Simplicity is the Best Garden Design

Tasha Tudor chose one of the most powerful quotes, as the sign off to her letter writing, Take Joy.
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Take Joy.
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Did you get it?  Had you already had the epiphany?
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Doesn't seem possible.  Yet it's true.  Joy is always present.  'Take', is up to you.
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Pic, above, here.
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Green Meatballs have irritated me for decades, then this, above.  How could I not laugh?  Apparently I adore green boxes and wedges.
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Recognize the stone path, above ?  Variation of the centuries old stone wheelbarrow paths.
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Hint of Tara Turf, above, too.  Meadows of Tara Turf, pure pollinator habitat.  Tara Turf under fruit trees historically named, guilds.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Evergreens/trees, meadow, home, above/below.  Relationships.  Core connections.  House to garden, garden to Nature, us to garden, Nature to us. 
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At the front end, decades ago, I could not be this simple, above/below.  Not for me, I was still too special, knew so little, thought I knew something.  Now, the garden, above, reeks of sacred & scientific wisdom.  A gift from centuries of the best minds.  In conversation with us, if we'll listen.
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Simple?  I see layers of complexity, above.  At the front end, for years, I saw none of the complexity.  Complexity?  Aka, layers of riches. 
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Pic, above, here.
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Squished smaller, the meadow, below, is a brick terrace.  Variations on a theme.
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Pic, above, here.
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Pic, above, here.
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In all seasons, below, these gardens delight.  Design your garden for February, and you've designed it for all year.  No matter the style of your design.
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Pic, above, here.
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Aside from natural affinities of placement, house to meadow, house to hedges, house to allees, which reign, I assess an odd secondary reigning power.  Furniture.  Where do you want to sit, where do you want to eat, where do you want to visit with friends, where do you want to nap, where do you want to read....?
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Aside from the bonuses of complexity with gardening simply, these are the gardens going full measure, into age, theirs and yours, and into the Great Beyond*.  "Three chords, and truth.", as they described early Country music.
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If you aren't sure about a garden this 'simple' it's apparent, they allow you to fill in, to a greedy heart's content, with flowers/flowers/flowers.  Begin with flowers/flowers/flowers, please do.  It's how I get the majority of my clients.
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Simplicity of these gardens is a liturgy of Nature, if you see their complexity.  Nothing we have to do, everything done by Nature, for us.
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"Nothing is ever solved. Solving is an illusion. There are moments of spontaneous brightness, when the mind appears emancipated, but that is mere epiphany."  Patti Smith
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And I've been the epiphany hunter, for decades, in my garden.  
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"There’s no hierarchy. That’s the miracle of a triangle. No top, no bottom, no taking sides. Take away the tags of the Trinity — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — and replace each with love. See what I mean? Love. Love. Love. Equal weight encompassing the whole of so called spiritual existence."  Patti Smith
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And I've broken layers of Garden Design into trinities, for decades.  
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 "Just negotiating zones. No rules. No change. But then everything eventually changes. It’s the way of the world. Cycles of death and resurrection, but not always in the way we imagine."  Patti Smith
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And I've had decades with little change.  Saturday, driving the Blue Ridge Parkway, a World Heritage Site, coming back, Beloved asked which way I wanted to go.  Another highway or the Blue Ridge Parkway again.  Depths within answered, "What is first will be last, and what is last will be first."  Oddly, Beloved got it & he's not normally Metaphor Man.  
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Benediction, returning, along the Blue Ridge Parkway.  
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“The grounds for hope are in the shadows, in the people who are inventing the world while no one looks, who themselves don’t know yet whether they will have any effect…”  Rebecca Solnit
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Hope is like joy, it's always there, if we take.  

“You too have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.”  Mary Oliver
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We have great help along the way, with unseen partners, heroes, liberators, teachers, lovers, and none must necessarily be human.  Gardens do this.  Whether you think so or not.
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For better and worse, growing up, my dad was an engineer, part of a team of 50 great engineers first to put man on the moon.  Will never forget something he said about electricity, "We know how to use electricity, but we don't know what it is." 
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His lone sentence, about electricity, informs beyond its basics, if you take it to.
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Recently, discovering trees use electrical current, no different than we have pulsing in our brain or heart, to communicate, I knew, finally, my communicating with gardens wasn't merely feel-good-mumbo-jumbo, nor one-way.  Science caught up, to what Garden Whisperers have understood from birth.  
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"Yes, trees are the foundation of forests, but a forest is much more than what you see… Underground there is this other world — a world of infinite biological pathways that connect trees and allow them to communicate and allow the forest to behave as though it’s a single organism. It might remind you of a sort of intelligence."  Suzanne Simard
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From Brain Pickings, "Simard, whose research was foundational to German forester Peter Wohlleben’s wildly popular book The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate, discusses her work and the improbable path that led her to it in her wonderful full-length TED talk: "  

Garden & Be Well,   XO T

If you have no time now, mental mark to watch later.  Stunning.
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A hoot, thinking back in college Horticulture would be rather safe from new discoveries.  Dunce hat thinking.
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Earlier this month Beloved & I went to Brasstown Bald, highest elevation in Georgia.  After touring the museum, I debated speaking to the Ranger about the museum's outdated 'science' of flora in the region.
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You know I did.
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Ranger's face was frozen at 90 mph wind force.  And I had mentally prearranged my delivery manner to him in advance.  So.  You watch the TED film about how Trees Communicate, tell me how it goes ............................................................................................................
My little story about driving the Blue Ridge Parkway earlier?  First time to be in a true forest, after seeing this TED talk, above.  Changes everything.  How clueless we must be about so much more upon this Earth.     
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Thank you to everyone keeping up with Beloved.  His procedure with chemo beads into the liver cancer zone went well.  His liver transplant was delayed a year due to the prostate cancer.  He must be clear of prostate cancer recurrence for a year due to immunosuppressants given after transplant.  Those drugs make any cancer grow minimum 10x faster.
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We're considering this year a sweet spot of time.  And it already is.
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* Leonard Cohen.....and the Great Beyond, below.

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Tom Jones - Tower Of Song - YouTube

Agrarian vs. Industrialized vs. You

Gardens begin inside your home.  Looking out.
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Your home is the garden's backdrop.
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The Agrarian & Pastoral ideal.  Idyll.  For you.  Now.  No matter the global industrialized anthropocene stew driving markets, and life.
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Agrarian.  More than sustainable.  Regenerative.
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More than regenerative.  Transcendent.  "If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need."  Marcus Tullius Cicero, Jan. 3, 106 BC - Dec. 7, 43 BC.
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Why consider Agrarian?  Why choose Agrarian?  Why be Agrarian though industrialized?  Sacred vs. profane, reality vs. grace.  The shorthand of Agrarian is unspoken, mostly, but well spoken, from birth, within.  "...the division between practical reason and aesthetic understanding is in fact untenable, and that until the relation between the two is re-established they must both remain impoverished."  Sir Roger Scruton.
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His back isn't facing you, below, he's telling you there is a life of transcendence inside.  Join us, please come inside.   



Pic, above, here.
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"Aim for the chopping block.  If you aim for the wood you will have nothing.  Aim past the wood, aim thru the wood; aim for the chopping block."  Annie Dillard.

 
Pic, above, here.
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"Hone & spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff."  Annie Dillard

 
Pic, above, here.
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"You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment."  Annie Dillard
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"If you cultivate a healthy poverty & simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then since the world is in fact 'planted' in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days."  Annie Dillard.
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Understand what the back of his robe is saying, top pic, this is Nature's gift, telling us the stories of life.  Nothing less than your life, in all its fullness.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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I take no credit for this deep need for Agrarian gardens, it came unbidden.  Since age 3, I knew.  Didn't know what I knew, no words, adults certainly weren't talking about the things 'I knew'.   More, I've always known I work for 'Tara', known I had a lane of my own.  Thought everyone had the same.   Amusing what we get right, what we get wrong, oblivious to both in error at times.

