MENTORING: LUNCH

Mentors & lunch have been a pair in my life for decades. Lunches at their homes, inside and in the garden. Paying it forward is so rich it feels selfish. Last Friday I invited CLOWN to lunch. A stressful career explains her hobby donning a clown outfit and visiting local children's hospitals. She asked for a circus theme.

CLOWN has a swimming pool she uses in her backyard but she's not interacting with her landscape. CLOWN plays drums & clarinet too. Yet her personality and lifestyle aren't stamped into her landscape.

CLOWN commented about the 'drama' I bring to the smallest details. Laughing because she said it came out wrong. Meaning it is happy drama I've touched things with.

Tara Landscape Design Rule: Overdose on a Theme.

.

Each of my mentors had overdosed on a theme. I'm shameless about taking ideas where I can get them.

.

What's your passion. Is it strange, weird? That's what your theme is. Don't hide your passions.

.

That's what mentors gave me, PERMISSION, to be me.

Cooking for CLOWN, a pleasure. Lemons, above, in the antique pitcher before heading outside to the compost pile. Wanting my compost pitcher to be as pretty as the Spode dishes on my table, the camellias blooming outside and more.

CLOWN did laugh at my happy little dramas. She got it. I can't wait to be invited to lunch in her circus themed landscape. When that invitation comes, and it will, I know CLOWN will be interacting with her landscape. Her home-garden-life, finally, together.

.

What are your passions? Would I know it by looking at your landscape?

.

How are you using your passions and landscape to nurture yourself?

.

Why is this stuff important? A vanishing threshold of life-home-landscape will diminish sorrow & increase joy.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE: FREE LANDSCAPE DESIGN

At the opening of Something's Gotta Give I was enjoying the dialogue, scenery & Jack Nicholson. Then they pulled into the LANDSCAPE. Forget Jack. At first glimpse, in the driveway, I knew the landscape was a masters class. Landscape simplicity is for the brave & daring. Only the Italians seem to consistently get it right.

I have to see interiors to design landscapes. Above, I see: white hydrangeas, blue salvias & blue hydrangeas, 1 antique rose to match the soft pink pillows and 3-4 asclepias (butterfly weed) to match the orange in the painting. Placing the asclepias to look as if a bird planted them. Patio furnishings match interior seating: pair of benches, pair of chairs, huge coffee table, 4 end tables.

The dining room, above, again shouting: white & blue hydrangeas. Use them in drifts, not mixed.

.

Evergreen hedges are indicated by the built in bookcases & breakfront. In Atlanta I would use sasanqua. Choose whatever is delicious in your zone.

.

Interior rooms prove, Elegance is refusal. It's also serene.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

pics via Columbia Pictures, Joni at Cote de Texas has an incredible post about the interior of this house.

B&B DESIGN

A 1910 B&B in Highlands, NC. I designed the landscape yesterday. Vanishing threshold with furniture choices, paint colors, summer house, stone paths, and more. Highlands is at 4118 feet. No need for air-conditioning. Ever.

I'm shameless about requesting lunch. We ate outside overlooking the Allee.

Breakfast room and many others overlook the Allee too.

Details, below. Calming.........

Rebuilding the porch, below, the way it was originally built.

Overlooking the Allee & designing, below. (I'm not that fat, I have on 3 shirts.) The hat is crushable & 100% uva-b proof from San Diego hat company.

Rooms are on 3 floors of the B & B

All rooms are en suite as ads in England like to say about having a private bath.

Above, this room had my favorite bathroom with a clawfoot tub overlooking the ALLEE.

Each room unique.

The floors, below. Such integrity.

Still in my pink toenail phase. Who can pass up pink toenail mojo???

Owners, Rick & Helene, of 4 1/2 Street Inn, are DIY. I can't wait to see their landscape & vanishing threshold unfold over the next 2 years.

.

4 1/2 Street Inn is in the Blue Ridge mountains,aka, Great Smoky Mountains & the Appalachians.

.

The Bartram Trail, yes the William Bartram, naturalist, passed near the Inn as did De Soto. The Nantahala National Forest is here too.

.

Growing up on Galveston Bay I only knew a climate that was an assault. In Highlands the air is soft and nurturing. An attraction since first going there in 1981.

.

Rick said, This is a healing place.

.

I wonder if it's The Power of Intention left from the Indians...............?

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

LANDSCAPE BOOK COVER

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

ROSES: COMPANIONS & DOUBLE AXIS

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

Above & below, two views of the same narrow path. A double axis pair of pics.

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

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

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

Above, ROSE's family room window with sundial on axis and enfilade. Roses's over the window make the tiny area lush.

.

Below, view from ROSE's family room window with Dancing Girl on axis and enfilade.
.

Above & below are yet another double axis.

ROSE threaded many clematis, below, through her roses.

Above & below, clematis.

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

Walls with 3D are more interesting, below.

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

The first time I met ROSE was through an invitation to see her garden, with Penny. Of course it was a hot, humid summer day. We began inside ROSE's home. Three steps inside the frondoor I felt like I'd known ROSE always. Delighting upon antiques, art, books, garden views, & stories. ROSE invited us to refreshments at the breakfast room table overlooking the back garden through French doors. Icy cool water, tea, soda, and pound cake left from a recent lecture program. Remembering, especially, the antique silver pitcher of icy water covered in beads of condensation.

.

Conversation, laughter and anticipation of soon seeing ROSE's garden.

.

The garden didn't disappoint.

.

More pictures of ROSE's garden are in my book, Beautiful by Design.

.

XO Tara

FACEBOOK FOR GARDEN CLUBS

Garden clubs are the last bastion of civility holding neighborhoods together. Garden clubs keep neighborhoods current. They let members know who has moved, who has just moved in, who's ill, who died, what the current crime issues are, put together open gardens, arrange for strewn trash to be picked up, plant & maintain neighborhood entries and they arrange for holiday decor. My jobsite this morning, above & below. A garden club ripe for Facebook.

Facebook was invented for garden clubs. Notes among members can be seen by all on the Wall. Picture albums can be uploaded. Decades of scrapbooks can be scanned for all to see. Garden club Facebook groups can be kept private.

.

Valuable historical data is within garden club scrapbooks. Residential landscape design for the middle classes is one of the least examined areas of social history.

.

Middle class landscape design says more about who we are as Americans than upper class landscape design.

.

In my view, garden clubs have a responsibility to take part in social networking to leverage the work they do. Ironically, Facebook will make garden club work easier & more effective.

My garden club lecture today, above photos, was in a private home. Garden clubs are stronger when they meet in private homes.

.

I do PowerPoint at larger venues and slide-shows in homes. Hydrangeas were the topic today.
Slides are superior to PowerPoint in beauty & I'll use them as long as I can.

On the way home from lecturing was, oh dear, my favorite thrift store. Above & below.

It's good shopping when a man appears & says, I'll carry these to your car. Wicker pet basket, wall sconce for the garden and another plinth for a cloche.

Below, more pictures of Hydrangea Heaven. All of the pictures at my lecture today were from Hydrangea Heaven.

Below, a dwarf hydrangea at Hydrangea Heaven.

Remember, FACEBOOK is for GARDEN CLUBS...............

Garden & Be Well, XO T

HYDRANGEA HEAVEN

Enter Hydrangea Heaven, as I did, with hydrangea blossoms caressing each side of my car. Penny McHenry is Hydrangea Heaven. Like her frontyard, above?

I met Penny over 15 years ago at a GA Perennial Plant Assoc. meeting. Wanting a good seat I plopped next to a woman I didn't know, Penny. We talked before the meeting, and long after the meeting. She ended by inviting me to lunch the next day. The day I drove up her driveway.

.

A view of Penny's deck, below.

Penny was bold & open. Before leaving the meeting I knew Penny had a grown daughter that had been murdered. A fact that didn't scare, induce pity, or curiosity in me. An unexpected reaction in Penny's eye's. She adored me for it. The same type of gruesome murder had occurred to my Mother's 1st cousin. I'd grown up knowing horrible things do happen.

.

Penny received 2 hydrangea plants amongst many flowers after her daughter died. She wasn't much of a gardener. Her backyard was mostly ivy but she did plant the hydrangeas.

.

And she tended them. Soon she was making babies with them. Putting a brick or rock on a branch, holding it to the ground, until it rooted. Transplanting the new plants to fill up her garden. Making more & more of her babies. Soon she was gardening all the time. Pathways, ponds, focal points, a larger deck with a gazebo for dining & more. Everything engulfed in a sea of blue mophead hydrangeas.

.

Neighbors began to talk about Penny's garden. Talk got so far it went to Southern Living magazine. When they shot her garden it made the cover.

.

Penny began lecturing about hydrangeas to garden clubs, then flower shows, then symposiums. She opened Hydrangea Heaven to garden club tours & meetings. Her garden was more incredible than any of the spectacular pictures taken of it. To experience the combination of Penny & Hydrangea Heaven together was to intuitively take in the fact that you wanted this for yourself. You wanted what Penny had. A life of joy lived amongst beauty.

.

Remember where it began. Her daughter was murdered.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.You know I'll write more about Penny, I haven't even taken us to that first lunch. When I began writing this post I only knew it was time to finally write about Penny. She died March 2, 2006. Now I realize it's not an accidental posting. Today is Penny's birthday.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

ECO-WATTLES

Eco-wattles are a landscape feature hard to photograph, difficult to describe & challenging to write about. And you want them!!

Eco-Wattles are landscape debris pulled together in serpentine shapes. 3.5' wide at the base, tapering to 3.5' tall. Don't haul off leaves, branches, grass clippings, prunings or your Christmas tree. Use Eco-wattles along woodland paths. Blow leaves off to the side and the wind can't blow them back. Above, my eco-wattle prevents neighbor's leaves from blowing into my woodland walk.

Everyone balks at eco-wattles until they see them in person. Above & below, line of brown is the eco-wattle.

I've created 2 types of eco-wattle: formal and informal. Informal eco-wattles have all sorts of garden debris. Formal eco-wattles have 1 type of garden debris and they're pruned neatly.

.

Eco-wattles: reduce maintenance, provide winter butterfly habitat, lead the eye aesthetically, enrich the soil, and more.

.

Mary Kistner, client-friend-mentor, grew up on an apple farm in upstate New York over 8 decades ago. She used eco-wattles on her 25 acres in Snellville, GA. Her land is now the Kistner Center, given to the Piedmont Land Trust when she died.

.

I took her idea and have applied it to residential landscape design for 15 years. No one else has been doing this. Why?

.

Mary Kistner got a job designing window displays for the largest department store in Atlanta during WWII. It had been a man's job and of course she had the job much longer than the war lasted.

.

XO Tara

CORPORATE WOMAN & HER LANDSCAPE

CORPORATE WOMAN had to meet on a weekend, she's always at work. From her address I knew she wasn't far and the homes are charming brick/stone from the 1930's. Three steps into her frontyard she burst through the frontdoor to greet me. Within moments we were holding hands, fingers entwined, entering her foyer, below. CORPORATE WOMAN makes cloche gardens, above, to relax. She makes a limited number each year and sells them all.

CORPORATE WOMAN is eclectic, likes still-life, ivory ironstone, old pitchers, sterling. I adore having clients with sure interior design taste. It dictates landscape shapes for garden rooms, paths, and lawns. With quantities of antique white ironstone it was obvious CORPORATE WOMAN will have oodles of white flowering shrubs, trees, & vines in her landscape.

CORPORATE WOMAN decorates with nature. The petals, above, falling from an arrangement of branches she forced into bloom. Mental note, CORPORATE WOMAN wants a landscape to use as a cutting garden.

Talk turned to food. CORPORATE WOMAN sent me home with Ina Garten. Her favorite landscape picture, above, will be her landscape. Now, her landscape is overexposed.

We spent a couple of hours on the swinging bed, above. Conversation? CORPORATE WOMAN single handedly put the HIP in hippie. A confident life supporting herself, raising a son, moving on from toxic men, marriages, jobs. She'll be in Italy this summer, with BELOVED & SON, for 2 weeks. SON, graduating college this year, continues in Europe another 2 weeks. A gift from CORPORATE WOMAN.

Focal points, subsidiary focal points, garden rooms, paths, terracing, trees, axis are already in CORPORATE WOMAN's landscape. And they're well done. Something's missing, the landscape isn't working.

.

Evergreen walls. Her landscape falls apart without them.

.

In addition: one pathway will be changed from a 'V' shape to a 'U' shape, focal points will be repositioned slightly, a few 'cute' things will be removed, sheets of ivy removed, a friendship gate to her neighbor's garden will be built and a viewing terrace added at the back of her property overlooking a woodland park and cemetery.

.

I know I'll be swinging on the hanging bed again with CORPORATE WOMAN. Perhaps I should have taken the offered wine and then blogged. Darlings, there was some hot, hot, and hotter talk.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara