What To Do With A Bad View

Of course the dining room, below, has an awkward view. 

Swag of curtain, below, in the downstairs window is the dining room.

Same swag of curtain, below, in the dining room.

Do you see the triple air-conditioners?  Do you see the industrial generator?  Do you see anything fussy to maintain?
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No.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Pics taken at jobsite last week.  Dining room opens into central hall of previous 3 posts.

Wire Chairs & Color Echoes

Those chairs !

Echoing in titillation the color of the square planter, blue stone terrace & into the distance with the door.

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Even the gardener is color echoed with the landscape.

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Do not underestimate that last bit.  Monet had his gardeners wear blue shirts.

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Of course the white blossoms & silver foliage echo pop.

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Garden & Be Well,          XO Tara

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Found the pic last weekend via Dirt Simple.  Layers of green, canopy & understory trees, shrub walls, flooring & etc of perfection.  This garden has been loved into being with a sure hand.

This Landscape Never Has Chores

Under the Chinese snowball Saturday.

I don't have to do any garden chores.  Ever.  Have you noticed?
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Sure, the petals will have to be blown when they brown.  How can that be a chore?
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It's an act of grace.  And thanks.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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When you have good garden accidents you know you've done it right. 

Well Placed Chair

The potager is hidden from view, above, but the chair hints at the mystery destination.
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Have sat here many times thru the years and in all seasons.  Having a bowl of cereal or lunch or perhaps talking on the phone.
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And to think, I placed the chair there for aesthetics.  Instead, it's lifestyle.
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Discovered the Well Placed Chair phenomena while studying gardens across Europe.
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Copy, it's a fabulous rule of Landscape Design.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic taken in my sweet garden last week.  Especially proud of this garden room because its backdrop is the rest of my subdivision.  And we don't want to see REALITY do we?

Small Lives Large With Axis + Focal Point

On axis with the doors, below, this tiny space lives large.  It has the potential for 3 more potent axis.

Purring at the formal lines + rusticity of plantings.
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At first I looked too quickly, thinking it was metal chairs.  No.  It's a bike & chair. 
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Don't you want to go inside? 
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That is Vanishing Threshold!
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Don't forget the Landscape Design rule: COPY
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Pics via Modern Country, taken by Shootfactory

American Windsor Chair

This isn't a chair for the dinner table, below.

 It sits for conversation, reading, napping, cradling a kitten, a scotch.

 Originally, below, at our family house on Lake Rabun.

It was,below, in my music room,

Now, below, it's in the kitchen, aka Garden Room, where I look across my rooms, enfilade, into the garden.

New floors, above, arrived at Christmas.  French doors will go in soon, leading to the Conservatory.
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Notice, you did not see the 25 year old linoleum, disgusting, that went out the door.
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Would NEVER have put the American Windsor on linoleum.  Seemed disrespectful.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Needing patience.  Have waited a quarter century for these changes and somehow the homestretch is the toughest.

Landscape Design: What Era Will You Choose?

Whitlow House ca. 1830.  Keeping the views,

 and the house rustic are intentional.  Wanting places of repose,

outside of time.

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Garden & Be Well,          XO Tara

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Pics taken at a project last week.  Landscape Design is about designing elements of TIME & PLACE.  Received a delightful comment about my home/garden this month, "You've really created your own little world, haven't you?"

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Beer In The Garden

I adore working men in the garden.At the end of the day this wonderful man, above, earned his beer.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic from Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival in Douglasville, GA. It's tomorrow & Sunday. You do realize there is NO pun intended with the top sentence?

Bedrooms On The Lake

Off the master bedroom, below.

And,
off a guest room.

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Yes, I've been lucky and stayed here.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics from same garden as previous posts.

Seating On A Deck

Pair of matched chairs. Works every time. If it's wood in her garden it's painted her special green.Directly below this deck, pathway to her rescue run. She rescues & fosters dogs.
From this portion of her deck, below,
you can see her wooded frontyard or the backyard & lake.

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Seating areas are throughout: garden, porch, deck, dock, woodland.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Same garden as previous post.

