ILLUSION OF REPOSE

Chairs & benches are favorite focal points. Why?

They give the illusion of repose.

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Weeks & months may pass without time to sit in my garden. Doesn't matter.

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Potency lies in the illusion, throughout my days, seeing from the windows, views prettier than any Hallmark greeting card.

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Seriously. How can Hallmark compete with a deep red cardinal landing on the top of a chair & singing to his mate? A squirrel bringing lunch to the arm of a bench in the potagere?

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Comfort must not be illusion. Sit test each chair/bench.

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I don't care if it's rescued or only $19.95. If it's not comfortable & fabulous, don't take it home. Remember my estate sale question, "Will this be fought over at my estate sale?"

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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I took the pic in Susanne Hudson's garden.

4SOME: CLUB, WING & ADIRONDACK

Adirondacks were the 1st 4some I saw outside. And LOVED. A client had a 4some of club chairs w/ottoman at their center, inside their home. Gorgeous.
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Now, wingchairs in 4some, above, outside. Yes!!!
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What works here?
* No foundation planting.
* Vines on the house.
* Color: bricks, chairs, pots, foliage, flowers, sky.
* Pots: size, plantings, placement.
* Scale.
* Flow.
* Axis.
* Contrasting textures. Dark leaves by chartreuse leaves. Big leaves by small leaves.
* Canopy & understory trees.
* Walls: plants & house.
* 4SOME of Chairs. Comfort.
* Invitation. Steps leading you further, if only in imagination. Doors, beckoning the great indoors.
* Mystery. Yes, I want to see this garden. Yes, I want to go inside this house.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic from Maison Sud-Ouest, via, Garden Rooms. Had to show it to you. This garden has stuck in my head as pure pleasure.

NECESSITY: LANDSCAPE FANTASIES

A Woodland Walk in my tiny garden, below, aka, air-conditioning side of my house. Chair rotted long ago. Red bud tree died slowly, rotted slowly. Great fun watching songbirds gather insects & make homes in its wood.
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LANDSCAPE FANTASIES abound, "What do I want to do here? Hmmmm!"
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A beautiful garden is fabulous but having a portion of your garden in the realm of fantasy is rich indeed.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

10 KICK ASS WAYS TO LANDSCAPE DESIGN

Landscape design rules make everything unique about YOU, more intense. Landscape Design Rules copied, above:
1. Vine on house. (Or espalier a shrub)
2. Pot cluster, themed (terra cotta).
3. Well-placed chair.
4. View into house delightful.
5. Color on house. All wood in landscape is peacock blue.
6. Color on chair. All metal in landscape is faded green.
7. Contrasting foliage shapes & colors.
8. Contrasting bloom shapes, spikey & round.
9. Does it hold together in winter?
10. Just let it touch. Foliages touch each other, the chair, the house
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You'll see these rules followed in the best landscapes. Claude Monet to Gertrude Jekyll to Christopher Lloyd to Vita Sackville-West to Sir Roy Strong to William Morris to Rosemary Verey to Tasha Tudor to Tara Dillard..... to YOU.

Don't like the pot cluster? Don't use them, plant a shrub. Voila, same landscape, but now you own it.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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I took the pic in a lovely private French garden.

VANISHING THRESHOLD STORY

Vanishing Threshold, with so little, yet it's a story. And I want to know the story!
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NOTES:
* Great color choices: roof, doors, bricks, throw over couch, pony-curtains-chair.
* Bricks leading to house acting as a doormat.
* Chair outside brings outside in and inside out, Vanishing Threshold.
* Weeds in the bricks & gravel. Delightful. Reality.
* I would like to see lamps on inside.
* Love the tiny bit of framing with plant foliage.
* Fabulous little landscape space with few ingredients. Yet, I want to know the story.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Thank you Krystol for this Pony Pic taken while you were in England.

CENTURIES OLD YET NEW

Nothing original here. It's all been done, for centuries. Yet it's fresh at each site. Easy to maintain.
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IN THIS LANDSCAPE:
* Path mown thru low meadow on axis to home
* Repetition of greens
* Contrasting shapes, oval & connical, of large shrubs & trees
* Gravel terrace scaled appropriately to architecture of home & functional use
* Pair of planters, informing you, "Yes, enter here."
* Plant on the house, Gertrude Jekyll, world's 1st landscape designer, said, "The first thing I consider in a design is what to put on the house."
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I'm already in my new cedar Adirondack chair, from Smith/Hawken going-out-of-business sale, reading a book on this gravel terrace. Of course it's stained the color of the window trim.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Thank you Krystol for sending this pic from your England trip.

