Where to Site a Garden Focal Point

In the garden, your house is the main focal point.

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For centuries, this, below, has worked.

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If something has worked for centuries, there is a reason.

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And, it will work for you.

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Urn on plinth.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Never had a college instructor or seminar speaker say, In the garden your home is the focal point.

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Why?

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What did those 'experts' miss?  Paint colors on the home, lighting, hardware, views into windows, style choices, where to correctly site exterior focal points.  For starters.

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Most common question I receive, Where should I put this plant?

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If only that were the question.

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Garden design is about where to put a plant?

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Hardly.

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Pic via Jennings & Gates: Notes from a Virginia Country House.  

Art on the Walls in Interior Design

Have you had this epiphany, Your garden views are art on the wall.

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No?
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Once you do your garden, and life, will change.
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Beautiful garden, beautiful life.  Vanishing threshold.
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More, the beautiful life awaiting is beyond the limitations of filthy lucre.
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These are the gardens I design.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic via Cote de Texas.  Why waste a moment on this earth designing green meatballs, a lawn, and annual beds for testosterone-on-wheels-mow-blow-go-commodify-all-I-touch?  The post-WWII-industrial landscape Monsanto & Ortho & Scotts sell to?  My landscapes are agrarian, historically based to enrich the soil, watershed, pollinator habitat & soul.    

Garden Design + Interior Design

Garden Design begins inside your home.  Ginger Barber interior design, below.

If the lane is indeed a dirt drive to this home I, seriously,  swoon.
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A trinity for Barber's work, " Designing beach houses, farm house and ruralist." 
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In a single picture, above, a several week class on garden design & interior design can be taught.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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pic Ginger Barber.   First seen at Cote de Texas.  Pure vanishing threshold.

Garden Design: Designed to Handle the Toughest Thoughts

Almost 2 decades ago, working in my garden, I spent much time praying for 3 quite ill friends.  By the end of the year my lesson was clear, Pray for G*d's will.  They were all dead.

Late this spring a text arrived in the early morning hours.  An extended family member, age 50, was dead, suicide.
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Something new to take into my garden.
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I did not like her yet knew where those odious parts of her personality arose.  In her teens I witnessed the train wreck passed off as 'parenting'.  An entire family melodrama, for decades, her parents ensorceled their clan into tacit approval yet the ridiculous cliche was true, The king wore no clothes.
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We were the only 2 at Lake Rabun, she had her 3 dogs, I had my 2.  Slept late, swam, played with the dogs, boated most of the afternoon, a picnic for lunch on the concrete dock, sunburned, it was dark when we sat in the kitchen, champagne + canapes, for dinner.  Is there any better chaos than 5 dogs in a small kitchen and cold champagne?   Casement windows & French doors wide open, it rates, still, as one of my favorite all time good dinners.  Total laughter
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Before calling her brother I made a list of all the validation points he would need to hear from me.  A good person he suffered the most, after her, in collateral damage from her raising.  And he tried many times in many ways thru the years to help her.  Only to be treated shabbily by her in return.  A long call, he meandered of his own volition thru each of the validation points I had written.
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A text last weekend, he had received the coroners report.  Conclusively, suicide.  Is her headstone at the cemetery yet?  With no more than that he knows what I'm asking,  Will you meet me at the cemetery when it's there?
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Married 30 years, I couldn't live with his alcoholism anymore.  Divorced almost 2 years, we will meet at the cemetery whenever.  No one can blame another for their drinking yet I know his family dynamics contributed greatly.  Sham parenting which bullied all those around into silence, Emotional Blackmail, Be complicit she is fine our parenting is fine.
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In my garden I realized she was one of the best at rescuing cats/dogs, I wish she had known that.  Our champagne dinner and all the pets she rescued, it's enough to remember someone with a smile.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Sham parenting?  They did everything John Rosemond says not to do, aka, give a man a fish dinner or teach him how to fish.  Her parents merely fed her fish.
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Pic via Gervais de Bedee.

Michele Bonan: Architecture + Interior + Garden

Much to delight, below.  

