Showing posts with label bench. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bench. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

STAINING PATIO FURNITURE: BEFORE + AFTER

Why did I resist Adirondack chairs for decades? Ubiquity? Who cares when a chair is this comfortable while holding a wine glass on one arm and a dinner plate on the other. Thank you dearest PINK for many lovely evenings & opening my eyes, and body, to the pleasures of your Adirondack chairs. Found at TJMaxx, below, it was automatic to stain my Adirondack chair faded green, matching all the other wood in my garden.
My 6' teak Lutyens bench, below, arrived when a client of COLLEGE BOY couldn't afford to pay. (Client owned a furniture store.)


It arrived with a strong reddish stain, above, and I waited years for it to fade.

Finished staining it yesterday. Would like to say it was a breeze. Ha. Need some distance from the project before describing it.
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Though I will say it fell under the cliched heading, Tell God Your Plans.......
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Sunday, June 28, 2009

GRAPHIC GIRL GETS HER LANDSCAPE

GRAPHIC GIRL surprised me with lunch while designing her landscape. Grilled salmon, vegetables with a mixed green salad & a pesto vinaigrette. The dishes, hand-painted, are inherited and were bought in China. Her home, circa 70's, is getting a new kitchen. French doors went in recently, new deck & screened porch too.
Enjoying paper in the guest bathroom, below. A weird enjoyment, but there it is.


FEEL your landscape with flags/tape before it's installed.
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Place flags for trees/focal points & tape for bedlines & terraces. Drawn to scale, 1"=20', below, still use flags/tape.
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A 6" change may transform good to FABULOUS.
Soon, a fig bush will engulf the pump house from behind, below. Her antique bench goes in front and hollyhocks will bloom on each side. A potager will replace the lawn.

The pool will get a facelift.
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Windows, below, will soon be French doors with a stone terrace.

GRAPHIC GIRL loves Stone Carpets, below. She saved the picture from Early Spring 2002 Garden Shed magazine. Don't you love her level of determined passion?

Below, is where her Stone Carpet will go. A custom lattice wall will hide the stairs/raised beds.

GRAPHIC GIRL saved this Veranda magazine cover shot since 2003.

Please, someone, create fabulous software for laptop & digital camera. So far, the software isn't worth it. My fantasy is designing en plein air with laptop on the folding table.

En plein air with GRAPHIC GIRL's inspirations: pictures, mission statement, plant list.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

FIGHTING MOSS IN A SHADY LAWN?

Keep the moss and ditch the grass. Simple yet potent design.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Sunday, May 17, 2009

DECADENCE ON THE LAWN

Masterpiece Theatre, decades ago, had Miss Marple. The English settings were incredibly decadent. Furnishings on the lawn. Tea on the lawn. A notion inextricably appealing.
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Oakleaf hydrangea are peaking now at Aldridge Gardens, above, in Hoover, AL. Their hydrangea festival was last week. After I finished lecturing box lunches were served in the garden.
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Why share this ridiculous notion? Without direct effort my life has included countless repasts in the garden for decades, at home, with friends, clients & lecture venues.
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What began as an infatuation has, indeed, become a way of life.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

DOUBLE AXIS: SINGLE SHOT

DOUBLE AXIS: if you have a focal point bench, below, you must have a focal point to view while sitting on the bench. If you have a focal point folly, below, you must have a focal point to view while in the folly. DOUBLE AXIS is a Tara Landscape Design Rule. It's also my invention. I shot this DOUBLE AXIS at Bodnant Garden in North Wales.
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The DOUBLE AXIS, above, is also an ENFILADE. A view thru to a view. From the bench, or folly, your view is across lawn, over pond, thru a double flowering shrub/perennial border.
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Studying historical landscapes gave me the DOUBLE AXIS epiphany. Also, my mentor, Margaret Moseley. She's now 92 years old. Wherever you go in her garden it's a double axis.
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Spanning 2 decades of symposia + college degree I've never heard anyone lecture about creating the DOUBLE AXIS or ENFILADE.
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Yes, I am this nerdy. DOUBLE AXIS + ENFILADE have been in plain view for centuries. It is incredibly satisfying to isolate them as important functions of landscape design. And don't give me the, I-don't-have-money-for-it, routine. Visit my landscape or scroll backward in this blog to see pics of my garden. I do my own gardening and my budget, ah well that's a laugh. An important laugh. If I can do DOUBLE AXIS + ENFILADES on my minuscule budget,

YOU CAN.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

LANDSCAPE BOOK COVER

This landscape design was all about Miss Ellie. She's in dog heaven now but her terrain was my job site. Miss Ellie loved to run. Her route was powdery earth. Nothing grew under Miss Ellie's feet. It's a small backyard with canopy & understory trees. Miss Ellie's mom, Virginia Hendricks, was the Interior Decorator I referred for years. Until she selfishly married & moved away. Every square inch Virginia decorates is a square inch to covet. Understand my challenge? Create a dog haven & make it gorgeous. Above, the family room looks from the deck to the swing. I emphasized the enfilade in the design and used lots of repetition to make the small space 'feel' larger.
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Virginia & Miss Ellie's landscape is on the cover of my book, The Garden View.
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Lots more pics and the plan drawing showing enfilades and multiple double axis.
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Garden & Be Well, XO T



Tuesday, March 10, 2009

ROSES: COMPANIONS & DOUBLE AXIS

This isn't the first famous landscape for ROSE. Downsizing house & garden, ROSE again hit it out of the park. Speeding up the process she knew to hire a designer, Brooks Garcia. ROSE mentored others by example. She could have done it on her own but it would have taken longer.
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Below, a narrow sideyard is made wider with stepping stones set on diagonal. The gate says, Welcome. ROSE came to gardening through a love of roses. Her beautiful landscape is merely a setting to show them off. A Southern matriarch in every good sense of the phrase, ROSE was nudged by her landscape into lecturing and opening her garden for tours.
Above & below, two views of the same narrow path. A double axis pair of pics.


