Design Simplicity

How little can you do

yet have a full narrative with your exterior?
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic, Paris Through My Lens

Bicycle Basket

Exactly.

I want one on the back too.
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Garden & Be Well,            XO Tara
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Described this to Handy-Man when I found a trio of bikes.  He got that glassy-eyed 'women-are-crazy' look.  Popped my balloon about being original, seeing the pic, but gave me a Cheshire cat smile because before the sun sets, Handy-Man will see this picture.
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And, Handy-Man, I want all my bikes to have 2 baskets.
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Pic via Paris Through My Lens

How to Design Your Garden

The most important garden views are from inside your home, vanishing threshold.  Laura, below, told me yesterday, body language, there was something GOOD in the garden.

I'm glad she did, otherwise I would have missed, below, completely.

Just outside the window, above, Torte-de-Shelle, her mother (now spayed) & my garden cat a neighbor left behind.
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Who needs TV with these delightful dramas?
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Design your garden for every window view.  In the garden, design your home's interior for every view into the windows.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics taken yesterday.  Much better drama, above, than earlier this year when darling Laura climbed the drape, shown, and pulled it off the wall.

Lawn

What is the fascination with lawns?

French parks have beauty, children playing, adults relaxing, Nature thriving, without lawns.  For centuries.
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Notice the choice to leave the tree trunks alone?  Brave.  Perfect.
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Garden & Be Well,          XO Tara
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pic Paris Through My Lens

Penelope Bianchi: Interiors & Gardens

With heart-on-my-sleeve, & happy obligation, pro bono is done each year, and making my voice heard by our state's largest trade group.  'Voice' was asked to lecture this month about Social Media.  Oops, there is a price for 'voice' being heard.  

Too many in my industry are not using Social Media's platform.

Owning every room I lecture in, props are set.  I do 100's of acres, what is a mere room?  Setting one of my journals down I had a 'moment'.  Miss Confidence, yes Puppet Barbuda, with less than 60 seconds to start, saw, above, pages from an old journal.

My journals make my eyes, brain, & soul HAPPY.  They have pages of beloved words, below.

These pages, below, delayed my lecture.  And changed how it began.

Journal was haphazardly opened to these pages created years ago of a home/garden.  Though busy, my eyes were drawn into stunned revelation.
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This is Penelope Bianchi's garden, above.  I had torn, squished, watered, dried, flattened, taped, written happy words with Penelope's garden.  Into my journal.  Moons ago.
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Puppet Barbuda honors few gardens in this manner.
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How is it possible in this huge world of peoples, distances, time I fell in love with a person's garden, & Providence conspired for me to meet the person, fall in love with her, and only then realize I loved her garden before I loved her?
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Go to Penelope's garden, here, and you will fall in love too.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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top pic Penelope's garden, other pics from my journal.  My journals are a secret weapon for serenity & hearing grace.
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Penelope, You must know this experience made me, literally, woozy when it happened.  Everything you write to me about my work was mentored by Mary Kistner into my quiver of knowledge.  She's been gone for a decade, I miss her so, and yet I've met 1 person who embodies all that she was.  You.  I love you Penelope.     XO T

Pleasure Grounds

Pleasure Grounds, Pleasure Walk, Pleasure Garden were common terms, once-upon-a-time.

Look up 'pleasure' & you'll discover it includes overlapping elements of liking-wanting-learning.  
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Without the science/s of today previous generations intuitively knew design-pleasure-into-life.  It is something to be taken, & given.
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Is your garden a Pleasure Ground?  To you?  To all who see it?
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My Pleasure Grounds, aka garden, bring Nature & friends into my life.  Many times a hand scribbled note on torn paper has been left at my door or in the mailbox, "I love your garden, my name is........call me at this number .........", or I've been in my garden & a car stops.  Goo-goo eyed adult/s get out & sheepishly introduce themselves & ask to see my garden.
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Yes, it is good to take, and give, Pleasure.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Forgot where I saved the pic from.  Built a garden house for a client last year & suggested to him we call it the Pleasure House.  Immediately he axed the idea, "It's already hard enough to keep my teenage son from having sex......."  Though he did appreciate where I was coming from historically.
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Counterintuitively it's giving pleasure that is the most selfish.  It is where you will find grace.

Choosing Chairs

A small flagstone terrace is almost complete at my new French doors in the kitchen.  Need to order the Phantom screen doors this week.  

All this for a pair of garden chairs to USE.  Adirondack's, above, are too big.  French chairs, below, have no support for leaning my head back.

The new chairs must be easy to move and a lot of the time I'll be working wireless with my feet up in the opposite chair.
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On the hunt for MY perfect pair of garden chairs.  Life is good.
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Does anyone know how to keep cats from climbing retractable screen doors?
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Project began December 2011 when my dad was diagnosed with cancer & died 22 days later.  During those 22 days my 30 year marriage was finalized in divorce.  'Planned' for last Christmas was installation of new heart of pine flooring in several rooms to match the rest of my home.  Existing flooring was refinished, all furniture, including office, was put into the garage.  To the ceiling.  I bought my own home late this fall.    That was the fear of divorcing, losing home/garden.  FEAR.  Instead, Providence deflated the housing market!  Did I mention I was afraid of losing my home of 28 years?  He, college sweetheart, began having car wrecks, most drunks do, in 2010.  One nite late, reading in bed, days after I discovered the 1st car wreck via my insurance company, I felt & knew something quite clear.  Fear had left.  After a decade+ of pure, daily, second to second fear, it was gone.  Time to divorce.  His alcoholism took me to poverty in 1999, I barely kept the roof over our heads.  Been a victim?  It stinks.  Took less than a month to figure that out.  Discovered Lois in a group meeting for friends/family of alcoholics.  Victimhood over.  Survivor.  But that wasn't enough.  Thriver.  Yes.  In a delightful twist my divorce attorney hired me recently.  Handing me a check she stopped in mid-air & began to cry.  She said it was not often she was able to see the results of her work & described my demeanor of fear/sadness when we 1st met in her office to what she had seen of me in her garden.  Teary eyed myself  & hugging each other, I thanked her for helping me divorce a 300 pound drinking problem!  We were laughing thru tears at this point, and aren't those the best?  Proudest achievements?  Financially doing all of this myself, no help, none.  Divorce was amicable.  Making the choice to be happy everyday.  'Damaged people are dangerous, they know they can survive.'  I'm super dangerous, I can thrive.            
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Top pic taken in my garden!  Proof, happiness/joy can be created, and more, a zone of grace around home & life.

Checkerboard Square with Circle

Untrained, unschooled & perfect.

Viewed from deck & house the existing lower garden, above, leads to their wild wood.
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They hired me to design their landscape.  Of course I left this alone!  Tweaks could be made but out goes THEIR charm.
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And, they built this DIY !
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Alexander Pope......Men come to build sooner than to garden finely as if gardening were the greater art.  ca. 17th century
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pic via client's Facebook page

Small Kitchen Garden

A few vegetables, greens, roses.  Done!

A rare patch of sun designed the location of their kitchen garden.  Their beloved dog dictated the fencing.  When we designed/installed their garden something fabulous happened.  'They' took over immediately their creativity unleashed.

Notice the leaf litter mulch?

A tree fell & her husband used it for the fencing.
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Sublime to create a garden for long-time-marrieds and they play like kids outside.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Pics taken at jobsite this week.  Alas, I was called back because of septic work that demolished a quadrant of the front garden.  Have posted their garden before & must go back in spring for more pics of various garden rooms that they've lightly touched with 'art' yet let Nature rule.

Flowers for the House

What's better the camellia, below, or the dried hydrangea blossom at its left?

Checking on a flagstone terrace project yesterday the camellias stole my attention.  These, above/below, on view from kitchen & master bedroom.

 Walking on gravel past my camellias in bloom.  Life's abundance & I feel it.

How can anyone live outside the camellia zones?

 Professor Sargent, above, is 2 stories tall.  Sitting in my antique wicker chair inside the breakfast room I look up into his blossoms.  Over 2 decades now.

Blowsy.  Adore this phase.

If I had stamens like this, above, I would show them off too.

My blowsy ballerina, above,  is peaking as the azaleas are molting.
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Tells me, 'Happy Birthday girl, you've made it another year."  Odd, my birth day never does.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pics yesterday in my garden.

Designing Anticipation

Junking last month I found a huge birdcage on plinth.

'The-plan-is', lunch with girlfriends in the Conservatory with a pair of heirloom chickens in the birdcage for entertainment.
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The Girls will love the change of atmosphere from their Chinoiserie coop & run.
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Life is good when Garden Enhancements are in the anticipation realm.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pic via It's About Time  Can't imagine  having a day of life without Garden Enhancements percolating in my imagination.  

Table Top Design

Mantles, tables, chests, dressers, bookshelves, and their flotsam/jetsom, tell me how to arrange clients gardens.

Do they like simplicity, focal points, pairs, drifts, matchy/watchy, shiny, bright colors, rustic, fru-fru, farm, castle, muted hues, eclectic, showy & etc.

Junking recently I found this dresser for the foyer of my new office.  Once sited I went to the kitchen & started grabbing blue/white.  Free is good.

On its way home, above/below.

What is the Garden Design indicated by the top of this chest with the blue/white?  Girlfriend obviously likes pairs & focal points.  Biggest platter is a gorgeous antique iron gate. Tulipiers are brick/stone columns with pair old urns and the smaller plates a flagstone path. Surface of the chest is groundcover Asiatic jasmine.

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THIS is how I see interiors.  Source material for the garden.

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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

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Never anticipated my new office being this fun, 'camp chic' style.  Nor psycho-analyzing my own table top style.