On the Porch

Unused on an upstairs porch at the master bedroom, below, she brought the sofa downstairs near the kitchen and potager.  Much better, it's been used for a few naps.

My trugs are plastic, functional.  Hers look so good.

My favorite garden boots.  Ankle support, no dirt gets in, the boot works the shovel, not my foot.  Plastic clogs are great for most days but when it's digging & function it's my almost 30 year old Danners.
.
Pics taken this month.  Same garden as several previous posts.  Graham Stuart Thomas is excellent on the garden boot.

Siting a Vintage Bell

They bought an old bell, below, and needed to know where to site it.

Have you considered where to put a bell historically?  Adore a new brain path.  Acreage, working acreage required signals.  Most important would be an emergency.  Secondarily, calling the hands to meals.  Here, above/below, the bell is close to the kitchen.

Soon the camellia hedge will obscure the cabin.  I do like the Double Axis pics, top/bottom.  Formal  & informal.
.
Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
.
Pics taken at jobsite this month.  Same garden as several previous posts.

Eye to the Sky

Cone shapes draw the eye.

Draw the eye to the sky, use 1 per garden room.
.
Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
.
Pic taken this month.  Same garden as several previous posts.

Lunch Ministry

Lunch Ministry.

Wildly productive.

Who do you target?  Why?

Providence conspired, for decades, to include Lunch Ministry in every Garden Design I create.

I say to certain clients. "You will have lunch and invite ________.  You'll join your Garden Club & host a meeting.  You will find a local Garden Tour, contact them and be included.  Friend getting married?  You will host a gathering.  You will send pics of your garden to xyz magazine."

She was gathering materials, above, for our lunch.  Things to talk about, information to share, not wanting to forget to include anything during our lunch.
.
These things are not done for others.  Lunch Ministry is for you.  Your spirit.  Giving away what has been liberally given to you.  What you get back is profound & humbling.
.
Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
.
Pics taken at jobsite this month.  Same client as several previous posts.  Please tell me you know what to do with the dirty dishes at Lunch Ministry.

Guest Room

Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language, says bedrooms are best with windows on 2 walls.  

Windows on 2 walls in their guest room, above/below, With the good fortune of a

 fireplace too.  Local pottery, & feathers from their pastures.

 Outside the windows, below.

This doesn't mean much to you now, below, it is

foliage & buds for summer's blooms.  The native oakleaf hydrangea.
.
Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
.
Pics taken at a client this month.  Same home/garden as previous several posts.  2 regions of the brain are accessed with the camellia & oakleaf hydrangea.  Wish I could see a scan of it!  At least I know the joy of what it FEELS like.  Too bad for non-gardeners, they aren't wired for this brain cocaine.    .
.
Will get this entire room for you this year, promise.  You'll love the bathroom.  Views of the back porch......  And you haven't seen the bed yet.

Details

Multiple meetings with the mason, iron monger & carpenter.

Each with decades of experience.

Attention to details.

Each layer, their own voice.

You see, above, a messy wax myrtle too close to the gate.  By design, it will be pruned into a tunnel of green.  We are awaiting a bit more growth to prune.

Perhaps by year 3 a tunnel of green engulfing both sides of the gate.
.
Yes, an idea from childhood, The Secret Garden.  I can still remember my 3rd grade teacher reading it too us after lunch.
.
Garden & Be Well,          XO Tara
.
Pics at jobsite this month.  Same garden as previous several posts.
.
Attention to detail?  Learned quickly studying historic gardens across Europe for 2 decades.
.
. Details are not restrictions, they are liberations.

You Must Create Complexity Into Simplicity

Only the tree was here when we began. No gravel road, walled garden, bushes, gate.

How do you create complexity into simplicity?  Expose yourself to the best gardens, burn their DNA into your brain cells.

Christopher Lloyd's , Great Dixter, below, inspired the topiaries in Tara Turf, above.

 Soon we can choose shapes.  Each yew will be allowed to speak.
.
My reservoir is deep, understanding Themistocles, "I cannot fiddle, but I can make a great state from a little city."
.
Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
.
Have had the good fortune of meeting Christopher Lloyd in USA, we had lunch and toured several gardens. Met him again in his garden, Great Dixter.  Have no books by Lloyd?  You are not a serious gardener, yet.
.
Same garden as previous several posts.

Front Porch Views

Common once-upon-a-time the cabin.

Built on acreage outside Athens, GA this 1 room cabin was 'home' for many years as monies were saved to build the main house.

Keeping some views pristine from the cabin's front porch honors its past.

 View, above, sitting in the rocking chair, below.  Daffodils were planted last year to look 'as if' they had always been there.  Georgia red clay, above, isn't a problem it's Providence.

Keeping the original pilings, above, was paramount.

Not far away is the home, already a century old, the family in the cabin dreamed, worked & saved to build.
.
This story was common, once-upon-a-time in USA.  Hard work, saving, doing without, no security net, fortitude.  Plan B when Plan A fizzled?  Hard work, saving, doing without, no security net, fortitude.
.
And the man who built the cabin?  I would be proud to walk 'his' grounds and show him my work as he told me stories of its past.
.
Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
.
Pics taken last week, same jobsite as previous several posts.  This project is using everything I've learned in 3 decades, and teaching new lessons.  Adoring the drama of directing the eye, foot, tire, spirit.

Poverty Cycle Into the Music Room

The library across the hall, previous post, is moody with northeastern light.  The music room, below, hums in southeastern light.

Eastern light, below, in the mirror, southern light, window above.

The garden view, below, is one of my proudest achievements.

I took the garden, a century old, to its Southern roots in time & place.  Using the Poverty Cycle.  Looking in the window, below, seen, above.

Tara Turf to the foundation, granite curbstone step instead of green-meatball-foundation-plantings, drifts of daffodils as-if-they-were-always-there.
.
Plenty of areas to play & show off in this garden, and I have, but without using the Poverty Cycle the garden would lack soul, character, integrity, & have too-much-uneducated-ego.  Of course you've deduced, this is my ego, above.  This is a portion of the front porch, hence, double ego!
.
Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
.
Pics taken last week at jobsite.  Same garden as previous several posts.
.
Ego for doing-the-right-thing makes me unemployable to the largest design/install companies across USA.  Why?  It's all about sales.  Are you beginning to understand the prevalence of green meatballs & foundation plantings and, and, and?
.
Oh my, a little Puppet Barbuda this morning.  Uneducated ego?  Testosterone-on-wheels-mow-blow-go-commodify-all-I-touch-get in fast-get out fast-sign my contract-pay me every month.  Sad, you'll pay later in lower house value, higher HVAC, increase maintenance expenses, poison  ground water with fertilizer, destroy pollinator habitat, and worse, harm your spirit with ugliness.  

Design Interiors From Outside

Front porch, below.

 Lamp seen from the front porch, above, and from inside, below.

Further to the left of the lamp, below.

You do know this already?  Interiors must be gorgeous from every garden view.
.
Your home is the focal point of the garden.
.
Walking with new clients, around their garden, seeing an ugly interior view I will turn my head, look into their eyes and my right eyebrow goes up.  Enough said.
.
Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
.
Pics taken at jobsite last week.  Same home as previous several posts.

What To Do With A Bad View

Of course the dining room, below, has an awkward view. 

Swag of curtain, below, in the downstairs window is the dining room.

Same swag of curtain, below, in the dining room.

Do you see the triple air-conditioners?  Do you see the industrial generator?  Do you see anything fussy to maintain?
.
No.
.
Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
.
Pics taken at jobsite last week.  Dining room opens into central hall of previous 3 posts.

A Central Hallway

 Over a century old, the home has a long & wide central hallway copying the dogtrots of old.  Back-in-the-day it was 'air-conditioning'.

Now, it's a place for extra chairs.  Easy to grab for gatherings in other parts of her home.

Cannot imagine the first matriarch of this acreage outside Athens, Ga.  Summertime with no cooling, cooking dinner, and breakfast, daily.  No cell phone, internet.  Only her man, children & workers for interaction.  Laundry, with clothesline, a great effort + time.  Harvesting the kitchen garden, canning.

.

Epiphany.  No wonder rural Southerners were tightly bound to their church.

.

Women taking the edge off.  Meet & greet comrades in life, unload frustrations, share joys.  Get the gossip, trade successes/failures on life topics.  Hopefully get a good sermon.  Enough to manage another week.

.

All this from a dogtrot.    

.

Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

.

Pics taken last week at jobsite.  Same foyer as previous 2 posts.

.

Women In History was an elective I took for my engineering degree.  It ignored physical discomfort & religion.