Above, a child's sized bench enlarges the scale of the tiny foyer between frontdoor & sideyard.


Above & below, backyard pic looking left & looking right. Another double axis. ROSE lives in a cluster home neighborhood. Her landscape denies reality.



Above, it's no accident the benches have a curved back. The curve softens rectangular landscape design lines and reinforces a French essence.


Above, ROSE's family room window with sundial on axis and enfilade. Roses's over the window make the tiny area lush.
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Below, view from ROSE's family room window with Dancing Girl on axis and enfilade.
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Above & below are yet another double axis.

ROSE threaded many clematis, below, through her roses.


Above & below, clematis.


Below, subsidiary focal point. Remember 1 focal point per area.


Walls with 3D are more interesting, below.

This hand, below, charms me each time I look at it. So many metaphors and it follows the 3D landscape design rule for walls. Which metaphors do you see?


The first time I met ROSE was through an invitation to see her garden, with Penny. Of course it was a hot, humid summer day. We began inside ROSE's home. Three steps inside the frondoor I felt like I'd known ROSE always. Delighting upon antiques, art, books, garden views, & stories. ROSE invited us to refreshments at the breakfast room table overlooking the back garden through French doors. Icy cool water, tea, soda, and pound cake left from a recent lecture program. Remembering, especially, the antique silver pitcher of icy water covered in beads of condensation.
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Conversation, laughter and anticipation of soon seeing ROSE's garden.
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The garden didn't disappoint.
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More pictures of ROSE's garden are in my book, Beautiful by Design.
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XO Tara

Saturday, February 28, 2009

WHAT INSPIRES & WHAT BORES

Vanishing threshold landscapes inspire me.
House, garden & life in perfect accord.
.......... INSPIRATION. Botanical garden glass houses BORE me when I'm in them. But their pictures resonate, later.
You can pick up a few ideas. Pots on a roof, above.

A dramatic display template to copy, above.
I wanted to go down the stairwell to see the heating system. No Entry...said the silly sign.

The path, above, shouting, Walk Thru & Go Away.
.................The inspirational picture, top, shouting, Stay--Enjoy Life.

Everyone 'WALKING THRU'. No invitation to STAY. Darling, this is BORING.

Enjoying the mechanics of drainage more than the expensively glassed conservatory landscape.

Ok, I was seduced by some curves!

Nice, above, but it's landscape design boredom.

Mechanical jewelry, above. A crank to open the glass roof. Who was the man placing beauty into its function?

In the States it's rare to see a beautifully pruned hedge, above.

Curves, above, are sumptuous simplicity.

Opposite side of sumptuous simplicity, above, amusement park chic.
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Have you noticed homes with AMUSEMENT PARK CHIC LANDSCAPES aren't really homes with a gardener?
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Have you noticed homes with SUMPTUOUS SIMPLICITY LANDSCAPES are the home of an exquisite gardener?
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Oh my, how quickly I traveled from What Inspires & What Bores, to, The Sacred & The Profane.
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Often, I have to 'SELL' clients less than they ask for.
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Steering away from elements of AMUSEMENT PARK CHIC. Knowing we all go thru the landscape design archetypes..............
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Yes, I'll write more of these things later.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
Top pic via Euro Antique Market, remaining pics I took at Kew last month

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

A WINTER LANDSCAPE--A LITTLE HOWARD'S END

Enter as I did. A gap in the hedge. No hint of what lies beyond. Curious? Standing in the gap, seeing a charming garden. A small Howard's End.
Echoes of the frontdoor................
.......in the back wall of the summer house.

More evergreen hedges, below, leading where? Mystery. A potager? Clothesline? Chaise lounge for sunning nude?

Flagstone terrace, not lawn, at the house. Extending the house.
This house doesn't have a back. Each side is delightful.
Lead horse trough now a rain butt.
All the sticks & browns soon to become blossoms, calendar shots.
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Winter's bleak chic more important than the ease of spring/summer blowzy caresses.
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I didn't want to leave this Howard's End-a new clip- world-life-feeling-energy-joy.
This dirt path is landscape design brilliance. A feeling of the country in the city & cementing the idea of being in another garden room. Leaving the garden through another gap in the hedge. Tara's Golden Circle: the ability to enter/leave a garden room through 2 or more doorways. A little design trick I observed in the best of old landscapes.
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This landscape is a several hour design class but you're busy. Thanks for taking the time to walk in the garden with me.
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I shot these pics last month at the Birmingham England Botanic Garden.
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Garden & Be Well, XO T