Immigrant Labor

For my Landscape Designs to become fabulous gardens there are many to be named a prophet-without-honor.

 

 This week we lost one at a wholesale tree nursery.  He was bush hogging with a tractor.  It turned over & the mower hit him.  Hours passed before this hardworking man was found.  A wife & children are left behind.

Most of the men making my career possible are immigrants.  Their laboring, striving, leaving home/country, attitude, humble me.
.
Garden & Be Well,              XO Tara
.
Went to a lecture luncheon last month at DK Gallery, Gina Hurry is the artist, above.

Lamp in the Landscape

 

Women who have these lamps, I thought as a child, are wacko.  Ticky-tacky gold leaf, gaudy.

Was there an exact date I grew up to be 'wacko'?
.
Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
.
Even in the afternoon I can see the sparkly light bulbs from the house, and they make me happy.  More stupid, about this lamp was its price.  Found at my favorite Antique shop I waited several visits for its mark down.  Not.  I made an offer & you see my trophy!

French Garden

 

In France, below.

 I count this, below, one of my greatest joys.

 Because in this garden, above & below,

You aren't in France anymore.  You're in my garden, Stone Mountain, GA, USA.  In a subdivision of tiny lots.  Without my garden, bottom 2 pics, I would see neighbor's houses-driveways-air/conditioner alleys etc...
.
In my garden, I am free to be where ever I want to be.  Any era.
.
Pictures don't lie.
.
Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
.
Top pic Our French Garden.  Bottom pics my sweet garden.

A View of Central Park

Atop the Metropolitan Museum, below,

 

 an art installation I visited this summer. 

 With its views of Central Park.  How I wish I could sleep in its various pods.

I imagine its views in different seasons & weather.  And, in my imagination, I have a telescope.
.
Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
.
Oddly, these thoughts only arrived once I got home.  Yes, this artist did their work on me !

Arne Maynard

Arne Maynard gardens simply.

 

 He listens to the soul of a site.

 He beckons in the language of formality or raw Providence.

 Lush simplicity.  There is no age only the ages.

 A fierce love of landscape is unafraid to look 'not done'. 

 A man willing to copy from the past.

Clothing a home, below.

A drive could have been put in, below.  Without, it's timeless.  Restraint.  Voluptuous.

Arne Maynard.  A light touch with a sure mission.
.
Garden & Be Well,                XO Tara
.
Pics via Arne Maynard. 

Landscape Design for the Butler's Pantry

At a Landscape Design this summer we landed in the butler's pantry.

She had thoughts of keeping the 'closet' style light fixture and installing as many built-in cabinets as possible. 
.
Of course her Landscape Design included a chandelier for the butler's pantry AND an entire wall for plates.
.
Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
.
pic via Habitually Chic.  Ironically it was the husband hiring me for the landscape.  Once wife & I met he was toast !   Though he did get a barn, 2 garden pavillions, and a winding woodland garden path with a bridge over his stream.  At his age I've occupied him fully till the rapture. 

Simple Garden Fix

A simple solution

 to a couple of tons of problem.

Car tires.
.
Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
.
pics taken at a jobsite last month.  Granite cobblestones.  New, I think from Mexico.  Can't wait till the groundcover, liriope, fills in and there is no more dead brown mulch.

Oswald Chambers

In my garden is where I listen.  Learn.  Let go.

 

"Determinedly take no one seriously but G*d, and the first person you find you have to leave severely alone as being the greatest fraud you have ever known, is yourself."  Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest.
.
Have been reading this daily devotional book for years.  
.
Best $1 junking find ever.
.
Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
.
pic via Linen & Lavender.

Shaping Groundcovers & Paths

Why did I EVER pay attention to gardens with mulch?  Mulch is brown, mulch is dead, mulch is expensive, mulch is labor intensive. 

Evergreen spreading groundcovers take care of ME.  I don't take care of them.

 (This is the mature attitude to take.)

 

.

New groundcover planting, below.

 

Shaping gravel paths with  spraypaint, below.

 

 I could never put in groundcovers or gravel paths/terraces without shaping them 1st. 

A guest expert decided to help shape the new gravel paths, below.

Mr. Timber Rattler lost his head soon after this pic.
.
Garden & Be Well,           XO Tara
.
Pics taken last month in a client garden.  Once shaped I walk out of the garden to view then walk/meander in the garden from all angles.  Many times I need to go upstairs and look down at shaped beds.
.
  I take my time to shape beds for groundcovers or gravel.  Bedlines are HUGE to what your eye sees in a garden.

Noise & Smell of Expensive Neighborhoods

 

Decades ago, designing landscapes, I noticed expensive neighborhoods are noisy & lack many natural fragrances.

Noise of remodeling with hammers, air-compressors & maintenance mowers/blowers is ubiquitous where the money is.  Mono-culture lawns too.
.
Designing a landscape near Agnes Scott College, at a charming historic middle-class bungalow, I revelled in the fragrance.  It was Tara Turf.  No deed restrictions demanding Bermuda or Zoysia.  Their lawns are fescue, moss, clover, ajuga, violets, & etc.  Smelling deeply of nourishment to my DNA.
.
On the few occasions I can get to my Conservatory for a nap I know it won't be interrupted with mower or construction noise.  Ironic pleasure, yes?
.
"I absolutely hate the sound of machines in the garden.  Mowers, Rotovators, hedge cutters are all a kind of torture.  I want peace.
     But there are some sounds that I do love to hear.  By late July the young buzzards mew and noisily complain in the fields by the river as their parents leave them to learn how to hunt.  A quiet garden allows the year to be measured by these sounds."  Sarah Don
.
Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
.
pic via Cote de Texas.  Who knew noise in the landscape would be a bittersweet topic.  Much of the noise has gone away in this economy.  A few years ago a client lived next door to new construction.  It was a large home entirely sheathed in stone.  It took a full year to chip the stone. 
.
Many neighborhoods now put limitations on mow/blow & construction days/times. 
.
The worst 'noise' day ever designing a landscape I had to hear a client's neighbor berate, bully, cuss, & threaten his young son for over 2 hours.  I wonder how that little boy turned out, he must be past college now.
.
More irony?  My business makes the noise in neighborhoods.  Hammers, saws, Caterpillar.......

Melding Design Layers

 

Garden rooms are created in melding layers: ceiling, walls, floors, aka, trees-shrubs-groundcovers.  In NYC this French restaurant has amazing melded layers.

.

Is there anything worse than the ubiquitous Flower Show garden?  At a glance novice eyes sees stone terrace, shrub line, tree line, no melding of layers.  Why walk in to see the garden, you can see it all from the aisle.  (No I'm not forgetting those huge piles of stone called outdoor kitchens,  they are so bad I will not speak of them.)

.

 

 

 I asked about the floor, below, and our server smiled.  He said the hand-made tile flooring cost more than everything else in the decor.  It was special ordered for their space from Morocco. 

With that attention to detail you know the food was good.
.
Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
.
Pics taken this summer.  I keep fantasizing about creating a landscape with this flooring as inspiration !!

Pond House

At pond's edge we're deciding architecture.

 

 Historical American.  Large enough for small gatherings & fishing gear.

 A fireplace for sure.

Nature at the pond will remain, embellished of course, to look MORE natural. 
.
Our pond has an island too.
.
Delight, and amazement, to find kindred spirits with these pics.
.
Cannot wait to post 3 corresponding pics of our Pond House.  Of course it will have to be 4 pics.  We have an area to create a 'rocky beach' for wading & pushing off with kayaks.
.
Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
.
Found these pics looking for landscape pics of What Not To Do.  Title for the lecture I gave last nite at our state's largest trade group, Urban Ag Council.   
.
Total brain fart, I did not save picture source.