The Walls Of Your Rooms

Landscapes ARE architecture. Begin creating architecture in the landscape with ceilings, yesterday's post, then walls. (My Tea Olive Terrace, below, along the side of my home.)Landscape walls can be the side of your home, above, or all plantings, below. (Wall, below, is mine & hides the neighborhood from my tender sensibilities. What me not living in the Cotswolds?)
Espaliered woody shrubs & vines dramatize the walls of a home, fence, dependency & etc., below. (My Bay Terrace, below.)
Using wit, below, Susanne Hudson swags a window. Pow, Shazam, baby.
With more wit, intellect, & drama she created a garden room, raised on a dais (aka deck, but dais is ever so much nicer, yes?),
with old church windows.
Landscape Design: create walls.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Slow down, peruse again, Landscape Design IS this easy. Look at the 2nd pic again. Notice how much sky I own because of my walls? You would CRINGE knowing how many houses along the ubiquitous subdivision cul-de-sac lane (aka street) my garden obliterates in that 2nd pic. Who knew? Gardens are offense & defense. A moat of grace around home & life.

Landscape Design Is Architecture: Ceilings

When I begin a Landscape Design I create ceilings: sky, trees, arbors. Within a landscape design a cone shaped plant should be in each garden room, drawing eyes to the sky. My tiny property lives as large as the meadow/pole barn, above, I own the sky, and use it, framed by trees, as ceilings to my garden rooms. Landscape design upon acreage is the same for a postage stamp.
Sir Hardy Amies, above, uses sky, canopy/understory trees, cone shaped summerhouse, and the wit of cone shaped obelisks with balled toppers.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Landscape Design Perfection: Sir Hardy Amies

I took this pic in the Cotswolds in Sir Hardy Amies garden.A complete landscape design course, in one picture.

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Looks easy, can you do it?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Money is not a criteria. Rescued plants, rescued hardscape & etc..... Yes, you can do this.

The Hunting Lodge: John Fowler & Nicky Haslam

If men come to build sooner than to garden finely, as if gardening were the greater art, (you do realize this is Pope, ca. 17th century?) the Hunting Lodge, ca. 1730, below, proves a succession of exception. John Fowler & Nicky Haslam specifically.First time seeing the Hunting Lodge? Your lucky day.
Pigtown - Design, aka Meg Fairfax Fielding, discovered a recent Wallstreet Journal article about this Vanishing Threshold of delight.

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Do not miss this jewel of design. Many ideas to copy in your garden, & home.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics via Aesthetes Lament

Blooms, Wicker, Toile

Bringing home blooms this week, below, in the back of Tess.Blooms - Wicker - Toile !!

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Puppet Barbuda delights in trinities.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Tess is my little van. She has 6 doors & is tricked-out for ALL things garden designing, lecturing, touring, shopping. Tess brakes for Open Gardens with Tea & Scones.

2 Couches: Interiors & Exteriors

Saw this on Cote de Texas yesterday. Pic is from the April, 2011 Veranda magazine.
Cannot wait to do this exact design, OUTSIDE !

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Will the client who needs this contact me NOW ! (Reality? I'm calling some clients today, "look at my blog post, you NEED this on your terrace.)

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We can source most everything from the Gardens arena at AmericasMart in downtown Atlanta.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Of course we're going to copy correctly and do the coffee tables, chairs & etc. too.

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How often does a landscape magazine turn me on like this? Well, let's not go there.

How To Use An Ugly Lamp

In my Conservatory yesterday, during an open garden, a delightful woman said,
"That is the best use of an ugly lamp." We all looked at the direction of her gaze/comment.
After the laughter subsided we agreed, yes the peacock blue lamp with original shade is ugly. But it's perfect.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Cobalt blue, peacock blue, don't know what to call it but I LOVE this color. And that is EXACTLY why this ugly lamp is perfect; personal passion. The lamp shade is more horrendous than the lamp. It, too, 'works'. Naturally, it came from my favorite thrift store years ago.

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What's not to love about a woman who will say such things to someone she just met? Another facet I adore about gardeners; blunt talk.

Still Life: Is This You?

As she came in, below, she set her hat & pruners on the window sill.It's a peculiar fetish of mine.

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Life creating still life without effort. The detritus of your life telling a story, beautifully.

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She? I snapped the pic in Ireland. Yes, Helen Dillon.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Vertical Gardening

Every garden must have at least 1 cone shaped evergreen. Draw eyes to the sky. More about this Italian garden, above, here.
Gertrude Jekyll, famous landscape designer, said, "The first thing I consider is what to put on the house." At zero point in college or symposia has anyone said this to me. Took this pic in France, a private garden. In addition to vines on a house, I like espaliered woody flowering shrubs, they need no trellis or wire.
Vertical gardening on a tiny subdivision lot, above, canopy & understory trees with climbing roses. If Monet could have a climbing rose thru his understory trees, so can I. That's my garden, above. The window? It's where I'm typing this post.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Quite selfish leading with the pic I took in Italy. A garden brimming with epiphanies. While I was in it and after.

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3 Vertical Gardening concepts, get started.

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Garden Designers Round Table: MORE Vertical Gardening Posts !!

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Garden Up! Vertical Gardening

March 22, 2011 by susan morrison

When you hear the phrase “vertical gardening,” what comes to mind? You might think about roses scrambling up a trellis, or an overhead arbor dripping with wisteria. Those with a contemporary aesthetic may envision a mosaic of succulents hung on an outdoor wall, while edible gardeners see a riotous mix of creative containers, with tomatoes and peas reaching for the sun.

Vertical gardening is all those things and more. To celebrate the publication of Garden Up! Smart Vertical Gardening for Small and Large Spaces by roundtable members Susan Morrison and Rebecca Sweet, this month our designers share their own unique perspectives on this exciting garden trend.

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK
Pam Penick : Digging : Austin, TX »
Rebecca Sweet : Gossip In the Garden : Los Altos, CA »
Scott Hokunson : Blue Heron Landscapes : Granby, CT »
Susan Morrison : Blue Planet Garden Blog : East Bay, CA »
Tara Dillard : Vanishing Threshold : Atlanta, GA »

Vanishing Threshold: Lunch & Learn

Vanishing Threshold is an original concept, an epiphany while studying historic landscapes in Italy. Landscapes begin inside your home. Place focal points on axis with key views. It's that simple.

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An inner voice impels me to take Vanishing Threshold out of the garden realm. Are you an Interior Decorator? Landscape Designer? Come hear me speak about creating beautiful landscapes in Vanishing Threshold with your home.

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AmericasMart, Lunch & Learn: Looking for inspiration and education between Markets? Join Tara Dillard for a demonstration on successfully incorporating outdoor living spaces into your designs - March 24, noon-1pm, at AmericasMart. RSVP to 404-220-2055 or nlyle@americasmart.com.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pot on plinth, above, on axis from my living room. Centered on window. Interior decorators, are you looking out the windows of your clients home? Interiors are not finished unless the window views are part of a home's interior. My landscape designs are not complete unless views into windows are fabulous.

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Designer? What is original to you? What is your horse/pony show? Willing to get out of your comfort zone & let the world know?

Krista Tippett : Big Ideas On Being

Heard a man say, "I do my best thinking when I'm sweating." Me too, & preferably sweating in the garden or hiking.Krista Tippet's topics I often take into my garden.

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In Krista's recent newsletter, something to take into my garden this weekend, and beyond.

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.
—Rilke's Book of Hours, I, 59

Translated by Joanna Macy & Anita Barrows.

Via most recent enewsletter from Krista Tippett.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic from inside my home, across the Natchez Terrace to my new Conservatory.

Ireland: Helen Dillon & A Classic Tablescape

Helen Dillon's Irish garden, below.All the potted plants from South Africa, all terra cotta pots, all full sun, landscape design rule of big leaves with small leaves.

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Timeless. Did I take the pic last summer or 1998? (Big concept, taking advantage of it? The best gardens across the globe do.)

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Travel assignment, visit Helen Dillon's garden in Ireland be sure to have tea/scones too.

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You thought this was just a table-in-the-garden-with-a-few-pots? Hardly.