Penelope Bianchi of McCormick Interiors

Penelope Bianchi, McCormack Interiors, is a new discovery. Penelope designs 'done' but I adore her 'not done' creations, below.Rare, she is the interior decorator creating gardens too. Of course she can design tidy gardens but I'm partial to, below, her scruffy

gardens.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics from Penelope's website. I'm slow to the game, discovering Penelope, and will post more pics.

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Been away the holiday weekend creating a garden, with Susanne Hudson, for the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival. It's next weekend June 4-5, with vendors, a garden tour ($25 with tram) & several free display gardens too.

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Our garden is free and FABULOUS. Why make a garden unless you believe it to be FABULOUS?

Front Porch Dining

Built before air-conditioning (near Athens, GA) there was a REASON for this long & deep 'L' shaped front porch.
With morning sun, it's perfect for evening dinner.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Table/chairs arrived recently, sourced/ordered by Susanne Hudson. Big surprise, there are 2 of these tables/chairs. Alas, my pic was awful. Will try again and post the whole front porch for you. Team Tara includes Susanne Hudson on this project.

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Susanne & I are teaming in a garden at the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival in Douglasville, June 4-5, 2011.

How To Hide An Eyesore Powerbox

Altar table, below, used as a potting table. Lamps (oooh-la-la) have electricity. Altar table, below, was past its church days before it's new life in the garden.
A power box, below, at a client's chicken house & pecan orchard.
Within the louvres, above, is the green power box.

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Top 2 pics were sent to my carpenter as description for what I wanted. He adapted the idea beyond expectation.

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Carpenter & I never communicate well in the 1st round. Ever. Then we laugh, always. Afterward he leverages my ideas 'better'. I adore working with this man.

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We'll accessorize the altar table with a cloth of burlap placed 'church style' (diminishing the louvres) , iron book holder, pair of heavy iron lamps, a couple of baskets for egg & pecan gathering.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Top pics are from the garden Susanne Hudson & I created for last year's Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival. We're using the table again this year but not as a potting table. Can you guess how? Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival, Douglasville, GA, June 4-5, 2011.

How To Copy A Design

Before her bedroom, below, I fell for the garden & parking court in the movie, Something's Gotta Give.Hunting/gathering last week, $20, gotta love it

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"Every garden needs a desk.", Susanne Hudson said. Crazy idea, yes?

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Life is good. Bedroom & garden will BOTH get a desk/chair.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Zero idea how to reconfigure the bedroom for a desk/chair & zero idea where to put a desk/chair in the garden. This challenge is pure catnip.

How To Choose Flooring

Landscape Design is a series of layers. After creating your ceilings & walls (previous 2 posts), create your Flooring. Shade, grass won't grow? Choose checkerboard, below, with shade loving groundcover.Forget STUPID lawn. Choose Tara Turf, below. A mix of what the wind blows in, the birds drop, clover, dwarf bulbs, herbs, spreading groundcovers & etc. Tara Turf is meadow made formal with mowing heights.
Want million dollar flooring for $20/ton? Choose gravel, below. Zero mowing, lovely crunch.

Choose flooring, below, to emphasize formal, informal. If this were a woodland design the flagstone would be removed & woodchips used. (1 of 3 gates, below, at the front of my garden.)
Mother Nature, below, laughed at my efforts, sprinkling a flagstone path with her petals.
River stones, glacial stones, laid in patterns for paths &
terraces. Rough laid stones, above, contrasting nicely with smooth stone folly & pair of obelisks.

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Wood floor inside with antique oriental rug? Same concept in the landscape, above:

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stone path=wood floor

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plants=antique oriental rug. (Adore using my engineering degree in this manner! You do realize you are entirely within my landscape design equation at the moment?)

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Design outside is the same as design inside.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Top pic I took in Susanne Hudson's garden, 2nd pic I took at Sissinghurst, 3rd pic I took in the Cotswolds, 4-5 pics in my sweet garden, 6th pic I took in Sir Hardy Amies garden not far from the 3rd pic. This is hilarious, I don't remember anything. These pics? Remember taking each of them.

The Walls Of Your Rooms

Landscapes ARE architecture. Begin creating architecture in the landscape with ceilings, yesterday's post, then walls. (My Tea Olive Terrace, below, along the side of my home.)Landscape walls can be the side of your home, above, or all plantings, below. (Wall, below, is mine & hides the neighborhood from my tender sensibilities. What me not living in the Cotswolds?)
Espaliered woody shrubs & vines dramatize the walls of a home, fence, dependency & etc., below. (My Bay Terrace, below.)
Using wit, below, Susanne Hudson swags a window. Pow, Shazam, baby.
With more wit, intellect, & drama she created a garden room, raised on a dais (aka deck, but dais is ever so much nicer, yes?),
with old church windows.
Landscape Design: create walls.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Slow down, peruse again, Landscape Design IS this easy. Look at the 2nd pic again. Notice how much sky I own because of my walls? You would CRINGE knowing how many houses along the ubiquitous subdivision cul-de-sac lane (aka street) my garden obliterates in that 2nd pic. Who knew? Gardens are offense & defense. A moat of grace around home & life.

Chandeliers In The Kitchen

Diminutive, my pair of chandeliers hang, as inspired by a blog years ago, over a harvest table. Many mornings I'm here, in my wicker chair,
reading & looking out 3 walls of windows, starting my day.A view out 1 of those walls, from my wicker chair this morning.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Did you notice my ceiling is not white? It's a faded blue/green, depending upon the lighting. Below the chair rail is a terra cotta type color. Both colors are within the wall paper. Susanne Hudson was hired to choose the colors. 25 years in this house & I still love the wallpaper.

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Pics taken this morning.

Last Night in the Conservatory

Power, below, arrived yesterday in my conservatory. Lights inside my home, above, seen thru the French doors
Honoring, above, talented hands/minds/hearts building the conservatory. My guys (3 lead men with several more on the team) leverage every idea I have. Humbling & exciting.
Last nite, above, 1st nite with a fire in the stove. Yes, I was given a little lesson in how to use it.
Conservatory is a bit 'CABINESQUE' inside. Tongue/groove walls rescued from a Lake Burton 1908 cottage. Unfinished, above, soon tongue/groove will go to the rafters & to the gravel.
Last night, after taking these pics, I brought a basket to the conservatory with wine, cheese, apples, summer sausage. Fire in the stove kept me toasty. Spent a happy hour calling girlfriends. Susanne Hudson, of course, was 1st she inspired the conservatory.

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Already, joy & laughter in the conservatory. And it's not finished. Exciting to anticipate: lamps, tables, chests & etc.... field gathered & awaiting their new life in the conservatory.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Had thought I would paint the interior of the conservatory. NOT. The sweetly aged tongue/groove is too fabulous. Will paint the windows. Yes, the chairs above look rather dreadful but were closest to the conservatory & I did need to sit. Cannot wait to hang the huge chinoiserie mirror I snagged at my local thrift store for $10. In theory, it will have a table under it made from the ancient iron radiator I rescued.

Copy Landscapes

Resist the temptation to be UNIQUE in your landscape. It will slow you down, and fail. You & your landscape are inherently unique. It's already there. Lipstick-on-a-pig when you 'add' uniqueness.
I fell in love with Susanne Hudson's little cloche's, miniature tools & wood shelves, above.
All year I've been collecting, above/below,
old wood shelves, antique English lead garden pieces & little cloches. Soon, they will be in my new conservatory. Just like Susanne Hudson.

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Poppets, everything in my garden is copied from somewhere. EVERYTHING.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Every effort at uniqueness does not fail, obviously. Don't let me sway you from trying something deep in your passionate soul bursting to get out. Ironically, uniqueness arrives in my garden when I DON'T try.

1st Rules of Design

Yesterday I was accused, "If Susanne Hudson does it, you do it."WHAT AN HONOR !
#1 Rule of Garden Design: COPY
2nd First Rule of Garden Design: Keep It Simple Sweetie.

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If it's beautiful in someone elses garden it will be beautiful, and original, in yours.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Top pic, Susanne Hudson's garden. Middle pic, my office. Bottom pic, a current client's garden.

Landscape Components

Susanne Hudson recently styled this porch. Recognize the magical component?The lamp. Poppets, that jewel stays ON.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Susanne Hudson sent me this pic 2-3 weeks ago.

Where You Need A Desk

Susanne Hudson says, "Every garden needs a desk."Her little thought is a great truth. Until then I didn't KNOW my garden was missing its desk.

When my Conservatory, made of rescued materials, is completed, yes, it will have a garden desk.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics of Susanne's garden desk taken earlier this year. Of course they are real hydrangeas.

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(Remember Penny McHenry's Garden Desk in her garage? Yes, inspired by Susanne Hudson.)