Karl Lagerfeld Riffs on Henri Matisse: The HenriKarl Garden

Today I saw the Nature work of Karl Lagerfeld & Henri Matisse, below.
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The HenriKarl Garden.
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Karl, its inventor, got on with it as if merely another breath to take.  None of the baggage Picasso seemed to have with Matisse.



Decades working with show gardens, few know how rare it is to create a show garden, fresh, unique, makes a statement.  More importantly, displays as a garden.





Pics, above, here.
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Why has no one manufactured these garden cutouts of Karl's?  Fake plants are sold, these are better than fake plants, they're Art.  A riff from Karl on Henri.  From their most sacred origins.
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Pic, above, here.
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I'll never forget the Matisse Cut-Outs Show at Atlanta's High Museum.  Seeing the first exhibit, and it takes every fiber of body/mind/spirit merely to remain standing and not fall-out.
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Matisse, above, here.
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Matisse Cut-Outs, above, here.

 
Pic, above, Karl Lagerfeld quote, here.
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Trinity of Matisse quotes, above, from, here.
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Seriously, why has no one manufactured and sold the HenriKarl Garden Cut-Outs?
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

Truth: Where Your Garden Design Begins

"......the facial feathers fanned into a sonic satellite dish dispersing sound to unlevel ears, one positioned higher than the other to help the owl locate its prey in three dimensions."  Maria Popova.
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Makes perfect sense.  Truth.

 
Pic, above, here. 
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Too often, truth is not our starting point, instead, we settle for facts.  Facts comfortably turned into information.  Worse, information elevated to wisdom.     
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I knew the garden, above, had a truth.  What?  I could not articulate it, nor create it.  Too busy using that American Horticulture degree, with its starting point a pure 180 from the truth, above.   Off to the historic gardens across Europe for 2 decades.  Truth was intuited in the first garden the first trip.  How could I not go back so often.  Now?  The imperative is to design gardens.

Garden Design is not a voodoo, let me make this up, oh I love plants x--y--z......, I must adhere to the HOA, these plants are on sale so they're perfect, let me do what my neighbors do and other such 'wisdom' without a base in truth.
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Each layer of Garden Design flows from a truth.  Great news, it means you've got this.  Better, you're working with Providence and centuries of the greatest Garden Design minds Earth has known. 
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In America, a Garden Design truth, above, most often not 'seen'.  How can you begin your Garden Design if you don't know the ears must be unlevel?   
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Truth, above, Garden Design begins inside your home, looking out.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

Do You Have Poyeema With Your Garden?

Last year, in Texas again, caretaking mom, days began early & ended late.  Mom was constant care, I was up 4:30-5am to get in my 'reading' before she awoke.  Those mornings were spent in the formal living room, unchanged since 1965, facing Galveston Bay, and a rising sun.  Coffee, journal, pen, reading on the phone. 


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One of those mornings, 7-15-18 in my journal, a word I knew existed, had to, hunted for, but never found, was finally discovered in a link within someone's comment on a political blog.     
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Gardening needs a word for its action steps, aka, working in the garden or garden chores.  Needed articles, but within reason, not-all-the-time.  Gardening is the art treated as a PSA equal to, use sunscreen, eat right, don't smoke.  Drive thru neighborhoods and how many good gardens do you see?  This doesn't include gardens solely well maintained, or merely matching HOA rules, but truly good gardens, beauty upon this Earth, and in our lives. 
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Decades looking, I found the word describing 'my' time in the garden.


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Poyeema.  It's Greek.  Do you know it?  I had never seen 'poyeema' written or heard it spoken.  Yet I have lived its meaning.  The link I followed, here. 
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Poyeema is mentioned twice in the bible. 
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"In Romans 1:18-20 the Apostle Paul declares that ungodly men are “without excuse” because they are surrounded by the evidences of the Creator’s “eternal power and Godhead.”

Our Authorized Version calls the creation, in this passage, “the things that are made,” but in the Greek it is called literally “the poyeema,” from which we get our word poem. The Apostle refers, of course, to the harmony of God’s creation, and is it not indeed amazing how billions of heavenly bodies can continually revolve in the vastness of space and never collide! And are not the flowers, the seasons, the sunsets all part of a harmonious creation, which God alone could have conceived and set to music?", here. 

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"Ephesians 2:10 – For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

The word “workmanship” is the Greek word poyeema and means a thing made, a thing produced, with effort and design. In Ephesians 2:10, poyeema literally is in reference to us who are His masterpieces. We can literally define the word poyeema as poetry in motion for our lives are ordained by God", here. 

'Romans is a poem of creation, and Ephesians is a poem of redemption...'
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Years of gardening poyeema on my blog, in my books, on my TV show, at my lectures, in client gardens.  A poetry of workmanship.  Joy in the doing, grace in the results.
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How to garden?  The 'traditional' method of garden writing?  Not my niche.  But I do have a favorite 'traditional' how-to garden writing resource, she talks to your intellect, and life.
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Ca. 1998 I had the good fortune to hear Margaret Roach speak in Atlanta, she had just written a book, A Way to Garden.  Margaret was perfection.  Then something awful happened, but good too I suppose, she received a promotion at Martha Stewart.  Martha knew a good thing.  But it hemmed Margaret, in my opinion.  Finally, Margaret retired from Martha Stewart and began her blog, A Way to Garden.  Lucky us. 


All pics, above, from A Way to Garden, about Jenny Elliot of Tiny Hearts Farm.
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Humbling to realize Providence created all in grace, and poetry of workmanship, for us, yet went further, giving us our own poyeema, to take, or not.  The poetry and workmanship are there, awaiting, whether we believe, or not.
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Have you had this?  Poyeema, maybe never thought about it but knew there was something there, something without words, but every good feeling?
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So went my days last year, caretaking mom, epiphanies, laughter, hardwork, tears, joy, grace.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Notice the dry humor about finding poyeema?  Sure, let's look in the comments of a political blog, find a link, take the link, and there it is.....the big shiny sparkling word searched for decades..... 
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TV show?  That was awhile ago, hosting my own show on CBS and a lot of fun, and I approached it with a mission statement full of poyeema.
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Who's the lucky one reading this far already knowing poyeema?   

The Garden Goes in Myriad Ways: Into Your Lymphatic System & Amygdala

"Some people can read Tolstoy's 'War and Peace', and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story.  Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe."  Lex Luther from Superman.
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Pic, above, here.
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Terra cotta pots in a conservatory, above, travel directly to my amygdala and throughout my lymphatic system.  Most about gardens & Nature does. 

 
Pic, above, here.
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What does this mean for seeing pots inside, above/below?  Their redolence is layered in activities initiated upon my amygdala and lymphatic system.
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Merely from photos.
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You too?
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Yes?  We're born, not made this way.  Born with the awareness of Nature, more, knowing we are merely borrowed Nature ourselves. 


Pic, above, here.
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Pic, above, here.
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Oddly, I feel this way, seeing a single pot inside, in a photo, as much as being in a garden.  Yet, upon different layers, in addition to the layers when it's merely a single pot inside.
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Shakespeare's arrows pierce, and ring true, his method is 'suspension of disbelief, allowing truth to hit emotions.'  Epiphany of a Truth.  I don't know why all the above is true, I just know it's true. 
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I've stayed in my garden lane all my life.  Ejected from my lane, at times, courtesy of 'life', is sometimes like walking into the bar scene from Star Wars.
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Are you this kind of Garden Whisperer too?  Have you ever outed yourself this way?  Feel this way, but don't have the words?  Feel this way, yet have different words, same words but further words?
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Mos Eisley is a spaceport town in the fictional Star Wars universe.... The ' insalubrious' cantina is described as a dark, sinister bar full of "one-eyed creatures and thousand-eyed, creatures with scales, creatures with fur".  More from Wiki, here. 

How to Choose Simpler to Have More

"Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment."  Will Rogers.
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I could fill this garden spot, below, with friends at lunch, or a soiree in the evening, enjoying both.  Mostly, I would fill it up alone.  A spot to work with laptop, or paper, properly provisioned with journals at the ready, and book/s, a glass of water.  At weekend, gardening is added, various tools/baskets set atop the table, a few vases brought for clippings made into arrangements for the week.  The best clippings bushes, those arrangements sometimes last months.  Birds above, cats milling, water fountain on lowest pressure, scents wafting across the meadow.  Alone, at table, or in the garden, "...one's inner voices become audible (and) in consequence, one responds more clearly to other lives."  Wendell Berry.  And what lives, especially E.M. Forster, often Joseph Campbell, the Stoics, Beverly Nichols, Christopher Lloyd, Sir Roy Strong, Helen Dillon, etc...
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All for the privilege of making a choice.  At the front end, I named these choices 'selfish', blessedly, in epiphany, I know these choices are purest grace. 
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Putting the trinity of intelligence, diligence, wisdom against letting-it-be.  Letting-it-be upfront, day one, too small, worse, a cage.  'Fertile solitude....the basic unit of a full & contented life.'
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In the garden, a place to be at peace with "The part of us that's smart & funny but also lost & broken."  Bathing away life out of the garden, people not making choices for beauty, elegance, wisdom.  Not that I succeed at wisdom greatly or often, knowing the effort is more than half way there.  'It's not what happens to you, it's what you do when it does', a favorite cliche.  The blame game has no elegance, instead I ask questions that don't know there is blame.   
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You've read this far, you're a garden whisperer.
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Yet, are you new to this?  What?  This garden world, this garden life, this garden portal of your own?  With, 'conviction, commitment & conscience', plan your landscape, each will return greater in forms you've never known, but always knew.


Pic, above, here.
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So.  People who will never read this far, never achieve a garden/landscape beyond builder grade?  "Good guy, bad guy narratives might not possess any moral sophistication, but they do promote social stability...."  Catherine Nichols.
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Builder grade landscapes survived/thrived for decades.  Now their toxicity to soil, water, wildlife, insects has reached proportions affecting our own health, individually & collectively.  The garden, above, has stepped away from builder grade.  Its plinth is agrarian/pastoral, not industrialized.
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Martha Washington used these tables, above, merely planks atop saw horses.  Chairs?  Start resourcing at garage sales & thrift stores, field gathered.  Paint them all the same color.  A color from your exterior color trinity, of course.
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Wish I could say I chose gardening.  No, wasn't that smart.  Instead, one of the few born into it.  Literally.
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Pic, above, here.
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Hope you already own, An Island Garden, by Celia Thaxter.  She's one of those audible inner voices heard clearly, in my garden.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

Branches in a Vase: Talent Not Required

Constance Spry trained dozens of floral designers.  She said it  mattered not their skills/talents, floral arranging is easily taught.  Perhaps, if she's the one directly teaching.  No Constance in my life, nor floral arranging skills, yet plenty of talent for making choices and following up with action steps.
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I dared tread into the realm of branches in a vase.  No talent, no budget.  Pure desire.
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Paying attention to types of vases, numbers of branches, scale to the room, and macro-silhouette.  Vases sourced from local thrift stores, branches from side of the road, and bushes needing a bit of pruning in my yard.   


Pic, above, here.
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Last year my life took a turn most lives take at some point.  My schedule was not my own.  Moms trump everything, and my mom was sick.  With the chaos of leaving my life, and helping mom in Texas, the imperative to cut branches and put into vases throughout my house became paramount.
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Pure Miss Katherine Scott, "I can live without the necessities, but I must have the luxuries."

 
 Pic, above, here.
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Blessedly my heart did not follow my head, and I did place branches in vases in several rooms at home.  Time for this, seriously?  Nonsense.  But the soul/muse spoke, and I was too emotional to be balanced.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Hunting and gathering the cuttings became a form of prayer.  Mom's illness was the first thing in my adult life pushing me into care giving another soul, and taking me away from my work.
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With great appreciation I learned helping mom is a joy of recompense, she never wanted children and lived a life she didn't want.  Unable to have my own children, her illness made me realize, mom was my ticket onto this incredible Earth.       

 
Pic, above, here.
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Choosing branches in vases, more than a few, why not go full-monty-wacko in how I spend what little time I have at home?  The joy in doing, too great to pass by.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Coming home from weeks away in Texas helping mom, several times last year, those branches in vases, awaiting me, I knew, were, oddly,  loving sentinels.  Those branches in vases became stewards of my heart, its loving and hurting were tended.
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What drama about a few branches in vases.  I was born twined with a garden, wasn't until my 20's realizing most people are not.
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Another thing I know.  You need zero skill to create a beautiful vase of stems.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

Gardening is Ritual Whether Begun As Sacred or Profane

In the garden is the ritual of life.
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How very satisfying, upon a winter's day, walking by a window, having put this garden, below, upon Earth.  A moment in perfect poetry answering why every galaxy, every star, every atom, every void was created, for this exact moment.
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In the ritual, love.  A manner to 'take joy', whether joy is obviously present, or not.  Joy is always present.  In a garden how can you not get life's 'Take Joy' memo?


Pic, above, here.
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"For Indigenous Australians, ritual sings the natural world into continued life, in a diffuse and enspirited relationship between the Dreamtime ‘past’ and the present. The Dreamtime surrounds the present, having created the landscape and order of the world, giving meaning and profundity to life and reflecting cosmic order, while rituals of the ‘ordinary’ present, in turn, sustain the ‘extraordinary’ Dreamtime order."
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"In the dominant culture, ritual is often a stale, wilted word, as dusty and songless as Christmas decorations glimpsed in midsummer. Many people profess no clear religion and lack formal rites, and yet, even in ritual-poverty, a yearning persists to rekindle it from a stub of a candle, a petal and a word. There is a perceptible need for that numinous Other Place to which ritual gives passport – where no one is exiled and none a foreigner, and there is a defiant fecundity in contemporary ways of answering that need to give wishes wings."
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" The poiesisor making of beauty, not the possessing of it, is the kind associated with art or poetry.  Meanwhile, the effect of making beauty, a Balinese taxi driver told me, is that ‘your mind is surprised and happy. Beauty makes you feel pure, and purity is necessary for prayer.’ " 
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"In the canang saris, flowers are the symbol of beauty, and flowers attend rituals all over the world: flowers for birth and death, the doorways of life, flowers for social doorways, for guests and hosts, flowers to honour and to thank with the lightest touch – a petal-weight of unimpeachable beauty. You don’t have to believe in god to believe in the radiant divinity of flowers and their beneficent efficacy."
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" Flowering plants are quite literally a source of life; according to the botanist Walter Judd at the University of Florida: ‘If it weren’t for flowering plants, we humans wouldn’t be here.’ They are necessary, but they also illustrate the margins of grace beyond necessity – a rhapsody of colour where life sings: such is the veridical beauty of flowers. In terms of evolutionary aesthetics, the beauty of flowers is primal – they have sung a soft serenade for 130 million years, and their beauty was there before we humans were there to see it. And perhaps after."
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"The sweet paradox of small daily rituals is that the ordinary is intensified into the sacred through the numinousness of the absolutely commonplace, an illustration of immanent divinity, demonstrating that all it takes to find cascades of enchantment is a tender attention in which the natural living world is blessed by the psyche, and the psyche by the natural world. Ritual sculpts, shapes and polishes the spirit in a fineness of mind, the hearth of the heart tended and made more tender by the delicate touch of something little more than a thank you. So the slightest of ritual magic, turning on a breath, might open doorways on to a future; and life might be protected by a petal and the holiness of prayers."  All quotes, above, by   Jay Griffiths , award-winning author and contributor to The Guardian and Orion magazine.  She lives in Wales.  
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In my garden, living with my garden around the house, and in my heart, became, along the way, love, grace, joy, and ritual for surviving on this Earth.
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Take Joy, indeed.  
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Full article with the quotes, above, Aeon.