SEVERAL LANDSCAPE DESIGN TRICKS

Do you think this is an accident? Just Let It Touch. My landscape design trick with focal points. Foliage barely gracing the edges of a focal point.
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Think the azaleas 'accidentally' bloomed on the chair? Hardly. I designed it to happen.
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Pruning to the event.
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Siting the Well-Placed-Chair. It's on axis in the woodland walk from the back gate, and the front gate. It's on axis from inside, Vanishing Threshold: downstairs breakfast room & living room, upstairs library.
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More than a home run, the chair has 5 axis views.
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And you thought it was just a chair in the garden?
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Landscape design skills used:
...........Tara Inventions............

1. Just Let It Touch
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2. Vanishing Threshold
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3. Well-Placed-Chair
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4. The-More-Axis-Focal Points-Have-The-Better-They-Are.
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Traipsing continents for decades seeking what makes a landscape work. Seeing universal patterns across space/time. Copying them. Naming them.
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In college my landscape design classes had none of this stuff. Why not? Perhaps it's what the Founding Fathers discovered. When truths are Self-Evident they need to be written.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

CHOOSING TO PAINT & STAIN

It's not an easy choice. Staining wood & painting iron in your landscape. No going backward once your 6' teak bench is stained.

Hard work going forward painting your inherited rusted iron chairs.

I waited years to pull the trigger.

It never looked 'bad'.

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Once the deed was done, WHY DID I WAIT SO LONG?

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A French conceit, consistently applying color in the landscape. Studying in France I saw that it worked.

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If it works in a fabulous landscape it will work in yours.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

SEASONS IN A GARDEN ROOM

Her voice, You must have Rudbeckia fulgida fulgida. Standing in the aisle layed with old roof shingles in the perennials greenhouse. I worked propagation, professionally, moons ago. (Moons ago is less aging than 'decades' ago, yes?) Her gold Rudbeckia fulgida fulgida has been blooming July-Dec. ever since, in my garden, above.

A bird planted the spring English daisy, above. Recognizing a true landscape designer, I kept it.

Same chair, above, fall view from my office.

Early summer, above, hydrangeas start and Rudbeckia fulgida fulgida are 1' high.

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A supporting tapestry to my days, for many years, I realized I should gather pics of my formal stone terrace & part-time meadow. Threads aren't finished, will get you a pic of the blue ageratum blooming in Sept.

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This terrace is a nurturing friend.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

GARDEN ROOMS

"So impertinent -- yet the house "did," for it was the home of people who loved their surroundings honestly."
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My garden is tiny. The gable, below, crowning my head while I type. Crepe myrtles for shade, fragrant tea olive crenellations along the cleyera hedge. (No grass it's my neighbor's frontyard!) "Italy is heroic, but Greece is godlike or devilish -- I am not sure which, and in either case absolutely out of our suburban focus."

My gate, below, delicately tucked into the hedge, always open.

A chair, below, just past the gate

in my potager. A room within a room. Studying in Europe many times yet, I travel farthest in my garden.

Near the chair an altar, above.

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"Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome "nerves" or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire. She loved Cecil; George made her nervous; will the reader explain to her that the phrases should have been reversed?"

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LOL, it is my garden explaining these things to me.

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Once, my garden informed me about a thorny topic, Tara dear your confidence is a masquerade for fear. A changed perspective allowing me to make a better choice and leave the fear behind.

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I'm never bored in the rooms of my garden.

My office window, above, overlooking a garden room. Do you think I ever see my neighborhood?

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I set out to create garden rooms and instead created a world.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Quotes from A Room with a View by E.M. Forster

FRONT PORCH IN A SUBDIVISION, FAST

Rare people implement landscape design quickly. What is quick? One year is a blink of the eye in the landscape realm. Jeri Farmer, retired marketing guru, moved in a year ago. In retirement? She owns, Le Jardin Blanc, with Susanne Hudson.

Jeri is hooked on white. With some blue. Susanne designed Jeri's garden overdosing Jeri's theme.

Jeri did something shocking. She implemented the plan, without wavering. And in a year has a garden life.

Landscapes, like people, are more defined by what they say no to.

"Men come to build sooner than to garden finely as if gardening were the greater art." Alexander Pope 17th century
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

BIRTHDAY PICNIC IN THE EVENING GARDEN

He said, It's late but please come to LOLA's birthday picnic. Bring something healthy for about 15. I met LOLA last month lecturing for the Extension Service. Instant GIRL CRUSH.LOLA was growing TARA TURF before we met! Historically correct for her older home. A mix of fescue-moss-clover-what the wind blows in. Never needs water, fertilizer or chemicals. Honeybees love it.

LOLA chose the paint for her bricks and created her own interiors. How to get you the fragrance of this magnolia?

Vanishing Threshold, above, dictates views into a window are pretty in both directions. No backsides of pictures, clocks, or TV.

Do you like still life's too?

About here, above, I thought to myself, This is probably rude leaving the party to wander & take pics without asking. Ha, did I stop?

I knew LOLA wouldn't have paper plates. Or paper napkins.

Gazpacho in the pitcher, Mario Bitalli asparagus (sauteed with garlic/parsley/citrus), fruit salad, cucumber salad, field pea salad.... Wine & beer & tea were in the copper farmhouse sink cradled in ice.

Set into a slight hill the house is crowned with a hardwood canopy of oaks. Captured light, above.

Vanishing Threshold, house & garden, each a seduction of comfort.

LOLA added French doors.

The back garden has 3 terraces.

LOLA really nailed her pot clusters, above. She overdosed, with 3!

Standing at the French doors looking into the garden. A designer planned the garden; contractors put in the stone. LOLA and darling TOM are doing the plantings & maintenance. Exactly the hand-heart-eye a paid maintenance crew cannot provide. The word for it? Charm.

What is a house & garden without a Queen? CHESSIE was in control. She also sweetly gave away a personal tidbit. She's a Daddy's Girl.

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LOLA & TOM live from the center of their home to the property line. And that darlings is Vanishing Threshold.

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Stop here if you don't partake of good gossip.

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LOLA & TOM were married last year in Italy. LOLA invited her 2 best friends. And that is how darling TOM honeymooned with 3 women at a villa in Italy.

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You bet I'll keep up with this interesting crew.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

LANDSCAPE ECONOMY: ARBOR, GRILL, SINK

Landscape ideas with charm aren't always expensive. Copied from a 1920's garden book, the arbor. At least I've seen similar arbors in old garden books. Not part of the 'landscaped' garden this outdoor kitchen has loads of character for little cost.

Repeating the arbor, below. Repetition is as important as simplicity in a landscape.

Vines on a house, or espaliered shrubs, are easy. Adding lushness with little effort.

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In a perfect world my slides from Italy would be digitized by now. I've got pics of a villa, which should be posted here, using the same idea above but the style is centuries old Italian. Great style transcends genre.

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What's happening in my garden today? Pulling akebia vine from hydrangeas, camellias, azaleas, viburnum, & more. Ugh. Then a bath and off to design a backyard.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

A CHAIR IN LANDSCAPE DESIGN

Sir Walter Scott's landscape had a well-placed chair. I copied the idea and learned it was more than first epiphanied.
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Blooming today, oh so fragrant Marchessa Boccella. She's remontant, blooming till frost and an antique rose needing no chemicals. A couple of weeks ago, below, Chinese snowball petals. A few are evident, above.

Soon, below, mopheads will be blooming again.

And the great southern drama, below, snow. When the teacup snowstorms begin I grab the camera & run.

Need to get the camellia blossoms in bloom with this chair and fall leaves. Who knew? Copying Sir Walter Scott I thought I was simply creating a single photo op with a chair. Instead it's seasons of beauty. And the random bird or squirrel alighting on the chair to dine.

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I dine there too, on occasion.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

LAKE PLACID LANDSCAPE LECTURE: MIRROR LAKE INN

Away a week, lecturing in Lake Placid & Albany, New York. Flew into Albany, rented a car and drove to Mirror Lake Inn in Lake Placid. A portion of the drive was beautiful mythical Middle Earth. Chunks of ice larger than my car, emanating a sky blue from their heart, falling from stone hillsides. White birch trees yet to leaf, waterfalls flowing into lakes following the narrow 2 lane road.
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Below, a portion of Mirror Lake Inn. Did I mention it's in the Adirondack's? I guessed there might be a bear inside, below.

Details done right, below. I typically spec new shutters into landscape designs.

My room, below, is the bay window & 2 windows facing through the trees on the same floor.

Views, below, from all of my windows were spectacular. It snowed the morning I arrived.

Another view, above, from my window. Laying in bed or the Jacuzzi tub I could see the lake and snow capped mountains.

After walking around Mirror Lake I was glad to sit, above. With age I've come to adore Adirondack chairs. Great to set a glass of wine on one arm and a plate upon the other. All while being comfortable and visiting with friends.

Thursday is my favorite New York Times edition. I went into the local library, above, and read the paper while overlooking Mirror Lake and snow capped mountains.

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Perennially Yours was the symposium I spoke at. Kerry Mendez, garden designer, put it together for hands-on gardeners. One in particular stole my heart. At breakfast a woman said to me, I have a Japanese garden on the shore of Lake Champlain. A line to attract any gardeners attention. Her garden began the day the Korean War started. On that day she arrived, with her newly minted botany degree, in Japan. She was working for SAC, the Strategic Air Command. Japan was a 3-year stint for her.

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Somehow I've got to get to Lake Champlain to see her Japanese garden, and her.

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Cold zone gardening changes a person. No time to waste in a short growing season. I was the speaker but listening to stories over meals & during walks humbled me. Gave a new window into what gardening means as a companion in life.

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Landscape design doesn't change but how it's accomplished in the pattern of a life does.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara