Take This Picture: Home to Patio

Will the picture from your-home-to-the-patio tell me who you are?

"Our lives are about getting the outside to match the inside."  Jung

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pic from Traditional Home, The Lisa Porter Collection.

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Posted this earlier, it flows well with a lecture I'm presenting at Callanwolde later this morning.

Garden Road Map

Every size garden needs its map drawn.  A road map.

When I draw a new Garden Design it is on site.  I must know how it 'walks' in real life.

Garden rooms must be named.

Last month at Hedgerow Farm, finally, this was handed to me at lunch.  She knew I would be as excited as she was.

Within minutes I had already put it to work.
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Yesterday the general contractor had questions about the next layer of installation & out came the map.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

Arne Maynard: Point of Inspiration

When I first saw Arne Maynard's work I thought, "Simple, liberating."

At a jobsite this week we are keeping a huge stupid gum-drop-on-a-stick holly.  Soon it will be topiaried into a sweet whimsy.
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Better, it's located within the new potager.  Amazing good fortune.
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Piquantly I know something else about Maynard's work.  In my 20's I would have reviled it !  The classic response to not understanding what you see.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic A Library of Design.

Stone Mountain: Where You are Inspired?

Most days of the week for 3 decades I'm here, below.  

Stone Mountain daisy is unique, in all the world/galaxy, to this single spot.

They've already begun to fade & their musky sweet smell of decay & death is intoxicating.  Thrilling.  A smell metaphor, "You've made another year.  You're ALIVE."  Language of Nature I understand.  People?  Not so much.
 

In the crevices & margins, above, I never cease to marvel and many times a year simply stop to absorb their lessons.

With every step this mountain lets me share in what is sacred.
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On this mountain my place is secure.  Providence speaks the eternal.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Pics taken yesterday morning.  Would love to have the perfume of yesterday, "Tara, you smell like dead daisys."  "Thank you."  I say.

How to Tame Trouble

Met a new client last nite with a no-mans-land of trees/ivy/invasives/drainage ditch/weeds.  Its ownership 'looks' like it could be their property or their neighbors.

What to do is quite easy.

An entry & path will instantly take ownership and tame the trouble.
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Clearing invasives, controlling ivy/weeds, planting desirable understory trees & etc... will take a bit more time.  Happily, now there is a road map.
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Garden & Be Well,             XO Tara
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Exciting times, their brown brick home with brown shutters will soon be WHITE !
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Pic Litchfield Hills, lost provenance of photographer.

How to Hide an Eyesore

If you have an eyesore place a focal point nearby.

Trying to hide the faucet would have drawn more attention to it.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken at jobsite earlier this month.  Most often, hiding eyesores does draw them greater attention.

So What is the Most Important Element of Architecture?

A small handful of homes during my decades of garden & home renovation have packed a surprise.

They appear 'normal' when I park at the first visit.  Knocking at the front door the surprise is apparent.

Saying to myself, "......this home is HUGE."
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The reasons must be many for the illusion.  Top of the list is, proportion.
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Ironic, architecture & life have so much in common.  Proportion.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Pics taken at job site, same home as previous post.  Perhaps this is the magic ingredient of architecture engaging Thomas Jefferson........1789 Mar. 24. (to Joseph Willard) "We have spent the prime of our lives in procuring [young men] the precious blessing of liberty. Let them spend theirs in shewing that it is the great parent of science and of virtue; and that a nation will be great in both always in proportion as it is free."

2 Types of Garden Design

The underbelly of my profession sometimes falls under the heading of design-build-maintain.

Aka, fox-designing-the-hen-house, cliche.

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Low front windows?  Sure, design shrubs growing to 15', they'll need pruning 2x/year.  Why design groundcovers, mulch needs replacing yearly.  And the list grows: mowing weekly, fertilizer & chemical treatments, irrigation, annual beds.

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This type of landscaping has its place.  Yet this type of landscaping is hardly low-maintenance & frugal.  It just 'appears' to be.  Mr. Testosterone-on-wheels-mow-blow-go-commodify-all-I-touch is happy to put you on contract.  Again, this type of landscaping has its place, I get that.  

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Why mention it?  Because it's incredibly sad to my heart.  Historic garden design feeds the soul, pollinator habitat, doesn't poison ground water, increases property value, reduces hvac expense, reduces maintenance, has little yearly expense,  & etc....  

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic taken at jobsite this month.  I didn't do the original design decades ago.  We've recently replaced mulch with groundcover at the foundation.  Luckily part shade slows her plantings from fast growth.  So, we did not replace them.

Life Demands Simplicity

Children, grandchildren, caretaking elderly parents, a beach house.  And, a husband.

Time for a needy garden?  None.  

 Have been working with this garden & in awe of her simplicity for over a decade.  Most important, she's always known she did not want her garden to have 'flowers' as the focus.  Greens & shapes are her 'thing'.  Humbling, she began where I took decades to arrive.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Why exactly would garden centers wish you to have a garden like hers?  Not much to sell you thru the years.
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Sadly, French doors in top pic are new.  Never fun to spend money on infrastructure.  Bling is more fun.
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Lucky me, yet another Southern matriarch to work with & know.  Why is that special?  Enjoying their knowing laughter about life.

Linda Maddox: Kitchen Renovations

Wish I had known, from the start of my career, to take pics of all the powder rooms I've seen.

This powder room tops my favorites list, and is being renovated into a butlers pantry.  

A peek at the 'before' kitchen, below.

I've worked with this client's garden several times thru the years.  Ironically, it's my own team doing the gut renovation for the kitchen, powder room, & mud room.
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Kitchen plans were drawn by Linda Maddox.  What she configured has left me in awe.  Will show off her talent, and that of my team, when it's done.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics taken at jobsite last month.  I see 'big name' kitchens often and know Linda Maddox could do a reality show with any of them and most likely win.  Have never met her, nor seen a completed kitchen of hers in person but what I saw with the plans at this site, oh my.  She doesn't know it yet but we will meet at some point this year!

Choosing Happy

"The more you try to fathom it, the more fathomless it is revealed to be.  No matter how much of your self you are able to objectify and examine, the quintessential, living part of yourself will always elude you, i.e., the part that is conducting the examination.  Thus you do not solve the mystery, you live the mystery.  And you do that not by fully knowing yourself but by fully being yourself."   Frederick Buechner

I was once afraid to create the garden in my imagination.  Deed restrictions & a spouse both parroting, "You can't do that."
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Death of loved ones, infertility treatments, little money, alcoholic spouse, blah-blah, whatever, yawn.  Unhappiness grew too deep.
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Oh my the blessings of unhappiness.  I CHOSE to be happy.  Created my garden.  Grace entered.  Now, decades of joy.
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Many of you already know, because you live it, happiness is a choice each day.  No matter the circumstances.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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In my career I meet so many on the cusp of choosing joy.  Though they don't know that's what they are choosing, yet.  Ironic, these thoughts come from meeting a 50+ woman angry at the world & demanding from the world ease & support.  Without working for it herself.  She is a joy to behold, in gratitude her life is not mine.  More, she is humbling, I could be her but my unhappiness grew too great to carry.  It's all in our choices.  Happiness harbors power.       
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Pic via 5th & State.

Garden Jewelry: Windows

This kitchen was a 1980's time capsule at my first visit earlier this year.

With kitchen & house renovations complete I was back at the jobsite this month to fine tune garden plans.

The kitchen window is new too.

From the garden, below, the window is pure jewelry.

The bricks were saw cut to enlarge the opening, barely visible, and soon the bricks will be lime washed.
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Exciting times, I've never worked with a window so stunning.  Sure, we'll have cobblestone edging & a stone terrace but the window will still be the focal point.
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Have known for years exterior lighting is jewelry for the garden, now windows are added to the list of jewels.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken at jobsite this month.