Garden design with only 2 elements.  Meadow & vine.  A combination from agrarian ideals.
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A duo screaming, This is not in USA !  At the minimum, not a USA garden designer.
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How do I know?  There is no monoculture lawn, green meatballs + concrete sidewalk from the French doors.  'That' type of garden design is pure post industrial.
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I 'see' gardens before architecture + interiors.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic Michele Bonan.   Liked Bonan for his garden, above, then discover he does architecture and yacht design too.  Of course, he is not American.  Italian.  Alas, an American 'designer' working for a typical design-build-maintain landscape company would be fired for the garden design, above.  Why?  Not much money in meadow + vine.  Agrarian derivatives are human factored, sustainable, Nature.  Post industrial derivative landscapes are consumer, $$$, driven.
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Yes, been reading Wendell Berry in the tub again !  When you have time, click the link, it's a fabulous interview with Berry by Bill Moyers.

Wendy Posard: Kitchen + Garden

When the garden is a feature of the kitchen I know the architect has gone beyond their education.  And delved into the realm of intuitive.

Flooring flows inside/outside and the scale is charming vs. large.  Other comparisons: happy vs. large, nurturing vs. large.......
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Necessity vs. luxury.
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"I can live without the necessities but I must have the luxuries.", a quote I first heard age 8, repeated by Miss Katherine Scott, a grand influence.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Pic is a Wendy Posard project.

Garden Design's Unexpected Element

More windows should be doors.  

More doors equal magic circles.  More doors improve the garden, and the house.
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Perhaps Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language, knows 'exactly' why humans respond so well to multiple doors.
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Did you look closely, above?  5 doors.  Another thing I did not learn in college about creating gardens, doors & magic circles.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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pic Wendy Posard.

Garden Design Begins Inside Your Home

No matter where I sit or walk-by and see into my garden, there is a beautiful view.

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Anything less is not worth my intellect.  

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Nor my joy.

Bay window view, above, is a huge satisfaction.  Several homes & the main street flagrantly try to appear & fail.

  Adore the fragrance of Nature, above.

I need many places inside my house, & garden, for the impromptu lunch, or reading a book.

Designing your garden from inside your home insures your life a moat of grace & beauty in defense of every thing life concocts.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Pics in my house.

Hand-to-Earth: Recipe for Figs from the Garden

Wealth in a bowl.

Figs, sheep's milk, honey.  A trinity from the garden.
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This is sustainable.  And, a choice.  An acre of land, a few chickens, a couple of sheep, bee hives, potager, a pleasure garden to increase pollinator habitat, & connecting hand-to-Earth.
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Hand-to-Earth.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic Amanda Brooks.
 

Features to Copy from this Room into the Garden

In the garden you know exactly what type of arbor is required, below.  Arched, 3' deep, iron, creating an enfilade punctuated with an urn on plinth matching the one below.

Repetition, is one of your strongest design tools in the garden.  Maximized with interior repetition.
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Color & pattern, very easy to copy from this room into the garden.
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I never tire of a client saying, "I love that."  Exactly, I copied it from their interior.    Yes, it's that simple.
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Garden  & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic via Cote de Texas.    Why an iron arbor to match?  Contrast.  Yet, if the client wanted heavy cottage style I might do the wood.

Vanishing Threshold: Dining Room + Landscape

Where, below, do your eyes land?

Mine went straight to the urn outside and its placement dead-center on the French doors, vanishing threshold.
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No accident the photographer caught it.  Douglas Newby has quite a nice day job !  We know the truth about easy day jobs, they require work.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic via Douglas Newby.   Photographers & interior designers rarely pay attention to Vanishing Threshold.  I START every Landscape Design at the Vanishing Threshold.

Charles Faudree: Creating Relationship with Opposites

"Establishing a relationship between unlike objects adds to the interest of a tablescape.

An antique French figurine is a three-dimensional companion to the painted figures

on the English foot tub."  Charles Faudree

Contrast.  The Arts cross-pollinate.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic from Details, by Charles Faudree & Francesanne Tucker.
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For inspiration in the garden I have been going to interior design writers for decades.

How To Follow Through with a Theme

Fine tuning the smalls, below.

Dried flowers from the garden & Jacob sheep grazing outside.
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From property line to the center of your home the theme should be who-you-are.
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Do I know who you are from first approach at the property line?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken last month at jobsite.  Sublime to see her reach this layer of interior design, the tiniest touches amplifying who she is.
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Hardest advice ever received?  "Be-who-you-are."

Empty is Fine. Why be perfect?

Garden Design is not about having a perfect garden.

