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.

Work in the Barn

Left open with intention.

Come inside.

Unfinished & mostly empty, the old barn has pulled us inside for over 2 years.  Structural & mice & wind & electric & rain & heating & flooring issues are done.
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The completed list is a definition for 'beloved'.
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Big plans.  Of course you will be kept in the loop.  And I'm sure, one day, invited.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pics taken at jobsite this week.  Incomplete, the power of intention is already producing results from this space of grace.  Often I design the Poverty Cycle into plans.  This barn is literally historically from America's poverty cycle.  Top pic is instructive.  Do I include that much integrity of personal character from the hand-heart-mind that built this barn?  A rich thought, humbled by a barn.          

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.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics this month in Susanne Hudson's garden.
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Where today, in your garden, can you take covershot pics?  No?   Why live that way?  
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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. 

Lisa Porter Collection: Vanishing Threshold

Texture, scale, flow, color, invitation, narrative, poverty cycle, light, fragrance, repetition, simplicity, intellect, ceiling, walls, floors & more.

It's all part of vanishing threshold.
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Garden & Be Well,          XO Tara
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Pic via Lisa Porter Collection.  Take the link, lots of pics, about this home by the beach.  Original article from Traditional Home July 2001.  Photos by Jon Jensen for Traditional Home

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Puppet Barbuda adores this fireplace.  Not at all reminiscent of the stone fireplaces in every flower show across USA redolent of the monolith floating amongst the galaxies at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

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.

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

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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

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

Poverty Cycle Into the Music Room

The library across the hall, previous post, is moody with northeastern light.  The music room, below, hums in southeastern light.

Eastern light, below, in the mirror, southern light, window above.

The garden view, below, is one of my proudest achievements.

I took the garden, a century old, to its Southern roots in time & place.  Using the Poverty Cycle.  Looking in the window, below, seen, above.

Tara Turf to the foundation, granite curbstone step instead of green-meatball-foundation-plantings, drifts of daffodils as-if-they-were-always-there.
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Plenty of areas to play & show off in this garden, and I have, but without using the Poverty Cycle the garden would lack soul, character, integrity, & have too-much-uneducated-ego.  Of course you've deduced, this is my ego, above.  This is a portion of the front porch, hence, double ego!
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pics taken last week at jobsite.  Same garden as previous several posts.
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Ego for doing-the-right-thing makes me unemployable to the largest design/install companies across USA.  Why?  It's all about sales.  Are you beginning to understand the prevalence of green meatballs & foundation plantings and, and, and?
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Oh my, a little Puppet Barbuda this morning.  Uneducated ego?  Testosterone-on-wheels-mow-blow-go-commodify-all-I-touch-get in fast-get out fast-sign my contract-pay me every month.  Sad, you'll pay later in lower house value, higher HVAC, increase maintenance expenses, poison  ground water with fertilizer, destroy pollinator habitat, and worse, harm your spirit with ugliness.  

The Poverty Cycle

From the garden.

Dried hydrangeas & roses.

Young, her garden produces for special gatherings.  Soon, her garden will be decadent in what she can use, and most importantly, give away.
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Garden & Be Well,           XO Tara
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Pic taken 2 weeks ago at a client's home.  About 100 years old, the garden had pecan trees & a few pears,  necessities of the Great Depression. The poverty cycle (yet another Tara invention!) so important to the look of 'new' gardens.  Incredible joy in nurturing these delayed Pleasure Gardens into being.  
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
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Details about online design services.
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Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
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Details about lecture titles here.
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I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Large Pots

Something new to desire.

                           
                        And I don't mean man or child.  How did I miss these pots in Paris?

Desire, undervalued & counterintuitive.
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Garden & Be Well,        XO Tara
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Wonder which client past/future will have these in their garden.  Love Magic Man, I know he can make them!  Will have to tack on a pair to an order for me-me-me !
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pics via Paris Through My Lens.

Which is Cheaper: Yew or Perennial ?

Low maintenance & affordable are ubiquitous in a mission statement.

Why have a perennial garden?  Requires skilled labor to maintain & most disappear in winter.  Per square foot & volume & maintenance perennials are ridiculously expensive compared to the long life-size-maintenance expense of yew topiary.
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Yews survive centuries, perennials survive years.
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Of course Garden Centers & Design-Build-Maintain businesses promote perennials.  Perennial flowers are intoxicating.  And important to their recurring  bottom line.
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Garden & Be Well,             XO Tara
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Went less maintenance than the above.  Used understory trees & groundcover (no mowing) in a checkerboard pattern in the front garden for a young couple with babies in their starter ranch home.  How did they get so smart so young?  Me?  I planted zillions of perennials at their age.  Now, only the hardy (iris, dianthus 'bath pink', lenten rose, fern, peony) remain.  Zillions more blooms with my flowering shrubs & trees & vines & groundcovers.  Love my garden but zero time for much maintenance and became disgusted with the thief of time/money with perennials/annuals and don't get Puppet Barbuda started on the dreadful eco impact of perennials/annuals.  You know, greenhouses, heating/cooling, water, soils, pallets, insecticides, fungicides, fertilizers, 18-wheeler trucks.
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Pic via My French Country Home

Interior Decorating for Ornery Client

After his garden he asked for a guest bedroom.  He had parameters, "Use the furniture I own & leftover paint from the garage."  I told him what I would do, he wanted none of it.  

 Mixed Benjamin Moore Philadelphia Creme with York Harbor, resulting in a pale ocher/yellow.  The room has to be simple, its bed already a focal point.  Wow, was he verbal during set-up.  All negative.  He was asked to step away until called for.

Burlap draperies, cane chair, & thrift store lamps were my only additions.  From the hall, he didn't step far, I could hear his continuing demands.  (Whatever.  I knew what was to be done.)
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Finally, he was called into the room.  He stood there, silent.  Looking.  He teared up, and hugged me.  This is his beloved grandmother's furniture.  I got it right.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pics taken this month on site.  This is the type of 'interior decorating' I do.  When it's using furniture already owned and there is little money.  I know where this room is truly going, very Eleanor-Roosevelt-at-Val-Kill. The entire time Mr. Negative was talking to me I was smiling at him.  So glad I'm over 50!  Younger, I would have tried pleasing his lizard brain.  Instead, my work is done for the grace of the soul.
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By-the-way.  Same scenario in his garden.  He had a collection of hodge podge plants.  Didn't like a thing I said about placement.  Once done he said, "This is exactly what I was going to do."  Pics of that later, when plants are bigger.

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?

How To Create Exterior Simplicity

The hedge is brilliant.  Vine on the risers is more brilliant.

Topiaried green meatballs are fun.  Terra cotta on the table?  Perfection.
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Notice the lack of pattern on the textiles?  Be careful with exterior textile pattern.  Very careful.
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Many interior rooms look onto this view.  Without going inside I know it's an obvious Vanishing Threshold.  Without going inside I know the owners.
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How little can the landscape have and hold together?  Whoever 'tossed' out this much simplicity is good.  Very good.
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Low maintenance, weekly blow & trimming 2x/year. 
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Choose a color theme.  It should flow from the interiors. 
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic via Cote de Texas.  When I worked at a nursery one assistant manager was incredibly talented at displays.  BUT, we would always beg him to stop.  He would create the above, BUT keep going.  On his off day we would cleanse the abundance. 

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.

Penelope Bianchi

Penelope Bianchi, below, is brave.  She didn't 'think' about growing a vine inside.  She did!

 She's timeless.  There's always comfort, & a garden.

 Her sense of flow, scale, comfort, history, fun,

 are direct from her muse.

And her home has been chosen for the top 10 romantic homes.
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I learn everytime I see pics of her home.  Didn't want you to miss seeing some.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pics from Penelope here.

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.

How To Get It Free

Thrift store yesterday, Donald Pliner shoes, 99 cents.

 Saving, $299.00, minimum, they've bought me

several tons of gravel, stone & a few boxwood.
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Girl math.
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But it really works.  All my dear lady clients get it.  ALL.
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Husbands groan.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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No, this isn't sexist.  I know exactly how boy math works.  Pics from Ann Mashburn's home via Atlanta Homes magazine.

Historically Siting Bulbs

Hillary Clinton had 'intellectual exercise' conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt.  Remember those headlines? 

 Oddly, I got it.  Even then.

Last month I sited thousands of bulbs after "consulting the genius of the place."  I've spoken with landscapes for decades.  
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This garden, above pics, has a historic home with little but its pecan orchard intact.
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Next year anyone seeing the drifts of daffodils will think they've been there a century.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Many of you have this skill, "consulting the genius of the place", but don't trust it.  It's why I listen so hard to landscape questions.  The answers are already in the question. 
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Yes, Alexander Pope...Consult the genius of the place......