A Pair of Landscapes: Exactly Alike Yet Opposites

Within constraints of sacred vs. profane the world takes away so much of our life, why give it more?  Merely targeting industrialized residential landscapes ca. 1945 to present, in USA. 
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This pair of landscapes, below, are opposites in style, yet both have style centuries older than industrialized landscapes.  What style is that?  Agrarian/pastoral.  More, both landscapes focus on the house and its inhabitants/guests, as proscenium and star.  A sweet pairing, life is the focus, not life maintaining the landscape. 
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Pic, above, here.
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Top pic appears modern, bottom pic appears historic.  More, their style, appropriated to other sites, becomes new again, unique.
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Ambition and aspiration are both of great value.  Yet how they are mixed, and their changing percentages given across our life, even a day, show in our material lives.  Ambition and aspiration should be in the landscape, with aspiration weighted heaviest, they've made the best landscapes for centuries across continents and cultures. 
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Industrialized landscapes stop at mere ambition.  Agrarian/pastoral landscapes, even with a bit of industrialization tossed in, have ambition, but their aspirations are greater. 
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What does this mean?  'Ambition is what we want to achieve and aspiration is who we want to become.' 
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Pic, above, here.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Seeing agrarian/pastoral landscapes as a child, there were a few, compared to thousands of industrialized, I saw generosity of spirit, welcoming arms, a rich conversation, fun, intelligence, secrets, home, love.


Pic, above, here.
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Hedges, trees, & a meadow/gravel terrace is the trinity for agrarian/pastoral, and the new modern industrialized landscape.  Be like Iris, know how you can get away with anything.       

 
Pic, above, here.
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Grief, when it comes, I take into the garden.  At least I know what the garden will do.  A new grief?  Never know what it will do.
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Pic, above, here.
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Your landscape should tell me who you are from the curb.  If I see a photo of your patio, it must be so fabulous I have to go inside your home, and wander the garden.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Gardens have always been places of light and love, to me, from earliest childhood, and respite from the darkness & hate that comes in measure to all.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Perhaps it was not being able to have children, I never had to give her, above, up.  Ever.  No worries if you've never gardened this passionately, there is no age limit to start. 
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Get dirty?  When I garden there are bruises, blood, time ceases yet expands, hunger doesn't exist, epiphanies arrive, grief has a place to harbor for awhile, forgiveness is given but feels like a bestowal.....
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT

An Interior Design Trick To Use In Your Garden Design

Garden Designs are Interior Designs.  I cannot do a Garden Design without seeing a home's interiors.  Table & chest & mantle surfaces dictate, happily, how I will design particular spaces in a client's garden.  Obviously, more in a home inform a good Garden Design, but only using the table/chest/mantle surface feast, below, for now.
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My grandmother, Laura, could play the piano from newspaper/magazine/book writing.  When you're Appalachian poor, you figure it out.  Using interior surfaces for Garden Design 'playing' comes from my grandmother Laura, I assume, and glad of it.
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Garden Design, below, is a backdrop hedge, pair of evergreen large shrubs or a pair of trees, and a drift of 2 shrubs, with a single accent shrub modestly sited as focal point from the drift of shrubs.
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Easy, yes?  Now you understand my grandmother Laura too. 


Pic, above, here.
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This Garden Design, below, a bit more challenging without seeing the rest of the house.  A backdrop hedge, pair of understory trees, evergreen groundcover carpeting the space, and a focal point  subtle in scale at center. 

