Are You Attractive?

"Perhaps it was strange for a young boy to have as his best friend an aging spinster, but neither of us had an ordinary outlook or background, and so it was inevitable, in our separate loneliness, that we should come to share a friendship apart. Except for the hours I spent at school, the three of us, me and old Queenie, our feisty little rat terrier, and Miss Sook, as everyone called my friend, were almost always together. We hunted herbs in the woods, went fishing on remote creeks (with dried sugarcane stalks for fishing poles) and gathered curious ferns and greeneries that we transplanted and grew with trailing flourish in tin pails and chamber pots." Truman Capote Capote goes on to describe, "Miss Sook, sensitive as shy-lady fern..."
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Are you attractive to children?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Taa
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Gardening for children? Futile in my opinion. Garden, fully, for yourself & Be-Who-You-Are. Children know the great characters.
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Pic taken in Susanne Hudson's conservatory.
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Truman Capote quote taken from, The Complete Stories of Truman Capote, copyright 2004, Random House, http://www.atrandom.com/. Thought it would have Breakfast at Tiffany's but only had his short stories, "literary fiction".

Fabulous Green

Puppet Barbuda discovered Vertical Lawns, below, in Italy. Vertical Lawns are over 2,000 years old. Modern interpretation of Vertical Lawn, below.

DISGUSTING.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Top pic via La Dolfina.

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Puppet Barbuda is incredulous a wall of 'green': involving 18 wheeler trucks, greenhouses, soil with peat moss & etc, attractive to weeds, needs watering, will die if it becomes shaded, containers made from an oil base, labor/expense to attach containers to wall... is shown off as desirable.

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Who is Puppet Barbuda? Landscape Design critic of course. If movies, books, paintings, music, clothes, perfumes, video games, & etc, have loving critics, shouldn't landscape design?

Foyer Speak

Meeting a new client, for the first time, in their foyer is intense. My eyes are chewing up the scenery, wheels in the brain spinning.Personality in foyer decor is at the top of unspoken clues I have for Landscape Design.
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Style, color, completion, tired, alive, dead space, friendly, cold, careless, anal, lamps, lamp cords, sconces, lamp shades, hardware, flow, interesting, boring, layered, halltree, chest, desk, secretary, books, art, flooring, switch plates, builder's original lighting or new, dogs, cats, children, music, fragrance, & etc.
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Attention to detail in the foyer predicts attention to detail in the landscape.
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Landscape design must give hints of the foyer. Who you are begins at the curb.
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Layers of Vanishing Threshold.
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You got this layer covered?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Foyer, above, by interior designer Susan Burks. Designing her landscape was a joy, her interiors already welcoming me at the curb.

Amalfi

Vanishing Threshold, among other things, places your home as a focal point in the landscape.Paint colors, doors, hardware, shutters, views into windows, gutters & etc.
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When the architecture is good simplicity works the best.

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Counterintuitive, it was a hard revelation. Why? I adore plants.

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Sure, I see benches & pots, above, but the architecture (degraded as it is by changes over significant time) allows simplicity to reign.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic sent from Amalfi by SHIPMAN last week.

Beauty Allowed

Beauty trumps. This gardener knows.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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I think this gardener slowly took over the courtyard. A pot here, a pot there, then bodaciously pot/palm plopped center stage. Voila, gorgeous, and really good sun. Do you do this too, create backstories to gardens without trying?
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Did you notice the pot theme?
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Pic by Shipman taken in Italy last week. He's on a multi-week blow-out cruise.

Contrast

Landscape Design is all about contrasts. Big leaves next to small leaves, green foliage next to variegated, waxy leaves next to pubescent leaves. Square planters at the entry to a round meadow.Metal rail, vintage modern furnishings & silvered decking flow from the interiors, Vanishing Threshold. Thriving in contrast with verdant woodland.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken at a client's last month. Apologies for the lighting it was noon.

Trusting the Vernacular

The 1st barn was interesting. An hour later & dozens more, just like it, I realized they were a local vernacular. Roofing, pitch, boards, color, economical, enduring.

Buy land in Elk Horn, Kentucky? I would trust the vernacular & build the same type of barn.

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Years of trying to recreate the wheel are over. Landscape design is copying, building upon what is proven to work. Knowing, counterintuitively, when I recapitulate ideas into another landscape a new wheel is, indeed, created. Without thought or effort.
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It takes courage to tap into the energy of other beautiful landscapes. To copy.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken last weekend in Elk Horn, Kentucky. I saw Providence on display both nites, The Milky Way bathing me in light (not seen since the 1970's.) Mature, peak of bloom Joe Pye weed coated in butterflies so thick the blossoms were obscured. Taking the pics I saw a fresh smashed frog in the road, in front of the barn, above, with a butterfly taking nutrients from it. Butterflies are drawn to fresh feces, are they drawn to fresh entrails too?

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.... !