Let Simplicity Serve Your Needs

There isn't a lot here yet the magic is intense.

Narrative.  Simplicity.  Choices.
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"What plant should I put here?", I'm asked often.  It's not the right question, in return I ask, "How do you want to live?"
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic The Vintaquarian.  Remember this trinity: Narrative.  Simplicity.  Choices.  What is your garden, today, answering?

Front Porch

Subtle, original.

 A desk on the front porch.

I must know you from the exterior of your home, before ever knocking on the door.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics from same home/garden as yesterday's post.

How to Teach Children Gardening

 Children need a lawn to play?  Children need a place for imagination to play.

Schools across USA plant vegetable plots for children to learn 'gardening'.
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That's not gardening, it's agriculture.
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Who teaches children ornamental horticulture increases agriculture yields almost double?
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Do you know how ornamental horticulture increases agricultural yields?
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic from Castles, Crowns & Cottages.  Lucky me, I've never stopped going into brambly gardens to play.  Luckier, I've had girlfriends to come with me.  Only once attracting a police chopper !  No, not caught.

Lisa Porter Collection: Vanishing Threshold

Texture, scale, flow, color, invitation, narrative, poverty cycle, light, fragrance, repetition, simplicity, intellect, ceiling, walls, floors & more.

It's all part of vanishing threshold.
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Garden & Be Well,          XO Tara
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Pic via Lisa Porter Collection.  Take the link, lots of pics, about this home by the beach.  Original article from Traditional Home July 2001.  Photos by Jon Jensen for Traditional Home

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Puppet Barbuda adores this fireplace.  Not at all reminiscent of the stone fireplaces in every flower show across USA redolent of the monolith floating amongst the galaxies at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Japanese

Invitation.  

 "...eternals as applicable in the smallest of spaces as in the vast acres of a country house garden." Sir Roy Strong.  Above, vast as a mountain range.

Water Mirror, miroir d'eau, above.

Water breaks the footprint of the Tea House, above.  Small touch, huge impact.

Looking outward, above, from the bamboo window seen coming in the entry, top pic.

Framing the view, above, for centuries this has been done.  Is a brick ca. 1960 ranch less worthy?

Hidden, then meandering, above, then spilling into the pond, below.

Why, above, do we like walking on water?

 At the minimum, 2 stones.  Male & female.  Earth & sky.  Ying & yang.  Even the shadows are benevolent.

Leaving the Japanese garden from its other side, above, into a pecan orchard.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics taken Massee Lane Garden last weekend.

Orchard Wall & Gate

Credentials.  Every element designed.  My general contractor had the audacity to ask if I sited the daffodils.
Receiving my gimlet eye, no words, he quickly backed away a couple of feet.  Literally.

I was at the jobsite this month siting the newest layer of plantings.  The guys loaded them from the grower, above, early in the morning.  My contractor spent over a week sourcing them.

Caterpillar had to be used to move each plant.  Planting holes had to be dug by hand due to electric/gas/water.

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I staked location flags for the load of plants then zipped the acreage shooting the pics you've seen the past several days.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Some of 'the guys'.  Hardworking, pleasant, humble.  Without them, no gardens.

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Considering the top pic for a logo.  Still amazed every element is designed, newly built/installed, yet Jane Austen rustic.  Everyone got it right.

Front Porch Simplicity

When the competition is an old Pecan Orchard I know to go simple, below.

Soon the tea olive, above, will engulf the end of the porch.  And then be pruned into a tunnel, for the pure life necessity of leaving the porch at its tiniest entry.  Silent Partner doesn't think this is needed.  He has his reasons, I have mine.  200 acres and I am particularly interested in this square foot.

My competition, above.  Fields, Pecan Orchard & Home, a perfect trinity.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken this month at jobsite of several recent posts.  Leaving the Pecan Orchard alone includes creating Tara Turf, siting daffodils, boxwood & historic brick path, keeping fence at the road and saying 'no' to foundation plantings.
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Another fabulous Landscape Design making me unemployable to the largest landscape design/build/maintain companies across USA.  Planned obsolescence of irrigation, keeping fence, no foundation shrubs, no zoysia, no annuals.
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MATH on what 'those' companies would lose in installation & a single decade of maintenance with my design.  New fence, irrigation system & rows-upon-rows-upon-rows of green meatball shrubs. Lawn: 2 acres sod, mowing, irrigation, pre-emergents, fertilizer, edging.  Shrubs: several prunings yearly, mulch in the beds, pre-emergents, fertilizing, replanting annuals 2/year.
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Minimum annuals charge is $500/season by the best firm (of course I use the best, Simply Flowers, & of course they are needed in many commercial, and residential situations.)  Monthly maintenance $500.  Fence $4000, irrigation $4000, mulch 350/year, chemicals/fertilizer 200/year, &  foundation shrubs $5000, 2 acres zoysia sod $52,800.
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$141,300.00 for a decade of traditional USA Landscape Design.  My Landscape Design, above, $50/month maintenance fee, no foundation plantings, no irrigation, no chemicals, no mulch, little pruning, no sod, little mowing, keep fence, no fertilizer, no annuals, $6,000 for a decade.  (A kind woman, I give away the concrete foundation expense of the brick path, mine are in dirt.  Otherwise add another $5000)
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$135,300.00 difference. 
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Has the math sunk in?  
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My work/style is not meant to save money, yet it does.  It's historic Italian.  Enfilade from the interior of the home, pollinator habitat, a thanks to Providence, a joy to look at and live within.  When away on vacation my gardens are carried in the heart with a yearning to know everything while gone & return soon.  If you can leave at all.
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Chill Pill Urban Ag!  There are other ways in this industry to make money.  Ask Silent Partner !  Thank you for letting me be on your Outreach team.