It's about having a beautiful garden without stress.  From every window a beautiful view.  

Doesn't matter if the terra cotta pot is planted.

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There is a realm the perfect garden matters, pollinator habitat.

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Oddly, my Garden Design formula based on historic gardens across Europe does, indeed, create maximum pollinator habitat.  And I thought I was going after beautiful + low maintenance.  Classic story of following your heart, while others belittle what you are doing, and gaining far more than anticipated.

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Why does pollinator habitat matter?  Increasing pollinators increases crop yields up to 80%.

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Have a seat, hold on, YOU are a pollinator too.  

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics at jobsite this week.  Have you ever really thought about the types of sex plants have?  Hilarious when compared to the snit about humans.  

Choosing Happy

"The more you try to fathom it, the more fathomless it is revealed to be.  No matter how much of your self you are able to objectify and examine, the quintessential, living part of yourself will always elude you, i.e., the part that is conducting the examination.  Thus you do not solve the mystery, you live the mystery.  And you do that not by fully knowing yourself but by fully being yourself."   Frederick Buechner

I was once afraid to create the garden in my imagination.  Deed restrictions & a spouse both parroting, "You can't do that."
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Death of loved ones, infertility treatments, little money, alcoholic spouse, blah-blah, whatever, yawn.  Unhappiness grew too deep.
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Oh my the blessings of unhappiness.  I CHOSE to be happy.  Created my garden.  Grace entered.  Now, decades of joy.
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Many of you already know, because you live it, happiness is a choice each day.  No matter the circumstances.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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In my career I meet so many on the cusp of choosing joy.  Though they don't know that's what they are choosing, yet.  Ironic, these thoughts come from meeting a 50+ woman angry at the world & demanding from the world ease & support.  Without working for it herself.  She is a joy to behold, in gratitude her life is not mine.  More, she is humbling, I could be her but my unhappiness grew too great to carry.  It's all in our choices.  Happiness harbors power.       
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Pic via 5th & State.

On the Porch: Table Toppers

The clay in her county is well known for its pottery.

Her bouquet of comfrey reminds me I've never once planted it myself.

The wicker arrived from a local junk shop a couple of summers ago.
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Her childhood and most of adulthood were in subdivisions yet on acreage she wields latent powers, including the placing of livestock fencing.
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Profoundly miserable in the subdivision, what if she didn't follow her soul to this acreage, instead going to a therapist?
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pics taken at jobsite this month.  Watching her is to bear witness.  Providence in action.  Humbling.    

Desk & End Table on the Porch

Perfect place to get a few things done on the laptop, a quick lunch, perhaps a grandchild coloring?

Maybe it's only an extra chair.

A magic table:  end table AND desk.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken yesterday at jobsite.  Did you notice the garden view in the top pic?  Decades of experience, studies in historic gardens across Europe, college, seminars, knowing  simplicity is the 'skill'. .

Meadow vs Foundation Plantings

 16 foot ceilings are the secret.

The house, I hope it's small, has surprised me.  When I find the right 5 acres, I will build it.

However, no green meatball foundation plantings for me.

Luxury is having your home set in a meadow.

Pleasure grounds flirting richly, unfolding a narrative.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Top 2 pics Furlow Gatewood's home in Americus, GA, from Veranda magazine.

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Bottom 2 pics a client garden.

Beware: These Pillows Need Worthy Backdrop

Few gardens could backdrop these pillows.  

Not the focus, yet complete dominance, this garden looks 'not done'.
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Heads-up, by the time a garden is this simple it is 'totally done'.
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Joseph W. Tyree did the landscaping.
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Perhaps the slipper shoes demand the pillows & garden as backdrop.  This man exudes something quite rare amongst his age group, happy self-confidence.
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More about man & house,  Architectural Digest.  Enjoy.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Beware, even, the cushion/pillow shelves at discount stores.  They may be cheap but they will steal your entire garden/deck/views.

Is Your Garden 'Art' on the Wall?

Every garden view should be 'art' on the wall.

2+ decades ago I visited a garden in Greensboro, NC with every window view taken into consideration.  Every window.
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Again, something learned from an 'uncredentialed' gardener changing the direction, forever, of how I design landscapes.  Not once during college did any instructor mention being inside a client's home to design a garden correctly.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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pic via Castles, Crowns & Cottages.