PhD: Women's Garden Groups & Society

My PhD in horticulture topic is, THE EFFECTS OF WOMEN'S GARDEN GROUPS UPON SOCIETY: NORTH AMERICA 1770-2009.

Philanthropic arms of art & education with social networking. They bind communities. Informing the larger group of crime, deaths, births, illnesses, divorce, marriage, and etc. while making sure weeds, garbage, flowers and more are taken care of.

Impromptu matchmakers in love, career, pets, interior decorators, books, neighborhoods, vacation locations, garden designers, doctors, car, make-up, hairstylists, houses, friends, and more.

Below, I spoke at the Tuckahoe Woman's Club in Richmond, VA this week.

Women with a mission. Arts & education.

They know meetings are about expert speakers not the minutia of topics best left to a board meeting. AND FOOD.

Food. I can never resist the real action. In the kitchen. Their talk & activities are a book. How they use language, their accents, topics, laughter, hushed tones, gossip.

I look forward to the foods chosen, their silver and china.

Over 20 years of Garden Club Food have spoiled me into expecting silver & china. At all neighborhood price points.

And homemade cheese straws, below, are often on the menu.

Nuts in a crystal bowl with a silver spoon. Overkill? Perhaps, but I do enjoy the love behind it.

And their decorating. Colors, art, comfort & attention to detail. The unspoken saying so much.

Below, the tables always set up to check you in, sell a raffle ticket or other type of fund raiser.

Tuckahoe Woman's Club had something extra, the pianist.

Impromptu table, below, for my books. I learned while being the NBC-TV local garden expert to always bring props.

And their sweet marketing, below.

Tuckahoe Woman's Club has their own garden, below. Proving they're Cool Chicks, empty pots.

Pink dogwood, below, beginning to unfurl.

Visiting a private garden after the lecture, below, Mrs. Estes loves the classics

and is a serious plantswoman, the fragrant yellow magnolia, below.

The template of speaker, food, meeting kindred spirits, matchmaking, appreciating interior decorating and table settings, and touring a garden have been part of women's garden groups for decades. Seeing & understanding how communities are bound into civilization vs. chaos.

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Learning how to be a plant society board member & president. How to choose speakers, get the money in, how to spend it as a non-profit aligning tightly with the group's mission statement. Putting together a newsletter, marketing, garden tour and attracting volunteers.

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Wondering why companies aren't approaching these groups to market their services and products?

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Oh, sugars, I'm not getting that PhD at the present time. Too busy living it.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

ENERGY BURSTS THE DAMN

Several women have hired me to open the plantings in front of their home. It's obvious change had occurred in their life. What? Seeing more change inside their home. Sensing a damn spilled forth. And their garden must respond. Must channel the flow. A flow of pure energy.

Below, my damn burst 5 years ago. It was obvious where to open the garden. On direct axis with the bay window. What had been a solid hedge, below, became a hedge with a permanently open gate. Robbins egg blue! Stone steps were added to the gate and front door.

Inside I made-over the mudroom. Adding antique drawers, and shelving with glass doors. Moving sets of china from the attic to the mudroom and onto the antique shelves. Organizing all of my wrapping materials into one of the large antique drawers. Putting paper plates, napkins, and plastic utensils into another. Pet supplies fill the last drawer.

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David Stevens put in the stone steps & COLLEGE BOY put in the gate. NAVY MAN from across the street helped bring the antiques into the mudroom. Ugh. I prefer my girl power but sometimes manliness is necessary.

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And the garden. I adore going thru the Robbins egg blue gate. Even if it's only with my eyes while sitting inside.
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What was the burst damn of energy? Don't know. As with my clients it is received with joy and honored as grace.

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May your damn burst with energy this year.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

CHOOSING A PATTERN

Your landscape should be a Vanishing Threshold with your interior. Pattern in the gravel? What to choose? Look at your: dishes, wallpaper, fabrics, art, furniture, etc. Repetition is a huge landscape design tool.