Not Easy To Find

If you see terra cotta pots: marked-down, at a garage sale or thrift store, BUY.They are harder to find good/cheap/free.
Some Ace Hardware have a line of excellent terra cotta in spring. Once they sell-out it's another year before the shipment arrives again.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken at Susanne Hudson's conservatory. Poppets, the pics are not styled. Why have a landscape be anything less?

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Ugly is easy, fabulous is intellect.

Best Conservatory Dimensions

Front: French doors 5'-6' wide with old windows on each side of

about 30"-32" each. Creating a total average 11'-12' wide.

Side: Old windows connected to each other with 2x4's. Creating

a total average length of 23' long.

Roof: 4-12 pitch with metal roofing.

Interior: Entering thru French doors each side is best dimension, at minimum, 36"-32" for furniture.

"L": Adding an "L" at right angle is most desirable. Not enough space, have another doorway, single door, along the side with a culvert cover for door awning.

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Average best dimension range using old/found materials for conservatory: 11' wide by 23' long.

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Poppets, above notes are copied directly from a email sent to my Macon, GA clients. You've seen their home & garden, & happy dogs, the past few days.

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The last pic, above, is Susanne Hudson's 1st conservatory. Too small, she enlarged it, seen in the top pics. Susanne & I built the conservatory, in my blog header pic, for the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival, in Douglasville, GA this spring.

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Building a conservatory in my garden, using rescued materials, beginning next week.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Susanne Hudson's conservatory was a feature article in Southern Living magazine. Took these pics in her garden earlier this year. Following my passion, they are not styled.

Man vs Crew vs DIY

Susanne Hudson & I chose the site, theme, materials & designed our Garden Conservatory, below, for the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival last spring in Douglasville, GA.We also had this man, below.
Fluid of movement. Body, clothes, tools, materials, site, social skills, sense of humor, (pleasing 2 exacting women), decades of experience &, most important, intellect.

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He surpassed expectation (we knew he would), came in under budget, ahead of schedule & worked alone aside from Suzanne & I doing our girlie best.

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The other gardens created for the festival? Each, created with crews of men & heavy equipment.

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Our man? Last of the Mohicans.

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It was an honor to watch him work.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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In my garden I'm mostly DIY, in my dreams I have the skills of this man.

Are You Attractive?

"Perhaps it was strange for a young boy to have as his best friend an aging spinster, but neither of us had an ordinary outlook or background, and so it was inevitable, in our separate loneliness, that we should come to share a friendship apart. Except for the hours I spent at school, the three of us, me and old Queenie, our feisty little rat terrier, and Miss Sook, as everyone called my friend, were almost always together. We hunted herbs in the woods, went fishing on remote creeks (with dried sugarcane stalks for fishing poles) and gathered curious ferns and greeneries that we transplanted and grew with trailing flourish in tin pails and chamber pots." Truman Capote Capote goes on to describe, "Miss Sook, sensitive as shy-lady fern..."
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Are you attractive to children?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Taa
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Gardening for children? Futile in my opinion. Garden, fully, for yourself & Be-Who-You-Are. Children know the great characters.
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Pic taken in Susanne Hudson's conservatory.
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Truman Capote quote taken from, The Complete Stories of Truman Capote, copyright 2004, Random House, http://www.atrandom.com/. Thought it would have Breakfast at Tiffany's but only had his short stories, "literary fiction".

Cote de Texas, "Copy"

Cote de Texas copies Carol Glasser. Joni says, "I bought a birdcage because she had one." (Carol's home, below.) Joni says, "I bought red toile because she did." (Joni's home, below.)

Joni says, "I collected English smalls because she did."

Joni says, "She bought Kenneth Turner candles, I bought Kenneth Turner candles."

Joni says, "I could go on & on how I tried to clone my aesthetic into hers, rather unsuccessully I'm afraid because true genius is not so easily stolen."
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True genius in design includes a fascinating fact, it's a gift, if you pay close attention, for the taking. Joni pays close attention. She knows to COPY.

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Copy, it's the first rule of Landscape Design. If it's beautiful in one garden it will be beautiful in yours.

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Each time you COPY it is unique.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics from Joni Webb's blog, Cote de Texas. Bottom pic is from Carol Glasser's home. At this moment, in my attic, an antique plant stand rests. Not much longer. It's coming into daylight this month & filled with terra cotta pots & ivy topiaries.

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If you haven't perused Cote de Texas yet you have a treat ahead.

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Joni has her Carol Glasser & I have my Susanne Hudson !!!!