The Best Design Question

Rare, the home needing a 'foundation' planting.

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Rare, the home without one.

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A step beyond, below, not having a foundation planting.

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They've taken on the sacrosanct lawn, with firm intention.

This garden has me at, 'hello'.
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However, the window nearest the garage must have an espalier fruit tree to the right.  And the hedge must have a stone plinth with urn at its end nearest the drive.  One more thing.  Ivy 'Gold Heart', on the house to the right of the front door, tendrils to 14', no more.
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How little can your garden have, and, still be 'you'.  It's the best question.
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Yes, I would make the effort to drive by this home at dusk/evening, to see inside.  Perhaps, a garden's best moments, as it melds with the interiors, vanishing threshold.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic

François - Xavier Van Damme  

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Would love to know what you see added to this garden.

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

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Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

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NOTE to my gardening friends... look for changes to come. 

Knew before computers/cell phones, sitting in Atlanta traffic on way to a client, 'I must reach a larger audience with the same amount of effort.'   Soon after that epiphany I signed my CBS-TV, and, books contracts on the same day.

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Then I read an article in the NYTimes about something called 'blogging'.  Saved the article for a year before reading it.  Studied all the blogs they mentioned, hired a computer expert they quoted, and attended a blogging seminar.

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Blogging 2.0 has arrived, my knowledge is 1.0.  A believer in copying the best historic gardens across the globe it flows into every arena of life.  Watching Maria Killam grow her career/blog/life over the past 3 years made its impact.  Signed up  for a year's course with her blogging expert, Jon Morrow. 

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Changes will be slow, plodding is my adored method.  Pulling triggers here/there is spice in the mix.
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What do YOU want?

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Nothing is too small, too big, or too ego crushing to mention.

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Passion lies in sharing what has filled me to the depths of grace, joy & atonement, the best landscapes created over the last 2,000+ years.

Just so you know... 
 I  welcome your input.

Details of Design

Home for shelter, pastures for livestock, hedgerows/ornamentals for pollinators, walled gardens for fruit/vegetables, aesthetics for spirit.

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A living, given from the land.  

Touring a similar garden in France many years ago I had to ask the head gardener what he meant, "At times there were only subsistence gardeners here."

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Portions of history, so dire, laborers were paid in food.  Living the best they could in the woods.

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Approaching this type of garden, above, from a 'fat' country, and time, in the T.E. Lawrence sense of the word, I did not see its lessons.

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Walled gardens produce earlier & later than Nature allows, keeps wildlife/livestock out, and thieves.

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Box hedging outside the garden walls keeps chickens out.

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Pretty flowers?  Sure, planted to be pretty, yet this reason is from a 'fat' intellect.  Which was mine, until epiphany.  

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Those pretty flowers increase crop/fruit yields by 80%.  

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Suddenly, what had been merely, 'pretty', is seen as truth, 'survival'.

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And, imagine all the lovely compost, produced on site, returning into the land.

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Providence, creator of the 1st organic machine.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pic via Pinterest.

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

.

NOTE to my gardening friends... look for changes to come. 

Knew before computers/cell phones, sitting in Atlanta traffic on way to a client, 'I must reach a larger audience with the same amount of effort.'   Soon after that epiphany I signed my CBS-TV, and, books contracts on the same day.

.

Then I read an article in the NYTimes about something called 'blogging'.  Saved the article for a year before reading it.  Studied all the blogs they mentioned, hired a computer expert they quoted, and attended a blogging seminar.

.

Blogging 2.0 has arrived, my knowledge is 1.0.  A believer in copying the best historic gardens across the globe it flows into every arena of life.  Watching Maria Killam grow her career/blog/life over the past 3 years made its impact.  Signed up  for a year's course with her blogging expert, Jon Morrow. 

.

Changes will be slow, plodding is my adored method.  Pulling triggers here/there is spice in the mix.
.

What do YOU want?

.

Nothing is too small, too big, or too ego crushing to mention.

.

Passion lies in sharing what has filled me to the depths of grace, joy & atonement, the best landscapes created over the last 2,000+ years.

Just so you know... 
 I  welcome your input.

Choosing Wallpaper

In the bay window, below, at the front of my home, facing the street, tiny front yard, and several houses.

