some of 'the guys'.  Hardworking, pleasant, humble.  Without them, no gardens.

.

Considering the top pic for a logo.  Still amazed every element is designed, newly built/installed, yet Jane Austen rustic.  Everyone got it right.

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.
.
I choose people to keep in my life who are energy in.  Plants too.
.
Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
.
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.

Pollinator Habitat

Maximum pollinator habitat intersects agriculture & ornamental horticulture.

More pollinators, more food production.
.
It's not rocket science.
.
Elements of pollinator habitat, above?
.
Canopy, understory, walls, groundcovers, high density, low density & etc.
.
Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
.
Pic taken in Hayesville, NC last weekend.