Chinoiserie & Design

Wisteria 'Amethyst Falls' at my front door today. A tiny area, yet interesting, and welcoming. (Without moving my feet these pics are a scan from left to right.) Peeking beyond the Wisteria, below, urn/plinth on axis with my bay window.
Filtered thru Wisteria foliage, above, the gravel terrace with large flagstones leading to the frontdoor.
The little Pot Cluster, above, and adirondack chair.
Classic Landscape Design, above, and pollinator habitat. (High & low density, canopy/understory, walls, floor, contrasting foliage textures/colors.)
Landscape Design's Pulitzer Prize, above. Beauty, privacy, low maintenance, organic, all season interest, pollinator habitat, fragrance, fantasy within reality, a place to sit, a spot viewed on axis from within the house.

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Take the camera view a bit to the right you'll see neighbor's homes, their cars, their landscaping, the street. Honestly, who wants to live that way? Seeing neighbor's stuff? It's not my realm. The pics above ARE my realm.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Puppet Barbuda apologizes for bluntness in her captions today. Puppet Barbuda is zealous in details of landscape design/pollinator habitat. Puppet Barbuda disdains the ridiculosity of pretty garden pictures focusing on 'a plant', 'how to dig a hole', 'plant them 2.5432" apart'. Information providing you nothing about putting a beautiful garden together. When Puppet Barbuda reads interior design books/blogs/magazines they don't tell her how to produce the fabric on the couch, how to dye it, cut it, sew it, staple it & etc.....they appreciate she has a BRAIN.

How To Design Delight

Necessities of life delighting me in other gardens. Gravel, chair, hydrangeas-roses-sasanqua-boxwood, collection of old watering cans. Of course I designed them into my garden.
Provocateurs of epiphany.
And beauty.
Filled with rainwater from the same storms killing-destroying in North Carolina, Chinese snowball petals fragrant at the top end of new decay.

Always, on to the next season. Always.

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Always, leaving this season. Always.

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Frisson, more delightful & engaging than perfection, to me.

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What is delightful to you in a garden? It's this simple, yes, to design delight into your garden.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics from my Potager this week.

Anna Wintour: Garden Room

Light, a trinity of topiaries, rough wood table, sleek metal chairs, drain in the floor, white walls to reflect more lite, Anna Wintour has the perfect garden room. (Read that sentence again, it's a great formula. Go, create your own garden room.)
(Pic, above, Ann Wintour's garden room in World Of Interiors)

I don't think Anna likes to linger after her lettuce.
(Pic, above, Christopher Baker)

I do. These chairs, above, are for me.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Habitually Chic had these pics in a fabulous post.

Vertical Gardening

Every garden must have at least 1 cone shaped evergreen. Draw eyes to the sky. More about this Italian garden, above, here.
Gertrude Jekyll, famous landscape designer, said, "The first thing I consider is what to put on the house." At zero point in college or symposia has anyone said this to me. Took this pic in France, a private garden. In addition to vines on a house, I like espaliered woody flowering shrubs, they need no trellis or wire.
Vertical gardening on a tiny subdivision lot, above, canopy & understory trees with climbing roses. If Monet could have a climbing rose thru his understory trees, so can I. That's my garden, above. The window? It's where I'm typing this post.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Quite selfish leading with the pic I took in Italy. A garden brimming with epiphanies. While I was in it and after.

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3 Vertical Gardening concepts, get started.

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Garden Designers Round Table: MORE Vertical Gardening Posts !!

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Garden Up! Vertical Gardening

March 22, 2011 by susan morrison

When you hear the phrase “vertical gardening,” what comes to mind? You might think about roses scrambling up a trellis, or an overhead arbor dripping with wisteria. Those with a contemporary aesthetic may envision a mosaic of succulents hung on an outdoor wall, while edible gardeners see a riotous mix of creative containers, with tomatoes and peas reaching for the sun.

Vertical gardening is all those things and more. To celebrate the publication of Garden Up! Smart Vertical Gardening for Small and Large Spaces by roundtable members Susan Morrison and Rebecca Sweet, this month our designers share their own unique perspectives on this exciting garden trend.

