This Garden & Its Mistress

Carriage house, fescue, boxwoods, pair of elms, stone wall/stone terrace/steps, below, all new, perhaps 12 minutes old in the pic.
Client is successful, headstrong, bold, smart, athletic, spiritual, demanding, puckish.

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Today she is in a hospital bed unable to move or speak.

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Before surgery she directed her brother to finish her landscape with us.

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My hope & prayer? In addition to complete recovery, I want to hear her ask: why those boxwoods are 6" off, why didn't you get bigger elms, why isn't the potager edged with dwarf boxwood, why aren't existing boxwoods-in-pots sited & etc.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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This story, this incredible woman, has dug itself in. She's in my prayers.

Potager Pattern Ideas

Carpet, below, in my hotel room in Charleston, SC., last month.Parquet, below, in the foyer of the hotel room.
Choosing a pattern for a Potager wouldn't be difficult for this hotel.

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Vanishing Threshold.

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I must see interiors before designing landscapes.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Love a hotel room with a foyer !!

Finally, Fabulous Fake Stone

Cobblestones, below. Manufactured by Belgard.Flagstone, below. Manufactured by Belgard.
Finally.
Fake stone that isn't crap.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Poppets this isn't only aesthetics. Think cost savings with uniformity of materials. I've NEVER used Belgard. This year? They changed my mind !! No, Belgard did not pay me, or ask me, to mention their products.

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Alas, Belgard still uses old fashioned photography in their sales literature. Don't let it scare you.

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Horrendously, Belgard still uses the equivalent of avocado refrigerator/shag carpet/pink Sunbeam mixer for exterior furniture styling with their sales literature. Don't let it scare you.

Materials Indicate Movement

Parking at the left with concrete block/gravel, enter the home at stones + wood steps, driving lane of cubed stone/gravel.Stone at doorway, below.
Concrete blocks/gravel for parking, below.
Cubed stone/gravel, below, for roads.
And, below,
they look great together.

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Did you notice something FABULOUS? Each is water permeable.

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Nice to pull onto these surfaces & hear their bit of crunch and feel their texture under your tires.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics from Mixson, my project in Charleston, SC.

Bowood: Cafe, Farm, Shop & Plant Nursery

In a century old brick warehouse Bowood of St. Louis, MO has a nursery redolent of those in Europe. A shop, below.Cafe, below. Yes, it was YUM. They have their own CHEF.
From the cafe windows, below.
They also sell plants, below. Adore their crunchy gravel paths.
Directly across the street, below,
is their farm. Produce is sold fresh & used in the Cafe.

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If you're in St. Louis, MO do not miss Bowood.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken from the Bowood site. Back from a week in St. Louis, Mo lecturing at their Home & Garden Show sponsored by their Home Builders Assoc. 11 lectures, 4 TV interviews & 2 radio interviews. Bowood was an energizing respite from my busy schedule.

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More tomorrow !

City Garden, Country Garden

My realm is residential landscape design. Specifically, Queen of subdivision Landscape Design. (Younger, I would have taken this as insult. Older, I wear it as a crown.) Certainly a product of my era. More, my passion. Infertility gave me decades of time, most women don't have, for Landscape Design. Travels across the globe, with few funds, studying historic landscapes. Also, doing most of the labor in my own sweet landscape.On occasion, I'm put into a different playground. Land.
Do you know what's different about Landscape Design in a subdivision vs. land?
Nothing.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics from Mixson, a project with LAND that I'm working on in Charleston, SC.

Formula: 2 Chairs + Table

Woodland, palace, mid-century modern, cluster, townhome, shotgun, split-level ranch & etc.2 chairs + table; works every time.

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Of course, you must choose the correct vernacular.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Another pic from MIXSON at my job in Charleston, SC.

Fabulous: Front & Back

Adore the asymmetry of doors, windows, shutters, steps, below.Complete follow-thru, below, at the back of the home. RARE !
From the landscape there are NO unconsidered views of your home.

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Front, back, sides. Hop on it.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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More pics from my project at Mixson in Charleston, SC.

Big Impact Little Input

Interior design & landscape design share templates.Most garden magazines waste my time. Neglecting to educate, inspire or widen my horizon.
Instead I look to other realms/arts for landscape design inspiration.

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Color, form, contrast, texture, scale, flow, focal points, high density, low density, invitation, joy, peacefulness, simplicity & more; this interior design, above, speaks.

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It would be pure pleasure to design a landscape flowing from the views of this window. My inspiration? Easy. Color, form, contrast, texture, scale, flow, focal points, high density, low density, invitation, joy, peacefulness, simplicity & more.

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Landscape designed in conversation with interior design. Vanishing Threshold.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Another pic from my project at Mixson in Charleston, SC.

Simplicity

Simplicity, below.
With very little, much is created.
Without moving my feet, above, another pic of the same space. Leaving this wall bare, eyes flow to the garden & sky.

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This is a model home at Mixson, a project I'm working on in Charleston, SC.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Lucky me, I get to design a landscape in conversation with this development team. Of course I'm biased, there is a huge dog run already constructed and most members of the development team do, indeed, own dogs.

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Gardens & interiors are a flowing conversation. Seeing this model home helped me know how to proceed in my landscape design work for this company.

Copy

Because it's new
doesn't mean it must look new.

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Copy. It's one of the 1st rules of Landscape Design.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic taken last week at Mixson a project I'm working on in Charleston, SC.

Don't Use This Type

Don't use a single wheeled wheelbarrow.
Double wheeled demand less physically + don't compact the soil as much.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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This girl has been ridden ROUGH. She's not old but already retired. Found at a jobsite I was working on in Charleston, SC last week. Adore the lines of a good wheelbarrow. Evocative.