How to Prune & Live

"... mental discipline of a scientist and the emotional responsibility of a poet."

              Peter Schjeldahl

Exactly the knowledge needed for pruning.  And living.
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Garden & Be Well,        XO Tara
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Pic taken yesterday in Ryan Gainey's garden.

Stone Wall Needs to be Seen

A well maintained century, below, at this home.

 Stone accent wall near the entry, above, is obscured by a gorgeous Japanese maple, below.

Have asked the pruner to create tiny views thru the Japanese maple  to the stone wall.  Yet keep the Japanese maple gorgeous too.
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Garden & Be Well,          X O Tara
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Same house as previous post.  Pics taken with my phone & you see my little work basket.  It holds pencils, circle templates, erasers, keys, phone.....and shouldn't be in the pic.

Leggy Hags

Leggy Hags!  And this latest pruning is wrong too.  Want lush foliage top to bottom?  Prune the top of your bushes slightly narrower than the bottom.  It's that easy.

This gate is perfection.  

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Garden & Be Well,        XO Tara

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Thank you Cousin Cathy for sending your vacation pics from Nantucket...

Exterior Design & Scale

Pretty now the Chinese snowball is young.  It's bottom will be pruned away once the blooms finish.  This Chinese snowball is growing into a tree. 

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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

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Pic taken in a client garden yesterday.  Always greedy to show off with decadent blossoms there are 2 more Chinese Snowball nearby.  They will be pruned too.  Viburnum macrocephalum, easy. 

Vines On A Wood House?

Vines on a wood house?  No.  There are ways but I'm too lazy.  Vine clinging to stucco/stone, below,

 a case of desire from Italy.  Can't do it with your wood home?  No problem.  Espalier a woody shrub.

 Whatever your zone, choose a hardy woody shrub and espalier the pruning.

 Abelia, viburnum, hydrangea, camellia, tea olive, and more can be planted & espaliered.
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Use a woody (Why woody?  No wire/trellis needed.) shrub as a 'vine' on your wood home.
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Don't buy shrubs already espaliered, buy big shrubs and prune them into espalier.  On camellia, and many others, this saves over $100+.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Carolina jessamine was growing on my baywindow.  Gone, too much work.  Espaliered a huge oakleaf hydrangea,  2nd pic from bottom.

Front Door: Curb Appeal

Yesterday, at my front door.  

Ivy 'Gold Heart', discovered studying historic landscapes in England.
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Espalier Oakleaf hydrangea, discovered studying historic landscapes in Italy.  (Irony, Italy teaching a USA southerner how to prune hydrangea.)
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Plaque is a Christine Sibley piece & I don't like 'words' in a garden.  (Great profession, exceptions to EVERYTHING.)
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Garden & Be Well,            XO Tara
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Epiphany yesterday.  With heat-humidity-droughts my garden is gorgeous from every window view.  And I haven't done any gardening for weeks.  Groundcovers, flowering shrubs, flowering trees, a few perennials & self-seeding annuals, focal points on axis.  No accidents.  I paid attention studying across Europe AND have a mission statement for my garden.
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More correctly, my garden is a metaphor for what I want in my life.

The Sacred & Profane of the Best Landscapes

The best landscapes have elements, below, of the Sacred

and elements, below, of the Profane.

Landscape design is about contrasts.

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The Sacred & the Profane. Got both?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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(Big leaves with small leaves, blue foliage next to burgundy foliage, pyramid forms next to horizontal forms, blowsy hydrangeas bursting over neat green hedging, spikey flowers by round flowers, & etc.)

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Top pic taken last week at Stone Mountain Park, bottom pic England.

TAKE JOY

Rosemary Verey wrote of removing foliage off winter blooming Lenten Rose. I copied, below. In Sir Walter Scott's garden I saw a 'well placed chair'. I copied, below.

Pamela Harper wrote of every garden needing a tall cone shape taking the eyes to the sky. I copied, below.

Joy is always present. Always.

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Take.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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"Take joy" was a favorite of Tasha Tudor, from the book, Tasha Tudor's Garden, pics by Richard W. Brown & text by Tovah Martin. Don't have this book yet? Take joy, buy it.

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Stephen Holden recently reviewed, "Gershwin...Here to Stay", performing at the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel, for the NYTimes. In it he wrote, "When Gershwin's friend Kay Swift observed him playing "dark, doom-laden chords" and asked him what he was composing, he said: "Oh, nothing. I was just working off some of the dreary music that lies near the top of a composer's mind. Then I"ll dig down to the happiness stuff, with any luck."

SASSY ATTRACTION

PUPPET BARBUDA adores sassy. Especially these poodle-puff-on-a-tail topiaries. Though plinths would be nice. Antique cobblestones, dear ones? The evergreen hedge? ODG. Improper pruning & voila a scraggly hideous dreadful ugly ridiculous base.
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Perhaps the pruner wears a polyester white leisure suit, a lightening bolt & TCB symbol on its back? PUPPET BARBUDA hears Elvis...."we're caught in a trap...." Exactly, the hedge is trapping this gorgous home.
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PUPPET BARBUDA would keep the hedge, moving it of course, pruning it properly creating dense evergreen lushness top to bottom.
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It's one thing to prune your own hedge, and screw it up, but PUPPET BARBUDA holds great contempt for anyone paid to prune this badly. It harms the reputation of her BELOVED LANDSCAPE INDUSTRY.
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Of course more but gotta go, PUPPET BARBUDA is busy this morning.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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ODG? Unbidden from the soul. PUPPET BARBUDA loves this house, in fact wants to live in it, yet the hedge, oh dear God.

WHAT'S MISSING IN THIS PICTURE?

Centuries of landscape design & garden maintenance lessons in France, where I took this pic. What is wrong in this pic?
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The gardener has increased his gardening time by 10-15X's. Why? Don't we all want low maintenance?
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Fallen prunings, with thorns, have to be picked up by hand. Leaves & petals will have to be blown.
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A sheet under the prunings, dahlings. A sheet. All is picked up, no thorn worries, no blower.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Other gardeners at this public park outside Paris were using sheets.