Love this gravel. Elegantly tiny and a receding brownish color. Too often gravel is too large. Large gravel looks commercial. Think parking lot. And gravel too bright, think whitish, overwhelms most landscapes becoming an unintentional focal point.

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Oh dear, now you've seen my work shoes. Ugh. But it was important to show the the scale of some gorgeous gravel. Can you hear this gravel as I walk? It's a delight.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

IT'S ALWAYS ABOUT BEING IN A RELATIONSHIP

Every element of the landscape must be in a relationship with each other. It's what the best landscapes have in common.
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Do you think it's an accident the gravel drive and raised bed, below, casually touch? Why isn't there cobblestone or brick edging? Why is the focal point, above, placed exactly so? Why is the focal point of a subtle color? Why is there so much 'empty' dirt? This is a transition zone from the wild wood to the formality of the home, to the right of the gravel drive. Curious?

Each stone must be placed in relationship to the landscape. Each stone will tell you how it wants to be sited. Which is its top, side, bottom. Do stones talk to you?

As the tree grows its roots take life from the land returning beauty. Simple grace, form, function, and powerful.

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The flowers 'just touching', and in relationship with, the stone, the tree.

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The statue, tree, & stone, above, near the frontdoor of a home. The statue is on axis with the frontdoor. The tree, stone & flowers are subsidiary focal points to partake, if you're observant.

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I cannot divulge this landscape. The owner has hired me to write about the home & garden. Once the owner's timeline is complete I'll trumpet details & pics.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

WHEN A MAN LOVES

Men come to gardening with single-minded love. Rapture? Mostly. Roses or hosta or conifers or ponds or daylilies or lawns or daffodils. Once seduced they want the entire landscape. Women, mostly, come to gardening wanting the entire landscape.
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HE came to the landscape in its entirety. A few of HIS daffodils, below. HE designed the road, sculpted the trees, & planted daffodils; contoured to follow the land.
Driving with this man thru his land as he shares its stories is to share in a benediction. Not once saying 'my' land, always 'the' land. Honoring his good fortune in being its servant.

Wicked & knowing, HE made sure my trip home was perfumed with a portion of his delight in his landscape.

Little did HE know their beauty & fragrance would inaugurate a new teapot. A birthday gift from my Mom.

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Is any of this a big deal? What is remembered thru time? A friend's love for their garden, a sweep of daffodils in spring, the gift of beautiful, fragrant flowers, a Mother's perfect gift to her child.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

FOCAL POINT: CATS IN A TREE

The rule is, One focal point per area. Subsidiary focal points allowed. Subsidiary focal point example? A cast-stone cat in the trunk of a holly tree.
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Near the frontdoor of my appointment yesterday I tried to get a pic of the stone cat. Someone got jealous.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

PROPHET WITHOUT HONOR: The Old Garden

HIPPIE CHICK said, Yes, to the open garden before the cottage & landscape were complete, below. Lawn, plants, stones, mulch, focal points, above, are hours old. HIPPIE CHICK wanted a landscape from the 1910's-1920's-1930's-1940's-1950's.

Knowing to use rocks as jewelry, urr, low columns. HIPPIE CHICK loves rocks.

Clothesline is new, custom made, based on memories. Rust color by choice. Tucked behind the new cottage.

Using what HIPPIE CHICK had on site. Her bench placed with the Tara Rule for focal points, Just Let It Touch.

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Pots on the stone wall, about 5. Lined up & planted with geraniums. A style derivative of Italian landscapes.

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I'm incredibly happy with this landscape. It doesn't look designed. It's eco, organic, sustainable, classic, low maintenance, no watering once established. And looks old immediately. Exactly what HIPPIE CHICK asked for.

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But, oh dear, my contractors. Wonderful men. Not wanting their work to look like some 'old' landscape. Me, turning into DOMINATRIX WITH A WHIP, demanding specific placement of rocks & plants. Making it look as if HIPPIE CHICK, past age 70, did everything herself decades ago.

