IS YOUR HOA DOA?

PUPPET BARBUDA, this blog's favorite landscape critic, sniffed delightedly reading a review of the film "The Lovely Bones." A.O. Scott is one of her favorite film critics. "The novel is conceived with enough audacity to make this gimmick intriguing, and executed with enough art to make it effective." A.O.Scott
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PUPPET BARBUDA reads, "The landscape is conceived with enough audacity to make this gimmick intriguing, and executed with enough art to make it effective."
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A.O.Scott is a garden designer! PUPPET BARBUDA loves his trinity of questions a good landscape answers.
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Is the landscape audacious?
Is the landscape intriguing?
Is the landscape art?
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PUPPET BARBUDA is disgusted with typical homeowner association rules pertaining to landscapes.
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Older HOA's, especially, devalue property. How? Keeping landscapes in a timewarp of SHAG CARPET, AVOCADO GREEN APPLIANCES, POPCORN CEILINGS & ETC.
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Interior decorating is allowed to move forward why aren't landscapes?
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Outdated trim colors, foundation plantings pruned, for decades, into malicious, cruel shapes, and turf guzzling labor, water, toxic chemicals. Too many homeowners are bound by law to the uglies listed above. And losing money.
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PUPPET BARBUDA kicking dollars at words.
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Neighborhood of 350 homes, with outdated Home Owner Association rules.
Average home price, $425,000.00
Landscaping worth 5% of sales price.
$21,250.00 loss for each home.
Total neighborhood loss: $7,437,500.00
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Is your HOA DOA? Please, forward this humble post to your HOA president. Start a dialogue. Money is on the table. Don't you want more?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara aka PUPPET BARBUDA
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Pic of lunch this week in my office

BROKEN HEADS

Working in the shed behind the greenhouse I had to be careful of spiders, snakes, rats & stacks of collapsing merchandise. I loved it!! The oddest rat scurried at my feet. I screamed. Thoughts in chaos. Why? The small black rat was in reality the BROKEN HEAD OF ST. FRANCIS, about 3" & black, rolling quickly by.
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Brain thought, RAT. Eyes saw a face.
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That began my BROKEN HEADS collection.
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Girlie, above, is about 4". She cost a $1 at some nursery. Another joy of my BROKEN HEAD collection? Cheap. One nursery tried to charge me $12 for a BROKEN HEAD, ha, I walked.
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Only the observant will discover my BROKEN HEADS collection in the garden.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

FLOWING COLOR

SHE sent this days ago, below, a victory. SHE chose a new door & paint color. We had choices to make about the door surround; opting to keep the original windows. The door was custom made to fit her space. The color chosen to flow from the myriad gray-blues of her interior. When I saw her wreath I had to smile. Can you guess what color she asked me to design the flowering shrubs/trees in her frontyard?
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White.
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SHE has white: azaleas, viburnum, holly, camellias, magnolia, dogwood.
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It's counterintuitive, the more demanding you are of your landscape the easier it is to create.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

MY DEAR LADIES

She hired me to design her landscape. It included turning a window into French doors leading to a beautiful window encrusted room surrounded on 3 sides by garden. That room would replace

a rotting deck. Ick. Leaving that 1st appointment I saw a book by May Sarton on her bookshelf. Dahlings, anyone loving May Sarton is my bosom friend. I left with borrowed books & a new friend.

Time passed My Dear Lady installed her garden & built the French doors & The Garden Room.

More time passed and My Dear Lady introduced me to her dearest friend. Yes, I designed her garden too.

My Dear Ladies are retired school teachers and owned an antiques business for decades. Driving a used school bus they scoured northern USA for their southern antiques shop. Can't you see My Dear Ladies loading that school bus & driving stuffed with antiques?

Every Saturday nite My Dear Ladies & I are in The Garden Room, above. Wine, canapes & conversation. Always out to dinner late, in a rush, we talk so much. Sometimes, midweek, we convene, as we did last night. Other times we head off to Scott's monthly antique show.

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Occasionally we've convened in the hospital, both people & pet!

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Last Christmas my family situation 'blew-up'. Being a smart girl I drove to My Dear Ladies & The Garden Room. Ha. We had a fabulous Christmas. Last nite we tenderly broached the subject because we want to do it again. We are.

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It was presumptuous telling a client to knock a hole in their wall and build a new room. Little did I know I was designing my own sanctuary.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

COLOR: CEILING, WALLS, FLOOR

Glorious fall is coloring ceiling, walls & floor. Pink walls, & ochre carpet, below. The grey flagstone terrace with dwarf mondo growing in the cracks, below? Now, a carpet of ochre. Magic. I adore the change, no matter how fleeting.

Oooooooh, the sound of walking thru leaves enriches my soul.

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And of course, I didn't forget to color the ceiling, below.

Looking up thru the art on the wall, pink camellia blossoms, into a golden/green laced ceiling, above.

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Designing in your garden is no different than designing in your house. It's one thing to paint or coffer your ceiling inside. Outside it's a feeling of, "I own the sky!"

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OWN YOUR SKY!!!!!!!!

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

CREATING A LIFE FORCE

TRACTOR CHICK's landscape is being installed. Double sided fireplace, bluestone terrace, gravel terraces, arbors, ponds, rill, outdoor kitchen, garden rooms, focal points, paths, allee's, orchard, compost pile, potting table with nursery area, tiny lawn to legally please the homeowners association. Hardscape is mostly installed. Plants aren't on site yet.

Yet it's already there. A new LIFE FORCE. Risking being, The-Fruit-Loop-Garden-Designer I called TRACTOR CHICK last night & said, "I feel the Life Force of your garden."

Guess what? She feels it too!!!!!!!!!

Normally, it takes longer for a garden to share its Life Force. Sadly, many landscapes never have a Life Force. If yours doesn't, once you ask, "Why?", you're on your way to having it.

PUPPET BARBUDA will not let anyone use the I-don't-have-the-money excuse. One bush, one tree, done correctly will create a Life Force. We've all been in check-book gardens, yuck.

What do landscapes with a Life Force feel like? Grace. An energy calming & inspiring; an energy making sense of anything life throws at you. Beauty, enriching & sublime filling the senses, feeding your inner muse.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics from my patio this week.

FALLEN

He startled me, at my feet, walking quickly to the compost hands full. A face, looking up. My garden, already an enchantment, transitioning from metaphorical to literal? HA!!!

Hanging at the entry on my arbor at the patio, he fell. Long forgotten, perhaps a squirrel knocked him off?

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His open mouth? He's a birdhouse hand-made of cast stone with marble eyes & a rough sandy texture. Bought him lecturing in North Carolina almost 15 years ago. A perk of traveling to lecture far from home, UNIQUE LOOT.

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I adore it when my garden surprises me!!

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What charming surprises has your garden given you?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

SHE LAUGHS

Fifty weeks each year, this planter is THE FOCAL POINT. Until, Mother Nature laughs, saying, "ANYTHING YOU CAN DO, I CAN DO BETTER."

Waltz with MOTHER NATURE. Let her lead. It's not a bad deal. YOU get the credit.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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In reality these pics are a Good-Garden-Accident. Client & I placed 4 of these planters around her pool recently. THEN the Japanese maple began to color. Good-Garden-Accident's tell you, "You've done the right thing dahling."

WICKEDLY WONDERFUL

At the front of her property as she drives in, below, a lovely new stone plinth. As she walks from the back of her property, below, to the front; the same lovely new stone plinth.

One focal point placed on DOUBLE AXIS. Discovered this landscape design trick at Mount Stewart while studying in Ireland.

Perfection, an urn so fabulous it can be planted, OR NOT. Discovered this landscape design trick while studying landscapes in Scotland.

Realized studying landscapes across Europe: The more directions a focal point has the better a focal point is.

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Wickedly wonderful. And EASY.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

NOTHING HAS MOVED

Today, below, the end of a long fall. This summer, below, a fairly decent year for Mophead Hydrangeas.

Table nor blue/white ginger jar has moved. Only the seasons have changed & where I've stood to take the pics.

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Big Impact, Little Input Gardening!!

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

A FREE HOUSE

Knowing he replaced windows Susanne Hudson deduced the old windows were going someplace, shall we say, unpleasant, in these 'sustainable' times? With Susanne's brilliance, instead of ending their life at a, literal, DUMP his windows are becoming GARDEN HOUSES, metaphorically, free.

#89 granite gravel creates crunchy delicious floors.

With rescued objects (aka free) and an exquisite eye for junking Susanne's GARDEN HOUSE is a statement in INTERIOR DESIGN too.

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Who knew junking & rescuing could be so GORGEOUS!!

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Took pics in Susanne's GARDEN HOUSE.

ROUNDABOUTS HERE & THERE

Roundabouts, below, get you around a garden.

Roundabouts are a fabulous landscape design tool. Use where 2, or more, paths intersect.

This woman, above, was beyond ready to take her frontyard in hand. Corner lot, too big, unattractive, way too much mowing, little property value, and most importantly, it did not make her happy. (Ha, beware the woman not happy with something.)

Grass was reduced, paths with roundabout designed, groundcovers, evergreen shrubs, & understory trees to survive drought/flood & aging in place. Aging in place? Want to be 88 with weekly garden chores? Ha, didn't think so. It's designing for unskilled labor, tough plants, and timeless beauty on axis from window views.

From the house, above, a stone roundabout anchors the view. Evergreen hollies anchor the entry path, variegated sweetflag (groundcover) surround the roundabout.

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Designed in the grand tradition with a low maintenance theme. Not completed, above, and already showing promise. And her? She's HAPPY.

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Small roundabout, above. Notice something important about the pot, above? It doesn't HAVE to be planted.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics of completed roundabouts I took last January in the botanical garden in Birmingham, England. My client sent the pics of her roundabout.