Southern Living Magazine: A Garden

For 20 years of my career, Southern Living magazine was 'the' resource for clients.  Most had pages dog-eared or torn out ready to show the garden of their dreams.  In return, equally, it was gratifying to reproduce those beautiful images.  Aside from reading Southern Living myself, for pleasure, I 'had' to read it because it was an expectation of clients.  
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Then came John Floyd's retirement in 2008, the editor for those glory years my clients adored.
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After John Floyd, Southern Living became a magazine for Southerners written through the prism of those outside the South.  Dropped my subscription after an article that can only be described as snarky & demeaning, lacking in inspiration, choosing the trite & hackneyed, without intellect or stewardship, time enriched became time wasted.  How could they.  Get John back.
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Oddly, another magazine had just been founded a year prior to John Floyd's retirement, Garden & Gun.  What a title.  It sputtered, as all businesses did during the debacle of 2008.  Time passed, about 5 years ago clients would start a sentence, "Did you see the latest Garden & Gun"?  Never was it about a garden, but someplace to eat, travel, or an article richly configured splaying open an epiphany, or two.  Three years ago, after buying a few copies on news stands, knew I had to get a subscription.  Zero disappointment.  However, the 'garden' part of Garden & Gun seems shallowly formulated, still in its infancy.  Don't care.  The rest of the magazine gives more than enough.
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Saw a garden picture, below, recently and love it.  Enough love, had to discover its source.  Well, go team, Southern Living magazine.  Hope this spark turns into a fire and I get 2-3 clients saying, "I saw this in Southern Living...."




Just wow, above/below, simple, comfortable, easy to maintain, leveraging life, not sucking the life out of you trying to keep it up, and historically accurate.
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The story gets better with this garden, above.  The Southern Living article includes the interior.  This is a second home for the owners, and part of their joy in this home is sharing it with others, whether they are there, or not.
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Yeah, Southern Living magazine is back on the radar.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Oh irony.  Garden & Gun hired a lot of staff from NYCity, relocating them to the South at its founding.

Tara Template: Entry Ways

Once I decided to create a beautiful garden, age 22, living in a garage apartment, no suffering it had 3 bays backing up to 50 acres of woodland & pasture a little like the movie Sabrina, I bought a few things from the nursery, planted them, nothing.
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Nothing.
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Add a decade, books, more planting, Extension Service courses, moved into my starter home, and acquired a 2nd college degree, this time horticulture, and still the great, nothing.
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Insert 2 decades of studying historic gardens across Europe, thankfully, at the front end of those study tours, 'nothing' turned into the mother load.
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Garden Design, aside from being mostly counterintuitive, is palpably honest.  Garden Design hides nothing,  Its secrets freely given.  It was I, seeing 'nothing'.  One of the oddest things I 'saw', when my eyes opened, entry ways.
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And once you get it about entry ways you are well on your way to Garden Design of the ages.
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What is so important about entry ways?
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First layer, answering, is ineffable.  Much as an epiphany, moment of intuitive enlightenment, or a koan.  But there are several layers definitely not ineffable.
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Odd fact about entry ways in a garden.  And, important.  The more entry ways a garden has, the better a garden is.
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Odder fact about entry ways in a garden.  Entry ways are a focal point, and you cannot have too many.  Yet, the rule about focal points, One-Focal Point-per-Area, absorbs and enriches the rule about entry ways.
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Yep.  Told you, counterintuitive.
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More, entry ways in a garden never create an exit.  From both directions an entry way is an entry way.  There are no exits in a garden, only entry ways.


Pic, above, from Bunny Williams garden.
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Entry way into the wildwood, above.  One of my favorite Garden Design arrows to use.
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Without the drama, above, of the entry way, specifically the spheres on plinths, you are not beckoned, Come this way, walk here, you will be enchanted, there is more.  A bit of the Scheherazade layer of Garden Design.
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Gardens are stories.  Gardens are narrative.
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Whether you think so or not.  Don't put your story into your garden.  Fine.  Your garden is telling a story about you.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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Very nice, below.  Thought you would like it too.
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“If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?”

– G.K. Chesterton, 1874-1936, British writer, poet, and philosopher