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 !!!!

Garden Room: 101

Before construction, Susanne Hudson & I knew our Garden Room was fabulous. Understatement yes? We designed architecture & landscape, decorated & styled with only items junked, rescued, borrowed. (Well, we did buy tin roofing, gravel & a few pots.)

Tiny, potent. Peek thru, below, see our potting table?

Alone, or with girlfriends, this Garden Room is a life changer. Virginia Woolf territory.

Delightfully different views into each side.

Leftover pavers from edging the gravel. Voila, a table. And a meadow, does it get any better? Yes, hearing the crunch of gravel, smelling the fragrance of meadow & woodland, sound of rain on tin, seeing the chandelier & lamps on at nite. Knowing you have a bolt hole.

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My favorite part? Building the garden & Garden Room with Susanne. And this was work?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Built for the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival, on site at Le Jardin Blanc in Douglasville, GA. Poppets, I had to spend several nites with Susanne while we created this Garden Room. Attended a Gala 1 evening. Progressive dinner another nite. Behind the scenes for a huge wedding at Le Jardin Blanc another nite. Mexican & margaritas another nite. Garden tour & Thai food 1 nite. Oh my, FUN.

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Want a Garden Room? Susanne & I can create one for you, contact here.

Details of a Garden Room

Rescued sink, "champagne is on ice in the conservatory", & stand made from leftover structural pieces, century old rescued pine. Rescued culvert, above, has a new life, & the rescued chest, windows, shutter.

How calm the shutter looks, above, hiding the sink. Carpet, #89 granite gravel.

Nap, above, on the daybed in the Garden Room? Notice its pot feet? Having a chandelier & lamps is of utter importance.

Chandelier, for sale, alas borrowed from Le Jardin Blanc, hanging from the tin roof. Ugh, we had to buy the roof. Curtains? Jute erosion control fabric. Bedding borrowed from Susanne Hudson's home, & mine.

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Hydrangea welcome, above. After all it's the garden Susanne Hudson & I created for the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival on the grounds of Le Jardin Blanc.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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You will not believe what this Garden Room looks like. Can't wait to show you the money shot, soon poppets ! Alert, this garden room built solely with the labor of 1 man & 2 women. None labeled 'young' in contemporary culture. Ha, young in what we create. Please, let us create a Garden Room for YOU. It's all we wanna do. Oh dear, this snippet is turning into the lines of a country song......... ta-ta before it gets worse.

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

Accessorizing a Table

A century old altar table, below, is the potting table Susanne Hudson & I used for our Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival garden. Lamps, plants, bust, ephemera; similar to interior table accessorizing.

Our potting table is viewed from front, back & sides.

Yes, poppets, those lamps are ON. Are you just now discovering you NEED a romantic potting table with lamps ON?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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We bought nothing to create the potting table. Using only what we had between us.

Houseplants 101

Why I don't, below, have houseplants. Except, 2 years ago 2 Christmas cactus 'spoke'. My 1st nursery job (required: red shirt/kaki pants) was director of houseplants. When my 1st order arrived, a full 18-wheeler, you know who unloaded, into overtime, the whole truck. (Poppets this was before the days of immigrant labor. A college degree punching a time-clock & unloading trucks. Should we discuss my parent's horror? To this day, they abhor my career choice.)

It wasn't long before I was an expert on houseplants. Great JOY when Amy Leigh of

GROWING PLANTS INDOORS was discovered. This girl's ON FIRE !!

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If you are growing plants indoors then go to Amy Leigh for inspiration or help.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Happy to have the Christmas cactus but I've yet to wear a red shirt or sweater again. And I loved the job. Don't miss the 2 1/2 years of going to bed at 8:30pm everynite, bone tired; in my 20's.

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Top pic: Henry, newest member of my family, he arrived early last month. Found in Susanne Hudson's garden in Douglasville. Perfect provenance !!

Repetition

Puppet Barbuda took awhile to trust repetition, a landscape design tool. Wasted years. Puppet Barbuda was stubborn. Still is.

Puppet Barbuda was too smart to COPY !!!!!

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Alas, years in the wilderness, and Puppet Barbuda DID NOT recreate a new wheel.

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REPETITION, if it works in one landscape it will work in your landscape. Each time repetition repeats....................IT'S NEW & UNIQUE at each repeat.

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Of course poppets you must adjust for plant zone, money, maintenance, & time. Ironically, copying $$$ landscapes rewards you, often, with better results than the original.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics from Susanne Hudson's garden last month.

Simple

A few weeks ago when the roses began blooming, below. #89 granite gravel drive, picket fence copied from historic template, carport (at right) with "columns" made from 2" x 6" boards, green-brown-white color theme. Pure Simplicity.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Can you hear the gravel as you drive into Susanne Hudson's garden?