Lunch Ministry

Lunch Ministry.

Wildly productive.

Who do you target?  Why?

Providence conspired, for decades, to include Lunch Ministry in every Garden Design I create.

I say to certain clients. "You will have lunch and invite ________.  You'll join your Garden Club & host a meeting.  You will find a local Garden Tour, contact them and be included.  Friend getting married?  You will host a gathering.  You will send pics of your garden to xyz magazine."

She was gathering materials, above, for our lunch.  Things to talk about, information to share, not wanting to forget to include anything during our lunch.
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These things are not done for others.  Lunch Ministry is for you.  Your spirit.  Giving away what has been liberally given to you.  What you get back is profound & humbling.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken at jobsite this month.  Same client as several previous posts.  Please tell me you know what to do with the dirty dishes at Lunch Ministry.

Guest Room

Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language, says bedrooms are best with windows on 2 walls.  

Windows on 2 walls in their guest room, above/below, With the good fortune of a

 fireplace too.  Local pottery, & feathers from their pastures.

 Outside the windows, below.

This doesn't mean much to you now, below, it is

foliage & buds for summer's blooms.  The native oakleaf hydrangea.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pics taken at a client this month.  Same home/garden as previous several posts.  2 regions of the brain are accessed with the camellia & oakleaf hydrangea.  Wish I could see a scan of it!  At least I know the joy of what it FEELS like.  Too bad for non-gardeners, they aren't wired for this brain cocaine.    .
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Will get this entire room for you this year, promise.  You'll love the bathroom.  Views of the back porch......  And you haven't seen the bed yet.

Poverty Cycle Into the Music Room

The library across the hall, previous post, is moody with northeastern light.  The music room, below, hums in southeastern light.

Eastern light, below, in the mirror, southern light, window above.

The garden view, below, is one of my proudest achievements.

I took the garden, a century old, to its Southern roots in time & place.  Using the Poverty Cycle.  Looking in the window, below, seen, above.

Tara Turf to the foundation, granite curbstone step instead of green-meatball-foundation-plantings, drifts of daffodils as-if-they-were-always-there.
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Plenty of areas to play & show off in this garden, and I have, but without using the Poverty Cycle the garden would lack soul, character, integrity, & have too-much-uneducated-ego.  Of course you've deduced, this is my ego, above.  This is a portion of the front porch, hence, double ego!
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pics taken last week at jobsite.  Same garden as previous several posts.
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Ego for doing-the-right-thing makes me unemployable to the largest design/install companies across USA.  Why?  It's all about sales.  Are you beginning to understand the prevalence of green meatballs & foundation plantings and, and, and?
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Oh my, a little Puppet Barbuda this morning.  Uneducated ego?  Testosterone-on-wheels-mow-blow-go-commodify-all-I-touch-get in fast-get out fast-sign my contract-pay me every month.  Sad, you'll pay later in lower house value, higher HVAC, increase maintenance expenses, poison  ground water with fertilizer, destroy pollinator habitat, and worse, harm your spirit with ugliness.  

Design Interiors From Outside

Front porch, below.

 Lamp seen from the front porch, above, and from inside, below.

Further to the left of the lamp, below.

You do know this already?  Interiors must be gorgeous from every garden view.
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Your home is the focal point of the garden.
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Walking with new clients, around their garden, seeing an ugly interior view I will turn my head, look into their eyes and my right eyebrow goes up.  Enough said.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pics taken at jobsite last week.  Same home as previous several posts.

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.

A Central Hallway

 Over a century old, the home has a long & wide central hallway copying the dogtrots of old.  Back-in-the-day it was 'air-conditioning'.

Now, it's a place for extra chairs.  Easy to grab for gatherings in other parts of her home.

Cannot imagine the first matriarch of this acreage outside Athens, Ga.  Summertime with no cooling, cooking dinner, and breakfast, daily.  No cell phone, internet.  Only her man, children & workers for interaction.  Laundry, with clothesline, a great effort + time.  Harvesting the kitchen garden, canning.

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Epiphany.  No wonder rural Southerners were tightly bound to their church.

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Women taking the edge off.  Meet & greet comrades in life, unload frustrations, share joys.  Get the gossip, trade successes/failures on life topics.  Hopefully get a good sermon.  Enough to manage another week.

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All this from a dogtrot.    

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pics taken last week at jobsite.  Same foyer as previous 2 posts.

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Women In History was an elective I took for my engineering degree.  It ignored physical discomfort & religion.    

A Foyer View

Doorways, rooms, and an upstairs landing, a myriad of garden views, flood natural lite into the foyer.

I must get each of those garden pictures, from the foyer, next time at this jobsite.
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Garden views from this foyer are enough for a garden design book.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken last week at jobsite.  Same home/garden as yesterday's post.

Foyer & Front Porch

Foyer, below, with garden light.

Window, above, from the front porch, below.

It's my job, vanishing threshold, getting it right.
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This project  uses my entire team: interior decorator, general contractor, foreman, crew team & equipment, carpenter + team, mason+team, pruner+team & of course the homeowner.  We are 3 centuries of experience.
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With no weak links.  Communication flows.  Every ego wanting to know what is not right or not working, how else to get it right?
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And we all love getting dirty.  Homeowner too.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken at jobsite yesterday.

Consider Everything

Really?

You think we don't see the grill killing the views?
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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I can hear the lovely terra cotta pots from here, "How dare they put that thing with us."
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Pic Cote de Texas.

The Camera Test

It's not often we get to see inside, below,

and go outside the same room, below, a century earlier.

Did you know this is how to test your garden?  Take pics in black/white, is the year obvious?  It shouldn't be.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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pics Ottoline Divine.