Placing Cobblestone Edging

No matter how many times, below,

 my guys create a new gravel parking court with

 cobblestone edging it feels like

a new book has begun.
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I feel something tangible with gravel & cobblestones, laid with love, appreciated in form, used for function.  As if a spirit were created to nurture those in its new, yet, ancient realm.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Pics taken last month.  This incredible man, pulls a line, uses a level, does it right each time.  No matter he's done it for decades.

Cat Proof Flower Arranging

Flowers need a heavy bottomed container in my house.

 Cats may pull the flowers out but the container won't pull over.
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Yes, you know exactly how I learned this.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Christmas eve my father was diagnosed with cancer, 22 days later he died.  Our family was together, Dad had no pain.  His faith was strong.   In my garden, my chosen tabernacle for grief, grace has already begun its healing.

Exterior Lighting

11" didn't provide much space for a pendant light, below.

 This 1940 cottage project demands character.

 Pendant light found at Scott Antique last month, age & patina along with the original mica.

 Prior to Scott's I had sourced, below.  Alas, too long.

Now, I'm glad.  Not quite the patina and it cost double the antique.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Will paint the bricks Alexandria Beige-Benjamin Moore.  Too much orange in the bricks, some mortar issues but once painted the nubbyness of the bricks and mortar issues will be assets.

Richness In Simplicity

Simplicities in my house, below, intensify

 my garden view.

Landscapes & interiors are double axis.
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How does your landscape look from inside your home?  It is art on the wall at every window.  Whether you think so or not.
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How does your home look from your landscape?  It is the focal point of your landscape.  Whether you think so or not.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken yesterday, a gray day with rain.  No flash for the pics.  Light streaming in, indirectly, from the garden.  My floor, banister, stairs, and me, each bathed in garden light.

Door Statement

Over a decade ago I designed a garden for a town home in Ansley Park.

Doors, almost exactly as above, led into a tiny bricked back garden.
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All of the town homes had the same back doors into their garden.
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Most owners removed their gorgeous doors to renovate & 'update'.
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My client had her fabulous doors.  Yes, we commiserated over the loss of the other doors.  How the 'updated' doors ruined the entire look of the small, but choice, town home community.  How we really didn't like 'those' people.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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A delight to be be reminded of the Ansley Park doors with this image via pinterest.

Jane Austen

"but had I place to new fashion, I should not put myself into the hands of an improver.  I would rather have an inferior degree of beauty, of my own choice, and acquired progressively.  I would rather abide by my own blunders than by his."  (Obvious what Jane Austen thinks of this character!)

"YOU would know what you were about of course--but that would not suit ME.  I have no eye or ingenuity for such matters, but as they are before me; and had I a place of my own in the country, I should be most thankful to any Mr. Repton who would undertake it, and give me as much beauty as he could for my money; and I should never look at it, till it was complete."   (And we know what Jane Austen thinks of this character!)
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From, Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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The flower?  In my winter garden.  Living history.  A camellia of course.

How To Get It Free

Thrift store yesterday, Donald Pliner shoes, 99 cents.

 Saving, $299.00, minimum, they've bought me

several tons of gravel, stone & a few boxwood.
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Girl math.
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But it really works.  All my dear lady clients get it.  ALL.
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Husbands groan.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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No, this isn't sexist.  I know exactly how boy math works.  Pics from Ann Mashburn's home via Atlanta Homes magazine.

How Tiny Landscape Rooms Live BIG

Paley Park, New York City, NY, below, via.

A tiny landscape living BIG.
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I've pondered why some little landscapes, including  mine, live HUGE.
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Yes, seriously, I've pondered & mulled & considered & strained to figure it out.
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It's the sky.
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With little space you still have infinite ownership of the sky.
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Use it.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Have seen Paley Park, in pics, several times thru the years.  Takes my heart each time.  Perhaps I'll get there some day!  Thank you Janelle McCulloch Library Of Design for posting this garden haven.

Historically Siting Bulbs

Hillary Clinton had 'intellectual exercise' conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt.  Remember those headlines? 

 Oddly, I got it.  Even then.

Last month I sited thousands of bulbs after "consulting the genius of the place."  I've spoken with landscapes for decades.  
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This garden, above pics, has a historic home with little but its pecan orchard intact.
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Next year anyone seeing the drifts of daffodils will think they've been there a century.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Many of you have this skill, "consulting the genius of the place", but don't trust it.  It's why I listen so hard to landscape questions.  The answers are already in the question. 
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Yes, Alexander Pope...Consult the genius of the place......

Landscape Design: What Era Will You Choose?

Whitlow House ca. 1830.  Keeping the views,

 and the house rustic are intentional.  Wanting places of repose,

outside of time.

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Garden & Be Well,          XO Tara

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Pics taken at a project last week.  Landscape Design is about designing elements of TIME & PLACE.  Received a delightful comment about my home/garden this month, "You've really created your own little world, haven't you?"

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Intimacy In Large Spaces

A folly in the landscape.  (aka, a one-room cabin.)

Light from the landscape a palpable force.
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Beyond the door, acreage in open meadow & wildwood.
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Design intimacy into landscapes with acreage.  
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Let Nature reign in open meadow & wildwood.
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Garden & Be Well,        XO Tara
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Pic taken at a jobsite last week.   I wish you could walk thru this door, into the acreage.  Know the spirit of this land.  The stewardship of its owner, dancing with Providence.

Lunch In The Conservatory

Friends for over a decade, we've kept up for too many years via ambient community, aka mutual friends & social media.

 We had lunch in my Conservatory yesterday.  Each of us brought to tears several times during meandering conversation.  Happy tears.  Tears of knowing.  Tears of bearing witness.

 Mostly laughter.  And buzzing with energy.
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Grace comes unbidden, and by nurture.  Yes, you want a Conservatory in your landscape.
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Garden & Be Well,            XO Tara
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Smallest Conservatory footprint, if you have a choice, is 12' x 18'.