An Exception

Landscape Design Rule: 1 Focal Point per Area Faux bois bench.
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Oversized hanging candle lantern.
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Blooming Hydrangea in a pot.
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Gravel path.
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Breaking Landscape Design Rules creates fabulous landscapes.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken almost 2 weeks ago in Susanne Hudson's garden. I spent 5 nites with her while creating our garden for the annual Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival. Oh yes, dahlings, will be posting those pics soon.
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I've taken dozens of pics of this gorgeous faux bois bench. Each awful. Finally. Ah, finally. Got it !!
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Yes, broken landscape design rule, above, but don't overlook the fabulous landscape design: canopy trees, understory trees, walls of shrubs, color theme, sense of mystery, sense of surprise.

Brown Choices

Brown, below, is a landscape design choice. Is it on your radar?

Leaf Litter Mulch is a choice.

Leaf Litter Mulch? Love it.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Preparing my garden for a tour, 4 years ago, I realized the standard set by local garden designers (Ryan Gainey & etc.), which I was happily copying, wasn't for me, anymore. Instead I went 180 degrees to my Mentors, all women. Each with Leaf Litter Mulch. A choice made in the afternoon. By dark, sooooooooooo tired, still working in my garden, I glanced up to see my garden and began to cry. Why? It was the missing element, Leaf Litter Mulch, I had the garden I had always wanted.

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Pics from Susanne Hudson's garden last week.

Checkerboard Flooring

Checkerboard flooring, below, in shade. Grass won't grow.

12" X 12" concrete squares.

Gorgeous all year. Affordable, low-maintenance, unskilled labor, rain water only. Add crocus, scilla, blue grape hyacinths.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Yesterday's client's office has a black/white checkerboard floor. Soon the garden outside her windows will have checkerboard flooring too.

Pic taken last week in Susanne Hudson's garden. She installed the checkerboard flooring herself. 18" X 18" concrete squares? Too heavy. Unskilled labor & woman powered.

Subsidiary Focal Point

Perfectly placed, Donkey, below, is nibbling

the ivy.

I asked Susanne if she placed Donkey at the ivy tendril. She had no clue what I meant.

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A cute donkey cart? My famous words about Cute Kills? Well, dahlings, there is an exception to every rule.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic taken in Susanne Hudson's garden last week.

Accidental Seasons

Like? Me too. Pulled from the basement, below, my grandmother's wheel barrow. No time, yet, to fill it with terra cotta pots & 'style' its placement.

Today, above, with hydrangeas. In spring, below, with Chinese snowball.

Chinese snowball petals swirling, below, onto unfurling hydrangea foliage.

In the snow, below.

When sasanqua's bloom in fall another wheelbarrow pic. Had no idea it would become a seasonal attraction. Still pondering where I'll place it once it's filled with terra cotta pots. I adore this type of pondering. Priceless.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Susanne Hudson created the top wheelbarrow.

Egyptian Warrior Booty

"More than 3,000 years ago Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt sent a company of gardeners to what is now British Somaliland for new species, and a century and a half later another Egyptian queen received from an army which had invaded Assyria many new plants, including a pomegranate and a new water lily." Joseph Wood Krutch Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic taken at Le Jardin Blanc last week. Bust & 19th century smoke house. Can you imagine what fun Queen Hatshepsut had when her Garden Party returned !!!

Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival

Susanne Hudson & I are creating a garden for the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival, in Douglasville, GA. Saturday, June 5 - Sunday June 6th, 2010.
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This chandelier, below, will be in our garden. Along with rescued treasures: rusty, dirty, antique, arcane. And: #89 granite gravel, busts, furniture. Ha, almost forgot, plants too. A tram circles the gardens on tour. Including Susanne's nationally recognized garden, below. Erica Glasener , of HGTV fame, speaks Saturday, 5th and so will I. In the evening there's a garden tour & progressive dinner.

Twice to Douglasville & spend-the-nites with Susanne already, working in our garden. More work days & spend-the-nites ahead.

This is work?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken at Susanne's yesterday morning, yes, a 'work' day morning! She toured me to some of the gardens Wed. evening because I won't have time to see them during the Festival. We were able to have private time with the owners, & their dogs, strolling their gardens after a lite rain. The air cool, fireflies, and scent of jasmine pervasive.

Painted 'Copper' Gutters

My back door, below. Notice the downspout? It's round, by choice. Better aesthetics.

Gutters are aluminum painted to look like copper. Sherwin-Williams, Best Bronze.

The woman? A Christine Sibley piece. Bought from the 2nd's table when Christine was alive. Ooooh, I miss her gardens, zoo, gallery, 2nd's table, antics, and her.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken yesterday morning. Painters finally finished the exterior. Susanne Hudson, interior decorator & color specialist, was hired to choose colors.