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK
Pam Penick : Digging : Austin, TX »
Rebecca Sweet : Gossip In the Garden : Los Altos, CA »
Scott Hokunson : Blue Heron Landscapes : Granby, CT »
Susan Morrison : Blue Planet Garden Blog : East Bay, CA »
Tara Dillard : Vanishing Threshold : Atlanta, GA »

Formula: 2 Chairs + Table

Woodland, palace, mid-century modern, cluster, townhome, shotgun, split-level ranch & etc.2 chairs + table; works every time.

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Of course, you must choose the correct vernacular.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Another pic from MIXSON at my job in Charleston, SC.

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.

The Chair

SHIPMAN sent this, below, from Greece yesterday. Of course, in my mind, these chairs have already been designed into fabulous gardens.
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Graveled terrace, ancient wood harvest/farm table, tree trunk arbor, 3 old chandliers not matching but hanging at the same level above table. 6 of these chairs with a pair of bentwood/cane armchairs at each end of the table.
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At the entryway of a garden room. A pair of these chairs with chickenwire molded into dog forms covered in a small leafed ivy. At the other end of the garden room another pair with chickenwire in cat forms covered in variegated ivy.
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In honor of a dear friend a cluster of shopping bags arrayed around the chairs.
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Of course there are chickenwire forms of people with the chairs...
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What do you see?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Can't wait till you get back SHIPMAN, lunch???

Surprises Tucked In

Adirondack chairs as focal points. Easy. Unless, perhaps, you've put too much junk in your garden?

Oakleaf Hydrangea blossom stealing the spotlight.

Tucked in, above, I adore old watering cans.

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A little surprise, tucked in, seen when you sit in my adirondack chair. Placement matters, poppets. Sometimes 2" matters.

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Don't create the gravest of garden cliches; all your baubles fighting to be seen AT ONCE. Ugh.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic taken this month in my garden. Again, you realize I do not like styled pics? When a design is good no need to style your pictures. Bottom pic: shot pea gravel, gray Cherokee flagstone edging & oakleaf hydrangea spilling over. Aaaaaah, love it. Calms me. Ha, whatever works, right?

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cliche: trite, hackneyed, desperate...............

Getting It, Fast

Enter Rose Terrace thru a pair of gardenias. Get comfortable in an adirondack chair.

Hear the crunch of Shot Pea Gravel under foot.

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Overhead, a cathedral of mature Crape Myrtle. Espaliered against the wall: tea olive, camellia, hydrangea, climbing rose. Edging for shot pea gravel, cherokee gray flagstone & rescued brick. View, embracing arms of hydrangeas & the Tea Olive Terrace with its pond-hedges-groundcovers.
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Last December the Rose Terrace was a bed of hydrangea under the crape myrtles. Yawn. I wanted to ENJOY my garden. You know, wine/canapes with girlfriends.

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Why is this new garden room FABULOUS FAST? Dahlings, I followed the rules.

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Garden Design has a history of templates that work EVERY TIME.

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Of course I had to get over myself to know this.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken last week in my garden. AND this new garden room was CHEAP.

Outside & Inside A Hedge

Standing in the street, below, at my front gate this morning. Inside the hedge, below, is my Bay Terrace.

Oakleaf Hydrangea blossoms unfurling, below, in the Bay Terrace.

The subtlety of my rule "Just Let It Touch", blossoms caressing, below, the adirondack chair.

Oakleaf Hydrangeas espaliered, below, at the bay window. Learned this trick in Italy at Lake Maggiori.

Did my garden make you curious about seeing, below, inside?

My go-to spot, above, for working on projects, lunch, dinner with a girlfriend.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Bottom pic taken weeks ago, rest of the pics taken less than 15 minutes ago.

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Love English hedgerows and copied. Mine: dwarf abelia, climbing rose 'Dortmund', hydrangeas, boxwood, palm, rosemary, lavender, liriope, clematis, hollyhocks.

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Breakfast yesterday morning, in my gown, sitting in the adirondack chair caressed with oakleaf hydrangea blossoms. Neighbors in my tiny subdivision, surrounding my tiny property, well hidden behind my hedge.

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The antique gateleg table had been in my office for a decade until last January. I hired Susanne Hudson to choose paint colors, somehow, ALL my furniture moved !