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Landscape design begins inside your home.

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Your realm doesn't start outside.

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Winter's tilt of the Earth, light hurtling through space, wrapping wavelengths tenderly around my garden, shooting as particles through the window panes, returning to wavelengths of light & shadow, seen perhaps merely in walking past, better, when there is lunch here with a friend, light & shadow caressing all they touch.
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This is all about you.  Choices.  How do you want to live in your realm?
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Lighting from the garden & views into the garden are interior design choices along with paint colors & wallpaper.
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Sacred vs. profane.  If you aren't making active choices in either direction, the choice is still made.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic taken this week.   Set of chairs a great find at estate sale nearby years ago.  Tiger oak drop leaf gate leg table a  delightful find at local junk shop, now out of business.

For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

.

NOTE to my gardening friends... look for changes to come. 

Knew before computers/cell phones, sitting in Atlanta traffic on way to a client, 'I must reach a larger audience with the same amount of effort.'   Soon after that epiphany I signed my CBS-TV, and, books contracts on the same day.

.

Then I read an article in the NYTimes about something called 'blogging'.  Saved the article for a year before reading it.  Studied all the blogs they mentioned, hired a computer expert they quoted, and attended a blogging seminar.

.

Blogging 2.0 has arrived, my knowledge is 1.0.  A believer in copying the best historic gardens across the globe it flows into every arena of life.  Watching Maria Killam grow her career/blog/life over the past 3 years made its impact.  Signed up  for a year's course with her blogging expert, Jon Morrow. 

.

Changes will be slow, plodding is my adored method.  Pulling triggers here/there is spice in the mix.
.

What do YOU want?

.

Nothing is too small, too big, or too ego crushing to mention.

.

Passion lies in sharing what has filled me to the depths of grace, joy & atonement, the best landscapes created over the last 2,000+ years.

Just so you know... 
 I  welcome your input.

Sideways Learners Will Understand

If you are a sideways learner you will understand.

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I have college degrees, international studies for decades, landscape seminars attended for more decades, a garden that followed the complete template disaster-passable-magazines-tv.  Client gardens with the same trajectory.

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All of the above merely taught me amusements in/from a landscape/garden.

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Not considering learning anything, in the least, about landscaping/gardening, I got some chickens.

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Chickens were my front door to truly learning about gardening/landscaping.  Who knew?

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What was the big take away?

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Stewardship.

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Literal & metaphor.

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Decades of striving, and the hens taught by merely being themselves.

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Humbling.

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With great pride, I want you to see where I keep my egg basket, above.  At the back door.

Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

Landscapes Need the Poverty Cycle & So Do YOU

There has never been a time these boats, below, have not been in my DNA.

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Why not take them for granted?  And, the men who kept them going.

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From age 3 reveling in their elegance & decrepitude.

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Sounds of water, lapping the sides in their slips.  the smell of their engines, mixed with salt water.

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Their beauty an act of Providence, the hand of man required to maintain.

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Constant battle.

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Money, sweat, blood, beauty, JOY.

None are left, though a tiny portion of this boat, below, maintains a hint of what I've hunted all my life.

 By the time I learned to ride a bike, I road to the marina, below, most days until I left for college at 17.

 In the NASA Roundup, Dad found one of these old boats for sale.  Age 7, life was finally turning a corner.  One of these boats would be ours.  Mom would have none of it.
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Many friend's families had 1 of these boats.  Every invitation to go onto the big waters of Galveston Bay refused.   Mom would have none of it.
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Never, to this day, have I been on one of these boats.  Virginia Woolf foretold my story, Too The Lighthouse.  And, to this day, when I visit my parents, I speed walk to the little marina, remembering different times and different boats, and the men who kept them running.   These newer engines don't smell as strong but the salt water is the same.
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Still yearning to go in that door, below.  However, now, life thrives on my side of this door.   Julien Fellowes, Gosford Park, portrayed it perfectly, here.

Where does this rabbit hole go?  This month I've told 3 clients I want them to do the blowing in certain areas in their garden.  Not because I want them to do maintenance.  It's for the relationship, for thriving, for Providence.  To receive exponentially more than they give.
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I know the depths of what the Poverty Cycle enriches us with.
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None of them have liked the idea.  Each had about the same expression on their face!  However, each has agreed, for awhile, to do as I ask.  Trusting from where my request has come from.
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If you can thrive on the outside of the doors you seek, you're rich beyond measure.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Top pic, here, rest of the pics I took last month.  How many of you caught the faint echo of Enchanted April with, "...different times and different boats."  Studying historic gardens across Europe it didn't take long to realize it was the Poverty Cycles producing the greatest beauty.  Of course, The Poverty Cycle in Landscape Design, is one of my inventions.  And, more proof it's quite a delight living outside the doors I thought I would be living within.  Providence knew where I should be.  Accepting that gift has been the making of my life.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

.

NOTE to my gardening friends... look for changes to come. 

Knew before computers/cell phones, sitting in Atlanta traffic on way to a client, 'I must reach a larger audience with the same amount of effort.'   Soon after that epiphany I signed my CBS-TV, and, books contracts on the same day.

.

Then I read an article in the NYTimes about something called 'blogging'.  Saved the article for a year before reading it.  Studied all the blogs they mentioned, hired a computer expert they quoted, and attended a blogging seminar.

.

Blogging 2.0 has arrived, my knowledge is 1.0.  A believer in copying the best historic gardens across the globe it flows into every arena of life.  Watching Maria Killam grow her career/blog/life over the past 3 years made its impact.  Signed up  for a year's course with her blogging expert, Jon Morrow. 

.

Changes will be slow, plodding is my adored method.  Pulling triggers here/there is spice in the mix.
.

What do YOU want?

.

Nothing is too small, too big, or too ego crushing to mention.

.

Passion lies in sharing what has filled me to the depths of grace, joy & atonement, the best landscapes created over the last 2,000+ years.

Just so you know... 
 I  welcome your input.

A.S. Byatt: Le Jardin Rustique

 "You must learn now, that the important lesson – as long as you have your health – is that the divide is not between the servants and the served, between the leisured and the workers, but between those who are interested in the world and its multiplicity of forms and forces, and those who merely subsist,  ......."  A.S. Byatt

Before computers & cell phones, handouts at my lectures had the quote, above, at their top or bottom.   USA landscaping is broken, knew this decades ago.  My big discovery, above, Le Jardin Rustique.  Blessedly discovered, in Europe, decades ago.  Created from thousands of years of refinements.  Le jardin rustique's have created, & refined me.
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Never tire of experiencing another's awakening to le jardin rustique.
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High, medium & low meadows, above.  Came home with Tara Turf at first siting.  A well known blogger, saw similar and said, "they even have daisies in the grass."  He saw, without comprehension.  And, he's a degreed residential architect, USA of course.
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What is this enfilade, above, to le jardin rustique?  Survival of mind-body-spirit.  Literally, and metaphorically.  
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Aside from beauty, unskilled labor to maintain, no chemicals or n-p-k poisoning groundwater/killing pollinators, no irrigation system, canopy-understory-walls-groundcover plantings to increase pollinator habitat & shade/sun the house as needed thru the years/seasons, increased property value/decreased HVAC, increase of crop yields by 80%, scientifically proven need of our bodies to harbor beneficial bacteria given to us from these habitats reducing auto-immune diseases, ADD, depression & more, there is a simplicity of relationship with Earth, as we intellectually engage, Earth provides & sustains beyond what we know we need.  
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We all need a-room-of-our-own, Virginia Woolf, “When a subject is highly controversial, one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold.” 
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If you have read this far, and have a mow-blow-go-testosterone-on-wheels-commodify-all-I-touch-landscape, why?  Rejection with those landscapes was upfront with me, without knowledge of their replacement.  Decades have been spent finding the answer.  More than resonate, hope your inner core, from your gut, feels the words, above.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Jung knew, "Our lives are about getting the outside to match the inside."  The time this takes & riches to be found are, indeed, our life.
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Links to scientific studies meander in previous posts, no time to look them up today.
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Pic via Pinterest. 
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" ‘Like life,’ said the painter. ‘We eat and are eaten, and we are very lucky if we reach our three score years and ten, which is less than a flash in the eyes of an angel. The understanding persists, for a time. In your craft and mine.'” – from “Christ in the House of Martha and Mary”, by A.S. Byatt
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

.

NOTE to my gardening friends... look for changes to come. 

Knew before computers/cell phones, sitting in Atlanta traffic on way to a client, 'I must reach a larger audience with the same amount of effort.'   Soon after that epiphany I signed my CBS-TV, and, books contracts on the same day.

.

Then I read an article in the NYTimes about something called 'blogging'.  Saved the article for a year before reading it.  Studied all the blogs they mentioned, hired a computer expert they quoted, and attended a blogging seminar.

.

Blogging 2.0 has arrived, my knowledge is 1.0.  A believer in copying the best historic gardens across the globe it flows into every arena of life.  Watching Maria Killam grow her career/blog/life over the past 3 years made its impact.  Signed up  for a year's course with her blogging expert, Jon Morrow. 

.

Changes will be slow, plodding is my adored method.  Pulling triggers here/there is spice in the mix.
.

What do YOU want?

.

Nothing is too small, too big, or too ego crushing to mention.

.

Passion lies in sharing what has filled me to the depths of grace, joy & atonement, the best landscapes created over the last 2,000+ years.

Just so you know... 
 I  welcome your input.

Beautiful Landscape: Seeing 'After' at 'Before'

Can anyone abide another magazine caption mentioning all you see?  Note, below, ivy clad walls, shuttered French doors, and etc ad naseam.  Why do magazines do this to beautiful garden pics?  A Tara Dillard caption, below.

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This garden, below, is a college course in vanishing threshold, combining home and garden into a moat of grace & joy for living.  (For starters.)  This garden, below, is pure narrative of the owner's character.

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I could write 5 fabulous captions with this pic but it's not where I'm going today.  Can you 'see' to create this when it does not exist?

Earlier this year I designed a landscape for this home, below.  A second garden design for this family, they popped out of their first home when baby #2 was born.  

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Realizing the need for flow, below, was instant.  How to achieve it too.

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Most homes have, below, yet most homeowners want, above.

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What would you do, below, to achieve, above?

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There is zero connection from steps to lower back door, and there is a stoppage of flow with distance to lower back door.  Aside from zero invitation to be in this zone.

Soon, a flagstone terrace will stretch from steps to end of the home, French doors will replace the double-hung windows, and the terrace will infill under the covered porch.
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Flow.

Obviously more than Flow needed in their Landscape Design.  Notice, above, how their new terrace is wrapped in privacy from the neighbors.

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Hand drawn Landscape Design, on site.  Myriad more brain regions tapped than sitting in an office at the computer.  

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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

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Top pic via Pinterest.  Bottom pics taken at jobsite this week.  Edited drawing to remove client info.  Designing on site, by hand, does not make me a better Landscape Designer than anyone.  But the science holds true of methods used vs. brain regions tapped.  Need all the help I can get !

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Maya Angelou: Beautiful Landscape + Beautiful Life

A client recently asked, "That crape myrtle tree at my patio is too messy, is it ok to cut it down?"

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A beautiful crape myrtle it was planted before we met.

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Alas, they are messy.  For weeks.  Very messy.

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My answer?

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It's important to be tied to the land, follow its progression through the seasons.  Devote unencumbered time, just you and your garden.  No phone, no agenda.  Let the body work in your garden, while your brain is finally using regions untouched.  Answers to questions you didn't know you had will arrive.  Plants emit wavelengths absorbed through your skin, let Providence work into you.  Literally.

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At the front end, it seems like work.  But that's wrong.  It is grace & joy waiting for you to tap their powers.

Part of my inner strength, pure grit, arrives sideways as I putter in my garden.  Body responding intuitively to doing the next-right-thing while mind has left the shackles of this Earth.
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Maya Angelou knows why my answer is counterintuitive, below.

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I believe in more than a beautiful landscape, I believe the action steps of creating/keeping a beautiful garden are the key to a beautiful life.

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Beautiful garden, beautiful life.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pics via Pinterest.  Top pic from Penelope Bianchi's fabulous garden.

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Told the client to use an electric blower with extension cord, Toro.  Notice, stewardship begins with you for the garden, changing to the garden in stewardship of you.  

For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.