Choices

This oak tree made a choice.I am humbled.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

Pic taken in a friend's garden last Saturday.

Before & After: Copper

Before, below, trying to mimic copper.The shiny red penny didn't quite get it done.
A few brush strokes, and many fallen leaves later, below.
Voila, copper ! AKA, Sherwin-Williams, Best Bronze. Use it on gutters/downspouts too.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

In the garden, don't forget, your house is a focal point. Get the Tara'tude app, All Parts Perfect.

A House In The Garden

Research discovery; plenty of cheap garden structures, and the too expensive. I'm needing a house in the garden, on a steep slope, behind my client's ca. 1920 Tudor home.

Have settled upon a chinoiserie style roof & plenty of French doors. Need a front deck too. Don't want the switchback trail up the slope to enter from the front, want to enter from the side.
Received the first set of drawings, below, from my contractor last night. All he received from me were several pics & about 12' X 18' please.
His creativity in materials has exceeded expectation.

.

Contractor & client have a phone appt. today about details. Pricing should be complete early next week. No, it won't be cheap. Goldilocks is hoping for 'just right'.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

Pics, top 2, via research (aka unknown) the past couple of weeks. Bottom 2 pics, via my contractor.

Southern Living Magazine: Clear Winner

When I design landscapes I must see pictures of gardens you like, and dislike.Women, men, widowed, single, divorced, all ages, starter home, mansion, city, country, heterosexual, bisexual, gay, lesbian, whatever, this garden is the clear winner.

.

Yesterday's client, yep ! Saved this pic since its debut.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

Pic taken of Southern Living magazine photo at my jobsite yesterday.

.

Why does this garden resonate? Good Design: canopy trees, understory trees, evergreen walls, groundcover flooring, layers of green (contrasting in texture/color), hi density & low density. Paths, seating, water, sky, intuitively low maintenance plantings.

.

Do you know why hi & low density are potent? Pollinators............

Axis, Bench, Focal Point In Your Landscape

A note yesterday, "Should I buy a pair of these.....?" "Yes", in reply.$200 each. Don't know the name of the shop. Designed her Birmingham, AL landscape a year ago & know there is a perfect place.

.

Where? TBD !!!!

.

Why is To-Be-Determined so extraordinarily exciting, always, in a landscape? When, many parts of life To-Be-Determined contains a wariness, an acceptance, a sense of 'this too, shall pass'. (Trees are noble shedding their leaves. Enriched by what they shed. A metaphor to hang on to. Oh, no, I have to relearn it over-over.....)

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

Pic via Birmingham........ I'm partial to benches as focal points. You may never have time to sit on your bench but looking at a bench from inside your home gives the illusion of repose.

A Room With Purpose

Bunny Mellon has a room for her baskets, below.Biltmore Estate has a room for flower arranging.

.

2 very good ideas.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

Pic via unknown.

Where You Need A Desk

Susanne Hudson says, "Every garden needs a desk."Her little thought is a great truth. Until then I didn't KNOW my garden was missing its desk.

When my Conservatory, made of rescued materials, is completed, yes, it will have a garden desk.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

Pics of Susanne's garden desk taken earlier this year. Of course they are real hydrangeas.

.

(Remember Penny McHenry's Garden Desk in her garage? Yes, inspired by Susanne Hudson.)

Sir Hardy Amies, Constance Spry, David Hicks

Constance Spry, below, of floral fame. A nice article about her in yesterday's NYTimes.With her, ca. 1960, Sir Hardy Amies.

.

A decade (longer?) ago I visited a fabulous (you know, like, cool, shazam, wow, the best EVER) teeny garden in the Cotswolds; its owner absent. Leaving, my guide said, "The owner is couturier to the Queen." Yeah, whatever, I'm an American & you think I'll fall for anything.

.

I bought, David Hicks, My Kind Of Garden, Edited by Ashley Hicks, last year, it includes Sir Hardy Amies garden. Bingo, my beloved little garden.

.

In the pic, above, it lists Sir Hardy Amies as, "...the clothing designer..."

.

When I can sweet-talk my way into using a SLIDE PROJECTOR in this dreadful PowerPoint era it's pure selfishness to see my dear, darling, perfect gardens in rich, soul satisfying colors. Sir Hardy Amies garden tops the list, of course there is Helen Dillon's garden too, and.....

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

My dream PowerPoint presentation? 4 machines, facing the 4 compass points, in a huge auditorium. You'll be sitting amongst the garden: looking forward-backward-left-right. Poppets, how many gardens do you think can be shown this way? It's exactly how I design gardens, every direction beautiful. Those preaching: sustainable, eco, green, organic, pollinator & etc.... set a very low bar and harm PUPPET BARBUDA'S beloved Landscape Design profession. Gardens must be all of these things and a Vanishing Threshold with the interiors of your home, and, low maintenance. Anything less than epiphanical and the giver of grace, well, Puppet Barbuda is sad for those 'poor unfortunate souls' living with such a landscape.

.

Indeed, I asked my lecture venue in St. Louis, MO next year for 4 PowerPoint projectors, he laughed!!!!

.

Pic taken from the NYTimes article.

Rust, Inspiration & Booty

Bringing my garden tub inside, below, the rust (it's real) looked so good I decided to keep it.
Wine Bottle Girl loved her old radiators so much she hired an artist, below, to faux paint them RUST.
Enchantingly, historically, beautiful &, poof, days later I RESCUED a radiator. Odd how the universe works, yes?

.

In my conservatory it will become the base to a console table with a marble top, also rescued.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

Rescuing my radiator was a bit tricky. Seen in the weedy woods while I was riding on acreage, in a golf cart, driven by a man, there was an awkward snag, his-land-his-stuff. "Oh, I want that !!!!!!!!!!!", and he paused a bit too long. Poppets, Ya Gotta Go In For The KILL. There was no time for me to gather the booty. You know what evolved, Golf Cart Man will bring the radiator to my conservatory.

Found: Cloches

Cloches are back at TJMaxx. Get there quick.
Above, $20 each. Made in China, the glass is thin. Polish cloches are much thicker. Mexican cloches are the thickest I've discovered.
I do not own a French antique cloche. I own 25-30 cloches, myriad sizes & makers.
With cats it's not easy having floral arrangements in the house. Into the terrarium, above, they go.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

Cloches are used to protect tender seedlings from frost. TJMaxx is next to my post office, they did not pay me for this post.

Landscape Design Patterns Inside Your Home

Art, furniture, architecture, lamps, even rugs inspire landscape design patterns. Particularly scrumptious, below.The curves she had led me in a NEW direction; pattern in a mass planting of evergreen groundcover, below.
Wine Bottle pattern, above, pure subtlety with green bottles, I'm thinking yellow/gold wine bottles instead. I want the pattern to be seen.
How the Wine Bottle patterns look in concept, above.

.

Her frontyard meadow is ripe for the central pattern in the carpet, top pic. Expanse of meadow with pathways radiating.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

Yes, Poppets, Landscape Design is this easy.

Squire Mushroom vs Wine Bottle Girl

"James Gillray's etching 'Delicious Weather', 1808, mocks the middle-class villa owner, satirized elsewhere as the newly rich 'Squire Mushroom', for his attempts to make an elegant landscape in a 2-acre garden." J Fearnley-Whittingstall
Who caters to the man, above? TESTOSTERONE ON WHEELS MOW-BLOW-GO & COMMODIFY EVERYTHING I TOUCH IN YOUR LANDSCAPE PHILOSOPHY.

.

Poppets, PUPPET BARBUDA, has been buying clothes, before reading/seeing the above, she declared her style: French, early 19th century, white wig, leggings, & dare I say, a bit of modest cleavage.
From the Dining Room, above. Seen only when standing near, not while seated. Solution? A floral arrangement of wine bottles & accouterments, softly lit from below. A cornucopia to Wine Bottle Girl's theme.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

.

How could I resist mixing these topics? The difference between 'Squire Mushroom' & 'Wine Bottle Girl' ? Wine Bottle Girl lives Cole Porter's, "It must be FUN". Poppets, she has zero time-energy-will to impress. PUPPET BARBUDA finds Squire Mushroom & his minions tiresome, to the point of harmful, to her beloved industry.

.

Top pic & quote taken from, THE GARDEN An English Love Affair One Thousand Years of Gardening, by Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall.