Front Porch: Color, Shutters, Narrative

In a subdivision, below, without the trees you would see neighbor's houses from the front porch.

Whenever you see the gardener, dressed up/down, she's arrayed in black/white.  With a bit of bling too, but you knew that from her front porch.

The shutters are bi-fold doors from a closet.  Ick to fab !

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Color, seating, flow, layers, texture, invitation, relaxation, all ages, conversation, dining, narrative.

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Which shouts loudest?

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I adore the narrative, above.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

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Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

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Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Front Porch: Formal + Informal

Design Rule: Contrast.

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A touch of the Queen + Ellie Mae Clampett.

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Urn on Plinth + Galvanized Buckets hanging with ropes.

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Your garden must tell me who you are before stepping inside your home.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pic taken this month.  Jeri Farmer's lovely home/garden was on the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival Garden Tour.  Jeri & Susanne refreshed the garden this year and time/money were both running short yet pots were still needed for the ferns.  Of course Susanne said, "Put them in galvanized buckets."

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

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Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

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Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Design Rule: Hint of Invitation

In the bright morning light, below.

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Hint of something, saying, come-this-way.

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Gravel path, boxwood, bench & hydrangeas.

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Paths should engage: foot, eye, mind, heart.

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The language of invitation.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic taken this month in Susanne Hudson's garden.

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

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Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Enfilade: View to a View

Decades ago I noticed the most common type of garden magazine, catalogue or book cover.

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Enfilade.

Lovely to see this enfilade with color trinity, axis, backdrop.

Enfilade, view through to a view.
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Got Enfilades?
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Notice, it's plural.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken in Susanne Hudson's garden this month.
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 For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

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Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Window Valences: In the Garden

Since the early 80's I've collected vintage garden books.  From those the memory bank retained this window arbor, below.

A delight seeing them at Susanne Hudson's historic home.

Susanne's were just moved from back to front on her carriage house receiving a new coat of paint and light renovation.

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Yes, gardens do need exterior valences.

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Gotta love a color theme, of course the garden valences are white.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pics taken last week.

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Tool Bouquet

Tool Bouquets, below, used as sconces.

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Begun with rot, aka beloved use, these tools are prophets with honor in Susanne Hudson's garden.

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For centuries mankind honored the connection of tool to Earth as life sustainer.

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Betty Friedan  wrote about the 1st generation of women disconnected from hand-to-tool-to-soil.

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Their children would not learn the names of farm tools, their use, how to raise livestock, plant crops, cook, care take others, much less know how to feed their own spirit.  Bugs & weeds, instead of pollinators increasing crop yield, became poisoned inconveniences.

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Their children played in clouds of malathion as evening trucks fogged mosquitoes.

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(No time to rewrite, for this era, Friedan's work, back to tools.....)

Study Susanne's art of tool arrangement.  She's the best.

An exquisite wedding planner, Susanne treats Tool Bouquet's exactly like flower arranging.

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It's easier to find designer clothes at a thrift store than old tools.

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I'm always on the hunt for old tools.  And, seeing walls, inside or out, needing a Tool Bouquet.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Tree House: Harm No Trees

No trees were harmed in the building of this tree house.

Rough hewn wood was rescued from fallen trees on site.

The tree house is supported on its own platform and existing trees were built through it with zero contact. 

Most of the other materials were repurposed.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken in Susanne Hudson's garden last week.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Lamps in the Garden

The old altar table, below, has a new life.

In Susanne Hudson's garden.

 Doesn't every garden need lamps, books, gravel, art, a copper wash tub, large mirror, and

hydrangeas too?
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken last week in Susanne's garden, it was on the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival tour.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Plant Obama Bowers Now

Something in Obama's tone made me believe his comment about American's energy bills needing to double.  This was during his 1st term.

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Results, in my garden, below.

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Crape myrtle 'Natchez', below, shades my house from sunrise to noon.

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The western sun was planted in crapes years ago.

Most money saved on energy bills involves discomfort.  Who wants to be hot or cold beyond necessary?

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Choose beauty for savings.  And more places for the song birds to thrive.  Butterflies & native honeybees too.

Before the crape myrtle blooms the Chinese snowball, above/below, blooms in the same garden room during March.

 Other crape myrtles in my garden save almost $40/month with electric bills for decades.
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Math is in the thousands, tax free.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Top pic taken this morning.  Bottom pics taken in March.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Garden Design Course: Free in a Single Pic

Under a pecan tree not much grows.

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Tara Turf is best.

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Why?

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Increased pollinator habitat increases crop yield up to 80%.

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 Susanne Hudson found herself with 4 benches needing a home.  Exquisitely, they found a home.
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Please put this on one of your Pinterest boards.  It's a free Garden Design course !
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Garden Design: backdrop, canopy-understory-groundcover aka ceiling-walls-floor, color, texture, scale, flow, garden rooms, mystery, serene, poverty cycle, curb appeal, focal point, subsidiary focal point, vintage theme, simplicity, low maintenance, pollinator habitat, urban gardening, structure all year.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic snapped with my phone last week.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

3 Reasons for a Checkerboard Path

 Checkerboard path, new.  Concrete squares, cheap.  Unskilled labor, mostly.  Easily traversed.  

With exceeding distance the drama disappears entirely.  (Go me, garden fact = people metaphor.)

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And, you can see more, above, of the porch from previous post.

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Checkerboard Path: Cheap, Easy to install, Easy to walk.

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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

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Pics by Tara Dillard last week.  Susanne Hudson's garden.

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Macro vs. Micro Design: Fail at Micro & Macro is Gone

Freshman year, 1st semester, a professor continually referenced margarine.  

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Stubborn, (skipped my senior year of high school) weeks passed before asking a classmate what was going on in class.

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Professor's fast/thick accent was saying, 'Margin'.  Economics 101, truly.  This one incident taught me, 'Wake up baby girl it's sink or swim.'

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This delightful man also used, macro/micro teaching methods.  Blessedly, got that immediately!

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Micro design, below.  Susanne Hudson's new porch.

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Seemingly insignificant, every detail, above, screams, "Pay attention to me-me-me !"

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The porch, perfect too, is macro.

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How important is macro vs. micro?

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  Without macro/micro, design (art) is incomplete.

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Landscape design is all about trees, hedges, paths first.  Then flowers.

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Human DNA loves flowers.  But, of course.  It's all about pollination.  Providence is divinely serious, with an obvious sense of beauty & humor.

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Driving in the car, too much, to appointments I cannot abide talking on the phone.  Not for safety reasons, my mind is lost in music & gardens & happy.

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Last week, Bonnie Raitt has been blasting her hedges in my car!  Repeat button on Thing Called Love.

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Once the epiphany about macro/micro arrived in Garden Design it arrived in Art Understanding.

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After listening dozens of time to, Thing Called Love, I still can't decide if it's the band or voice attracting me.

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Then I realize it's a good garden, her macro & micro are out of the ballpark with both.

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(Thinking in metaphor is the norm, you too?)

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Some weeks it's Cole Porter or Sinatra or Patsy Cline or Willie or Norah Jones or Mozart or AC/DC or Foghat or Bob Seger or John Williams or Elaine Stritch or......

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They get their macro/macro.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara 

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Pic taken yesterday at Susanne Hudson's.  Bonnie Raitt's pic from NPR.

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Treat yourself to Elaine if you don't know her, chose Ladies Who Lunch !  Remember, it's Broadway when it was truly Broadway.    

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Don't believe in spoon feeding anyone.  Label 3 elements of macro garden design.  Label at least 1 element of micro garden design.  Answers, above.

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.