Piquant

He's 68, retired, & living his dream on 10 acres of Kentucky heaven. A mix of rich character. Living as a conservative, voting liberal, spending as Jesus would. By hand, and alone, he's building this drystack stone wall behind his home.

Stone is gathered from his stream after storms.

Of course there's a gorgeous woman in this story. Queen of the realm. She rules thru culinary skill, aesthetics, intellect, humor, experience, wisdom, patience, & love.

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What stories are in your landscape?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken in Kentucky last weekend. Have always had a piquant fascination for old stone walls. Wanting to know when they were built, who was the builder, know the 'life' swirling while the wall was being built.

Whence Creativity?

Curves of nature. Spit of rock, below, in the stream. A lovely marquis shape to plant hosta along a path in your woodland. Perhaps the far shore is Azalea 'George Tabor' & the marquis shape a drift of helleborus. Understory trees planted where 2 or 3 of the larger stones arise from the stream.

Distributions of ironweed, Joe Pye weed, and more, in the Kentucky field, above, another template. Perhaps for a perennial border or a mixed border.

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I adore reading nature at its purest for copying into Landscape Design.

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Are you a Garden Whisperer too?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken last weekend in Kentucky.

Choosing Simplicity

Paintings, and lives, are made of this, below. 10 acres amongst other farms, many Mennonite, hills & streams. They retired here recently. The work is hard but the joy is greater.

Already their home a refuge for children/grandchildren, friends, & animals. Blossom, above.

Clearing land, above/below, 1st cleared over a century ago.

Discovering original gravel drives & ponds.

Felled wood stored in the circa 1940's cedar barn. Trucks & tractors bought (too) reasonably during this economy. Trading Atlanta for Kentucky.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken this weekend. Did you notice how the slope was contained, at the gravel drive? Of course I said, YES, when invited, roadtrip with a girlfriend to stay with another girlfriend & her yardboy! Stopped at roadside junk sales along the way. Bagged a few old lawn tools. More......

Your Frontdoor

Creamy color taken from bricks. Window box & hare, a still life. Shutters rich, not builder grade. Thought went into this Frontdoor welcome. My Dear Lady is pulling thru to health after months. Her garden oblivious to her inattention. Instead, her garden enriching the healing process.
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Does your landscape work for you or do you work for it?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken this week, same garden as previous post. Your interiors may be fabulous but their first impression is at your Frontdoor.

Ranchburger: Beauty Without Stress

Lining the foundation of this ranch, below, were the obligatory-neatly-in-a-row, evergreen meatballs. Between the house & frontdoor sidewalk I removed the line of meatballs,

put in a flagstone terrace with teak bench/coffee table, low evergreen shrubs, groundcover, understory tree, & pots. Voila, ta-da, but of course.

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My Dear Lady has been slowed by multiple health issues for over a year. Yet her garden has never been a worry for maintenance, even during this 5 weeks without rain.

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This is the point of good Landscape Design: can you work a million hours, travel, caretake a loved one, or have health issues & still maintain a beautiful landscape?

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A beautiul landscape not allowing for real-life is not a beautiful landscape, it's stress.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken earlier this week in the same garden as previous blog post. Poppets, "I" did not literally perform labor in this sweet garden my contractor did. Wish I could rip out mature shrubs, install flagstone terraces & etc.... !

Kitchen View

Birdhouse condos, below. View from deck.

Still lifes are imperative for this landscape. Deck is viewed from the Garden Room & Kitchen. Is the deck used? As a destination for the eye, yes.

From inside the Kitchen (& Garden Room), below, EDUCATOR watched a pair of bluebirds build their nest & raise their young this spring.

This simple joy, a huge victory.

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Sometimes the hand of G-d takes control of our life. Sinking into a garden let's me trust that hand. Watching it in the life of a friend is humbling.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken yesterday in EDUCATOR's home/garden. Client, & now a friend of several years, she is able to maintain her garden with unskilled (aka: affordable) labor. More....

Compost & Gertrude Jekyll

"The size of a garden has very little to do with its merit. It is merely an accident relating to the circumstances of the owner. It is the size of his heart and brain and goodwill that will make his garden either delightful or dull, as the case may be, and either leave it at the monotonous dead level, or raise it, in whatever degree he may, towards that of a work of fine art."

Gertrude Jekyll, Wood and Garden, 1899 When a client has compost, above, filling their drive I know they are of the finest rank.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken last week in the same garden as the previous post. Wish you could smell the sweetness of that compost pile.

Landscape Mix

Old gate, below, in a new fence.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Another pic from yesterday's post. This lucky girl sleeps with her carpenter & yardboy. Aside from putting in the old gate in their new fence he also designed/built their deck & more....

Tuteur & Drama

Cone shapes draw the eye in landscapes. Charming tuteur, below, buta subtle color.

Imagine if each tuteur were bright yellow or red. Changes the garden, yes?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic from the same garden as yesterday's post. My client made these tuteurs. Notice the drama of tuteurs in pots. The Anna Belle hydrangeas are a victory in this drought & hi temps & sun.

Privacy in the Open

Typical subdivision, below, seen from the street. Standing at the frontdoor, above, a view of the street, below.

Why do Americans give real estate to passing cars?

Vanishing Threshold landsape design starts inside your home. Not at the street.

Hints of the street, above. To the left of the bed, above, is the driveway.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken last week. A client from many years ago called me back for some tweeking. They are both self-employed, grandparents & have Show dogs. Crazy busy lives, yet wanting a beautiful, little care, landscape. They are do-it-yourself gardeners.
Good timing for the visit. They are repainting soon & we will choose a more faded shade of white & the gutters will become 'copper'. And they're in need of a good pruning. A fabulous landscape with zero styling for these pics. (Magazine landscapes styled for their moment of glory aren't my thing.)

The Chair

SHIPMAN sent this, below, from Greece yesterday. Of course, in my mind, these chairs have already been designed into fabulous gardens.
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Graveled terrace, ancient wood harvest/farm table, tree trunk arbor, 3 old chandliers not matching but hanging at the same level above table. 6 of these chairs with a pair of bentwood/cane armchairs at each end of the table.
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At the entryway of a garden room. A pair of these chairs with chickenwire molded into dog forms covered in a small leafed ivy. At the other end of the garden room another pair with chickenwire in cat forms covered in variegated ivy.
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In honor of a dear friend a cluster of shopping bags arrayed around the chairs.
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Of course there are chickenwire forms of people with the chairs...
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What do you see?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Can't wait till you get back SHIPMAN, lunch???

Underused Plants

Now that you've seen, Edgeworthia, below, how can you not have it? Winter blooms on deciduous stems. Grown as a shrub or small tree depending upon your pruning. Part shade to edge of woodland in the south, full sun to part shade in the north, zones: 5-9. . Pic

Lonicera fragrantissima, below, visually a bore, but once you smell her, you will have her. A gangly shrub, zones: 1-9, with arching canes, sun or shade, plenty of winter blooms to bring inside.

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Witch Hazel, below, a small understory tree for shade to part sun. Blooms in winter. Foliage persists through much of winter, beige, boring until you see it dripping with rain/dew backlit by the morning sun. Upon that morning you will know why the universe was invented.

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Each are drought tolerant & essentially carefree. Oddly, I chose winter bloomers.

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More Underused Plants at the Garden Designers Roundtable today.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Discovered the pics via Garden Lust. Not entirely clear if they were from the New York Times or taken by Garden Lust.

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The Garden Designers Roundtable posts will be up after 1pm central.

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Wish everyone could have camellias and gardenias and tea olive & etc. Alas, narrow zones.

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Fantasy plant? Dwarf eleagnus, 2'-3'.