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Why is this incredibly wonderful style of landscaping DERIDED?

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I didn't create the style, it's decades old. Why did it fall out of favor?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

FINIAL FETISH

It's not much but it makes me happy. Rabbit finials. Knowing only I wanted finials on the arbor the search began. Found the pair of cast aluminum rabbits at Lowe's. Painted Robbin's egg blue they match all the other metal in my landscape.
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The arbor, stained faded green, matches all the other wood in my landscape.
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Overdosing on a theme; it's a Tara rule.
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Finials? They're a fetish.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

COMING HOME: VANISHING THRESHOLD

Often when I'm hired, during the initial phone conversation, a client will say, I hate coming home. A sentiment understood. I, too, used to hate coming home. What changed? Jung, Life is about getting our outside to match our inside.
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It's literal & metaphorical.
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CHOOSE TO LIVE A CERTAIN WAY. Garden & home flowing in a Vanishing Threshold of beauty-energy-grace with life.
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Above, so rare. A magazine shot of an interior in vanishing threshold with its landscape. Peek out windows & doors of interior magazine shoots. Closely. You'll notice they've airbrushed the outside view.
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Vanishing Threshold begins in thought, then inside your home, then outside in the landscape. In that order.
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Landscapes begin inside the home. Not outside.
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Photo, above, is a masters class in Vanishing Threshold. It didn't happen by accident. The owner CHOSE to make it happen. Why don't you?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Thank you La Dolce Vita for posting this pic from Traditional Home.

LANDSCAPE PHARMACOLOGY: TREES

A Scottish study concluded, living in eyesight of a landscape extends life. Not gardening. Seeing. How much better seeing a beautiful landscape? Landscape pharmacology? If musical pharmacology exists, so does landscape pharmacology.

When beautifully landscaped gardens surpass their owner, what survives? Trees.

Creating a landscape? Begin with what it will end with. Trees.

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How the French do trees: a large variegated leaf tree, a weeping tree, a large cone shaped evergreen tree, a burgundy foliaged tree. At the minimum.

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In my garden today, above, cherry tree (pink) & Chinese snowball.

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For a couple of weeks I'll be living, in a subdivision, amongst beauty dating past centuries of Chinese scrolls. And the beauty is alive. Not a scroll painting.

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Without modesty, I'm hearing in my head, Peter O'Toole as Lawrence of Arabia, I DID IT.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

FETE IN THE GARDEN

Unbeknownst to me, while designing en plein air, CORPORATE WOMAN, was preparing a fete. Several salads, cheeses & breads served on antique blue/white platter with antique sterling. Enjoyed in the garden swinging on her daybed from the ancient oak.

My hat landing in the the meadow at our feet. Violets blooming at the brim. Appreciating the sublime. When life is a still life.

Appreciating her DEAR HUSBAND who lovingly takes the cushions in/out for her. Without being asked.

Choosing carefully where to place the bacchanalia. Laughter, sun, soft spring air, life, fragrance, timelessness, discussing the garden plan, sharing life stories.

A gift CORPORATE WOMAN shared with me, her joy. Her love of family, home, food, books, antiques, travel, art, story telling, and her garden.

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Humbling.

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Am I fully realizing the joys in my life, and sharing them?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

DON'T PLANT THE POTS

EXTERIOR WALLS SHOULD BE 3-D IN AREAS. A wall fountain, a birdhouse, exquisite shutters, espaliered plants, a vine, art. Whatever ties in with your interior design. Low maintenance, above, means don't plant the pots.
..............HOW?
* In the 1/2 face use an artful arrangement of pine cones + Spanish moss.
* Put a bonnet on the woman with an arrangement of dried hydrangeas + spike of dried
butterfly bush blossom.
* Give the bearded man a circa 1960's NASA crew cut of clipped twigs from a nearby tree.
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You get the idea. I'm curious what you've come up with.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara