Faces Vs. Words

I don't like 'words' in a garden. Too 'fixed'. Limiting. Why look at a stupid doormat that says 'welcome'? Your home, frontdoor, colors, plantings, focal points, lights, knocker, views into windows & etc. each say 'welcome'.At my backdoor, above, a Christine Sibley piece. Bought from her 2nd's table, the only way I could afford her things.

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I've never tired of her face; through the years she's spoken volumes.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Christine Sibley, artist-gardener-business woman. She left this world too soon.

A Slope In Italy: Drystack Stone

Olive trees sold long ago. These stones have retained this slope for centuries. No mortar.A new Drystack Stone wall begun by a recent DIY client.
Copy brilliance, I do.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Cannot wait for my client to finish their wall & send a pic.

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A previous contractor told me (with attitude), at a jobsite, this type of wall could not be built, "It has to be mortared." Should have quit using him with that job. But he was young & I thought I was mentoring. Alas. Months later 2 women clients (they don't know each other) called me in the same week, using the same word, misogynist, about this contractor. I'm sure he's missing my referrals.

How To Create Hidden Assets

The rule is 1 focal point per area. How to break the rule? Subsidiary Focal Points.
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In the Tea Olive Terrace, above.
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Tucked quietly in a corner, often overlooked.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken last week in my garden. A perverse delight, creating subsidiary focal points to be overlooked.

How To Hang Pictures

Hung by the artist, R. Scott Coleman, & his wife Kathrine Coleman, below, this art is obviously arranged. But it doesn't look 'arranged'. And the table, custom built for the Conservatory, is arranged subtly with smaller pieces of R. Scott Coleman's art. Placed in the Conservatory, below, for a garden tour it's
going to be missed once it's all packed up and taken away.
Imagine the walls, above & top pic, without the pictures. Not good, feels like 'life' is taken away.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken by Kathrine Coleman. I wonder how many pieces of art the garden owner bought!! Can't wait to visit this client again. Get my body into their Conservatory, spatially 'feel' it. Garden pics only get me so far. NEED my body in gardens that excite my eyes.

How To Hide An Eyesore Powerbox

Altar table, below, used as a potting table. Lamps (oooh-la-la) have electricity. Altar table, below, was past its church days before it's new life in the garden.
A power box, below, at a client's chicken house & pecan orchard.
Within the louvres, above, is the green power box.

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Top 2 pics were sent to my carpenter as description for what I wanted. He adapted the idea beyond expectation.

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Carpenter & I never communicate well in the 1st round. Ever. Then we laugh, always. Afterward he leverages my ideas 'better'. I adore working with this man.

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We'll accessorize the altar table with a cloth of burlap placed 'church style' (diminishing the louvres) , iron book holder, pair of heavy iron lamps, a couple of baskets for egg & pecan gathering.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Top pics are from the garden Susanne Hudson & I created for last year's Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival. We're using the table again this year but not as a potting table. Can you guess how? Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival, Douglasville, GA, June 4-5, 2011.

Most Copied Garden In Charleston, SC

Loutrel Briggs designed this garden, below, for Emily Whaley. I've copied this garden more than any other.Mrs. Whaley and Her Charleston Garden, is a book you'll read often through the years.
Dogwood Books & Antiques, below, was a vendor at my lecture venue in Rome, GA last weekend.
Bought 2 boxes of vintage garden books. Most will be given as gifts. Mrs. Whaley and Her Charleston Garden? Bought both their copies. Penny McHenry gave me my copy.

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Penny & I were in Mrs. Whaley's Charleston, SC garden less than 3 months after Mrs. Whaley died.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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2 days in Rome, a box of books per day. Couldn't afford to stay longer!!! Saw the 1st hydrangea blossom opening yesterday while reading the morning paper & perusing my Ipad (at the same time of course). Wanted to call Penny, tell her about my 'Penny Mac' being the first mophead this year in my garden. Missing her delightful scream at my news. Missing, more, her dive into all the wonderful/sumptuous/fabulous hydrangea happenings in her garden.

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It really stinks when a good friend is gone. Her phone number is still in my head. (Aren't those the beginning lines of a country song?)

How To Hide A Fence

Asked to hide a fence at the back of their garden in a tiny, dingy corner,

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the MUSE said, "Put in an 'L' shaped Conservatory, gravel terrace, chandelier from the oak tree, a dining table underneath & build it from rescued parts."
It wasn't an option, below, to see the ugly fence from all these windows.
Recently completed, below, on a garden tour for Hay House, in Macon, GA. (These are smart people, create a BIG deadline!)
Artist in residence for the garden tour R. Scott Coleman, here, watercolors.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Since I designed this garden missives have been sent showing the progress. Many building parts are ca. 1870. Did you see the fence? Love my MUSE. Puppet Barbuda cringes thinking how Mr. Testosterone-On-Wheels-Mow-Blow-Go would have designed this dark little corner.

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Pics from The Daily Landscape.

Landscaping After The Tornadoes

Lecturing near tornado devastation yesterday I had time to meet & speak with the Floyd County Master Gardeners & Rome, GA mayor.
Let's do a Free Landscape Design Symposium.

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Siting trees properly cools in summer, heats in winter. Contouring turf properly reduces mowing-fertilizer-chemicals-water-maintenance; more space for flowering shrubs & groundcovers creating maximum pollinator habitat & beauty. Choosing paint colors, light fixtures, patio/deck shape. And the fun of siting focal points.

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Lovely garden, curb appeal, raised property value. Greater tax receipts.

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Puppet Barbuda went in for the kill, with the mayor, on that last bit. Increased Tax Receipts!

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In hindsight the mayor looked like a deer in headlights. Hmm. Puppet Barbuda was in her element. In hindsight Puppet Barbuda should have let the mayor speak. In Puppet Barbuda's defense, she had little time with the mayor before mounting the stage to lecture. Think Puppet Barbuda would miss a single second of STAGE TIME?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Stopped at Liz's Antique Barn on the way out of Rome. Puppet Barbuda found a TUTU.

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Took the pic in France moons ago.

How To Copy A Design

Before her bedroom, below, I fell for the garden & parking court in the movie, Something's Gotta Give.Hunting/gathering last week, $20, gotta love it

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"Every garden needs a desk.", Susanne Hudson said. Crazy idea, yes?

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Life is good. Bedroom & garden will BOTH get a desk/chair.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Zero idea how to reconfigure the bedroom for a desk/chair & zero idea where to put a desk/chair in the garden. This challenge is pure catnip.

Design For Winter Not Summer

Design for Summer & it's pretty in summer. Design for Winter & it's pretty all year.

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A new thread to that thought, design a summer garden to look like winter. Hmmmmm. In the heat/humidity/mosquito summer seeing a cooling garden of winter. Interesting.
Summer, above, Lake Maggiore, Italy. This qualifies.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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How do I know it's a summer pic? I took it.

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Epiphany came reading, "Ms. Malcolm's books have wintry atmospheres - both intellectual and aesthetic - that derive partly from the way she takes facts and attaches them, like someone hanging tea-light candles from high rafters, to mythology and classic literature, mostly Russian." "When a relative recalls, in the courtroom, the dead man eating a pomegranate, the Comp Lit student in Ms. Malcolm pounces. "Of course he was eating a pomegranate," she writes. "Characters in Russian literature are always eating (or offering) fruit at significant moments." Dwight Garner, New York Times, in his book review, Iphigenia in Forest Hills: Anatomy of a Murder Trial, by Janet Malcolm.

Sir Cecil Beaton In Reddish

"Cecil was actually the first person ever to walk me round a garden, which he regularly did at his house in Reddish.This seemingly simple act, like so many in one's life, was seminal in opening up to me the very idea that one could actually make a garden at all." Sir Roy Strong, about his friend Sir Cecil Beaton.
Do you walk friends round your garden?
Do you have friends that walk you round their garden?

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I do.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken in my garden last week. FYI, zero watering for these plants. Beauty Without Effort; great mantra to me. Just another little detail why "sustainable" is such a COS. (Does this show Puppet Barbuda's age?) Sustainable? Why accept sooooooo little? FTS.

Turning A Hedge Into Entries

For decades I've designed gardens. What I know for sure? It's not about the plants. By the time someone contacts me they are in a new chapter of life, sometimes a new book. Are they aware? Mostly, no.

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When the garden is born again, their life is changed.

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My job is to "capture the humanity of what is under way".

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Myriad times I've taken 1-2 plants out of a hedge & put in a path. Creating 2 entries instead of 2 dead-ends. Isn't the vocabulary stunning? Entries vs. dead-ends.

Then, it happened to me. A hedge in front of my home became entries.

Within the new hedge/entry a potager became a gravel terrace with adirondack chairs, a place to have lunch, talk on the phone, eat breakfast, read, sit still waiting for hummingbirds to fly so close I can hear their wings. And the Chinese snowball blossoms drop their petals in benediction of the foxgloves, above, about to bloom next.

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How could I know when the entry was born I would have a new room to LIVE in? And I had entered a new chapter.

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It's easier to see a new chapter in a client's life.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken in my garden last week. I've done more than the Bay Terrace the past year. A Conservatory, Tea Olive Terrace, Natchez Terrace. Though I didn't know it while creating these garden rooms they have given me the strength to finish a book in my life.