Front Door: Create an Entry

Ceilings are not high, below.  A transom was over the door.  I removed it and added a taller door & sidelights.  Creating more height,

I chose 2 panels + the upward curve.  Love the doorknocker Miss Florida found.  We did a lot of back/forth online with knockers & paint color & hardware.   

Urns fabulous enough to be empty were designed & plinths  for height adjustment.  Ironically, Miss Florida, who always says, I don't know anything, has consistently put in seasonal arrangements from prunings in her garden.

I also took away the foundation plantings, aka green meatballs, and used espaliered fruit trees + groundcovers.
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The white is too white on the house.  Alas, it had just been painted before I was hired.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics taken at jobsite last week.  We are doing a new layer!  The drive, front woodland & upper arrival drive.  Cannot wait for the groundcovers to fill in, brown dead mulch, anywhere, has touched my last nerve.
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Hand-to-Earth: Recipe for Figs from the Garden

Wealth in a bowl.

Figs, sheep's milk, honey.  A trinity from the garden.
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This is sustainable.  And, a choice.  An acre of land, a few chickens, a couple of sheep, bee hives, potager, a pleasure garden to increase pollinator habitat, & connecting hand-to-Earth.
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Hand-to-Earth.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic Amanda Brooks.
 

Garden Design: Double Axis are Mandatory

Walking into my back garden this week, below.

Looking from my back garden, below, toward the same gate.

Double Axis.  Design a beautiful view, go into the view & turn around and design a beautiful view in the opposite direction.
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View, above, is one of my chief treasures.  Why?  You're looking into the neighborhood where 2 streets & several houses meet.  Chief treasure is understatement, pure pride.
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Have zero objectivity about my garden, none.  In my garden I feel tightly held by Providence.  Sorrows are taken into my garden & diminished, joys are carried into my garden and increased.  The toughest questions of my life have been taken into this garden, and answered.  Events have unfolded that were unacceptable, and my garden embraces me with great nurturing until acceptance is indeed found.  When I was in Texas and knew my father would not live thru the nite I went into an empty hospital room to figure out how to breath, not fall down, fight the grief.  A clear thought came into my heart, "You will go into your garden and figure out how to live without him."  From that moment grief began to recede.  Merely thinking of my garden began healing me.  My garden is more than my best friend, it's where I experience Providence.  Of course I adore, "G*d almighty first created a garden."  Perhaps it's this simple.  Copy the One who made it all.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Pics taken this week in my garden with my phone.

Petersham Nurseries: Cafe, Nursery, Garden, Entertainment

Are you on Petersham Nurseries email list?  

Get on now.

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Their pics are Garden Design classes.  And balm to the soul.

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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

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pic Petersham Nurseries.

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Have never physically been to Petersham, merely a mental traveler.

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I travel farthest in my garden.

Front Porch: Take that Rail Off

"Take the rail off", I said.  Friend, not client, we knew the obstacle, husband.  Years passed. Now, below.    Understand intuitively who took the rail off & built the new step?

Ahead of the curve, they sold their lakeside mcmansion, and moved here, her childhood 2B/1 bath cottage.  When it's full of their 5 children, 15 grandchildren, & friends (lucky me) the house does not feel small, only unlimited horizons of love & joy.

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"Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now?"  William Stafford.  Gifting this lovely quote to my dear friend who lives in the cottage, above.  
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken last week.

Features to Copy from this Room into the Garden

In the garden you know exactly what type of arbor is required, below.  Arched, 3' deep, iron, creating an enfilade punctuated with an urn on plinth matching the one below.

Repetition, is one of your strongest design tools in the garden.  Maximized with interior repetition.
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Color & pattern, very easy to copy from this room into the garden.
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I never tire of a client saying, "I love that."  Exactly, I copied it from their interior.    Yes, it's that simple.
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Garden  & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic via Cote de Texas.    Why an iron arbor to match?  Contrast.  Yet, if the client wanted heavy cottage style I might do the wood.

Designing Redolence

Not only historic, I want my garden designs to be redolent of having read, and adored, E.M.Forster.  Jane Austen, Wendell Berry, my grandmother, you get the message.

A garden must be more than 'there', it must take me somewhere.
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For decades I've known, I travel farthest in my garden.
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The owner of this garden, above, discovered me in my gown getting pics at 6am.  I knew it was she who created the magic.  As I walked barefoot in the dewy grass we meandered while she told me her garden's story.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic Piper's Cove, Jamaica.  The resort was built in the early 90's and she could only afford tiny plants.  I know exactly how she feels about each one.

Historic World Pivot Point: Rarely Captured in a Garden

Remnants of historic gardens, from garden design studies across the globe for decades, create a trinity: woodland, low meadow, stone focal point.

You are looking at, above, when-the-music-stopped.
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A concrete terrace built during the 20's for evening dances, think Gatsby, was topped with a stone fountain during the 30's.
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It is rare to see, in concrete, when the world shifted.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Pic Shaw Gardens, Jamaica.  Had quite a 'moment' when I saw this, of course my friends were happily obliviously walking past fast, before I told yet another garden 'thang'.  Poor dears, they had to tolerate my 1 track mind.
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Know what else you are seeing above?  Maximum pollinator habitat: high density with low density + water.

Vanishing Threshold: Dining Room + Landscape

Where, below, do your eyes land?

Mine went straight to the urn outside and its placement dead-center on the French doors, vanishing threshold.
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No accident the photographer caught it.  Douglas Newby has quite a nice day job !  We know the truth about easy day jobs, they require work.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic via Douglas Newby.   Photographers & interior designers rarely pay attention to Vanishing Threshold.  I START every Landscape Design at the Vanishing Threshold.

A Real Man Cave

From our lunch table overlooking the Caribbean the Cave Man stories intensified, Do you want to see the man who lives in the cave?  I did see him, he's 2 feet behind his fishing net, below.    

With every intention of shooting him, once I saw him, I could not.  He possessed nothing but his dignity.
 

From our lunch table, above/below, the Cave Man's sanctuary.

Haven't we all had I'll-go-live-in-a-cave Robinson Crusoe thoughts?  The Cave Man's foyer, below.

Coming face-to-face with a person who is living that life I saw the poverty surrounding his choices and his deep courage in retaining his integrity & spirit, though the choices take him to death.  He is free, burdening no one.
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No, I could not take his picture.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Again my love of seeing gardens across the globe stuns with epiphany.

Landscape Design Rule: Repetition

When space is limited use repetition to make it appear larger.

Seems so right, above, hard to believe it's a landscape design 'rule' in action.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pic Shaw Park Gardens & Waterfall.

Shaw Gardens: Tea Terrace + Cannon

A proper Tea Terrace, below.  Unchanged for a century.  Must I tell you what a Tea Terrace becomes in the evening?  Wine & canapes on the terrace, of course.

When I asked about the cannon, below, Mr. Adams said, It's never been fired.  Where did it come from?  He said, Oh it came from up above.  How did it get up there?  The Spaniards carried it up there, he said.  (You realize he means the Spaniards contemporary with Christopher Columbus.  I hear, George S. Patton, Fixed fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of Man.)  FYI, Mick Jagger has a gorgeous estate where the cannon was rescued.    

Mr. Adams, below, of Shaw Gardens.  More than love his job, he loves Shaw Gardens & showing it off.
He said, Take it easy, dozens of times as we traversed steep grades.  Before arriving at the best views he would say, Look where you are going or you will go where you are looking.

Today, mostly, I wanted you to meet Mr. Adams, above.  And know his wisdom, Take it easy.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Cannot imagine the misery of getting that cannon up the volcano !  Worse, the misery of Mr. Adams ancestor at arrival in Jamaica.