 
Pic, above, here.
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Now you are good at table/chest/mantle top Garden Designs too, yes?
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Been doing this so long it's an amusement to peruse a home the first time, looking for copied echoes.  Have not had a home with different brain wave surface decorating between rooms yet, they all flow.  Interesting.
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Many times a client hires me because they've become 'stuck', not knowing what to do next in their landscape.  Historic Garden design is so modern in its templates there is never a reason to truly be 'stuck' for Garden Design ideas.
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With good gardens on tour it's enjoyable noting the interior shapes/forms moving from inside to outside.  The best gardens never display their true genesis.  Inside & outside are one, Vanishing Threshold.
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Garden & Be Well,    XOT

How to Make Your Landscape MORE YOU

What is the first rule of Garden Design?  Excellent question, knowing rules are not for me.  Excepting, when rules make me, MORE me.  Same template for the well-heeded mantra, Less-Is-More, yet occasionally that mantra best completed with, More-Is-Less.  Perhaps knowing when Faux Geometry is more geometric than true geometry.
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Get the point?  Good.  The best life points have no clear words.
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Back to you, and making you More you with Garden Design rules.  First rule of Garden Design, COPY.
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Garden Design, below, has been created at all price points and throughout recorded history, thousands of years.
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Vanishing Threshold, simplicity, sky, canopy, understory, walls, floors, focal point, color, texture, flow, seasons, scent, sound & etc.
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What brings this Garden Design alive?  In the moment, it is dogs playing.  Perhaps your permutation of this Garden Design, below, would have a sundial, about where the dogs are playing, maybe your grandchildren, perhaps a harvest table and dear friends for dinner.....


Pic, above, here.
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Writing this post I 'see' the portrait, history, and a memory.  Studying historic gardens in  England, we were on a ferry and our teacher pointed to a stately home on shore, large, pretty, extensive gardens, old, "The man who built that home was in the slave trade, international slave trade."
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Visceral knowledge, no words.
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Gardens & politics are often combined.  Not going there, today.  Excepting the pairing of gardens as refuge from the evils of politics.
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Amazingly, Gardens as refuge, is the same as, the-more-we-go-inward-the-more-we-outwardly-connect.
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Odd but true, use Garden Design rules to be more YOU, delve deep into your garden lifestyle, and connect more to the World.  Would believe none of this, excepting the living of it.  Was not seeking any of this, merely, a pretty garden.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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All Garden Design Rules are in previous posts....I know...must do that ebook, finally.  Ironic, 5 books written with real publishers, set on the coffee table, yet no ebook.  Saw my childhood piano teacher last week.  She shared with Beloved how I was a hard student to teach because I wanted to be in charge of what I played, so she worked in that framework, and the rest, is music, and a pupil taught well.  Receiving my horticulture degree, knew it was junk, and that was the start of decades across Europe studying historic gardens.  Only mention these odd things because I was certainly not the personality to follow ANY rules.  Kept digging, and what did I find?  RULES.  Providence laughs.

Flow: First Layer of Design

In college, Garden Design taught flow, flow of turf, and flow of beds.
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Pitiful.
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Pic, above, here.
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At the time, I knew the education received was no good, for me.
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Flow was not on my radar, up front.  Intuitively knew, turf and beds with their in-curves and out-curves were aliens.  To me.
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Decades of touring historic gardens across Europe, with a horticultural guide, taught the methods of designing a true Garden.  If you want turf, foundation plantings, in-curves/out-curves, mow-blow-go, annuals, don't stop at this blog, keep moving.  Plenty of resources want your business, and happy to have you sign their contract.  I'm not for you.
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Historic gardens flow from your home, historic gardens flow from your life, historic gardens flow richly, adding layers of joy, grace, beauty to the site, more importantly to your life. 
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Seeing the quote, above, made me smile.  First thing I do, designing any garden, is consider Flow.  Not plants.  Flow.
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Is Flow in your quiver of Garden Design arrows? 
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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What would be best, to teach flow, is have a real garden, put it on paper, begin its Garden Design.  And talk you thru it as you watch, in a seminar format, no more than 20 students.  Of course, doing this after power points on each layer of Garden Design.  Your first assignment?  Entire class must design a garden, the same garden.  No peeking at each others work.  No worries, anyone wildly out of flow, I will nudge in proper direction.
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No names on any design.  All designs go on the wall.  We walk/talk them all.  What you learn from wrong choices in the works as important as what is correct/magic in the designs on the wall.
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Heads-up, the hardest garden to design?  Your own.