Brave Enough to be this Simple?

Glen Ella, below, New Year's Eve.

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Still in use, their barn, more than a century later, its current garden design pulls deep admiration.

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Simplicity.

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Mostly, these barns are rotting/caving-in/gone across USA.

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Go off the grid?  These barns are original off the grid support.

Field gathered stones, below, still functioning.

Perhaps my favorite view of the barn, below.  Simplicity of garden design, and views into the guts of its architecture.  What is the narrative?  Was it added on to?  More than once?

Barn still in use, above, totally garden designed.  Yet, to most, it will seem derelict, dangerous, and they will think, "Why don't they do something, or tear it down?"  Without realizing the brain power creating this current narrative with form/function.  More than brain power, a relationship with Providence.
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Would you be this bold, above, as a garden designer?
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Simplicity is a hard/impossible task.
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Simplicity requires the ego to mask itself.
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No worries about that, once you realize your ego can shine via the simplicity.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Arrived with friends, for dinner, at Glen Ella near dusk, the later seating was booked.  Cold, little light, and everyone walked toward the entry, and warmth.  Not me.  I forgot they existed.  My behavior, whence a good garden appears, targeted on the hunt.  The garden, camera, me, a trinity & zone flying beyond time, social acceptance, whatever.  Poor unfortunate souls needing drugs to arrive in this zone.  
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Have met 1 other soul with this trinity to Nirvana, in Italy, a Delta pilot.  He/I were constantly in each other's way and beyond irritated, beyond the moon irritated.  A few days of this hell we knew some sort of 'arrangement' had to be discovered, some sort of 'friendship'.  Finally, we spoke.  Of course he had to let me know he was a Captain, and a bit about his lovely large home etc.  Woo-woo, let him know a friend's dad had been a Flying Tiger, and original pilot hire by Delta, and he lived around the corner from me growing up.  Told you we didn't like each other up front.  And by the way, someone had to train the astronauts how to fly their rockets, uh, that would be my dad in the simulator with them, former Air Force test pilot.  Isn't it rare the events bringing out our best 7 year old selves, in a snit?  Oh that archaic lizard brain.  You know exactly what happened next.   Talked our way to what is best for both of us, have been true friends since.   He's a wonderful pilot, and person, the best.  Adore his wife, she's a junker for antiques too.
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Grew up knowing the neighbor was a Flying Tiger.  Thought it was euphemism.  During college saw a movie with John Wayne, Flying Tigers.  Consistently, when I'm wrong, it's never a little.

Of Chickens & Caretakers of Charlie Hebdo Victims

Last Wednesday, a massacre in my chicken coop.  Neighbor's dogs already drawing blood, and death, by the time I arrived.

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DNA takes over when you come upon a bear while walking in the woods, and during a chicken massacre.  In my experience.

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Screaming.  8 days later my voice still not good.

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Blessedly the dogs owner heard, ran, helped.  With character & integrity.  

He helped gather the dead.  And wounded.

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Wednesday was the Paris massacre too.  Gathering coop debris Thursday evening, still seeing where dead chickens lay, feathers now in hand, how could this be dead people with families, friends, lives?

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This chore, a fragment of the gift of stewardship, made me aware of and pray for those caretaking the dead and wounded in the Charlie Hebdo office.

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A headline arrived about those caretakers.  A police commissioner, after meeting with family of a Charlie Hebdo victim, committed suicide.

Less than 1/4 acre, in a subdivision of tightly packed houses, these pics are my home.  Where my garden begins.
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Garden views reign at every window.  Imperative, and non-negotiable.  Thirty years building, garden paths, terraces, conservatory, potager, ponds, chicken coop, plantings blooming every day of the year, and etc.
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Three years ago, chickens arrived.  The goal was to enjoy their calm sounds & movements, marvel at their beauty, then, processing.  Instead, they taught me how smart chickens are, and human-like in their behaviors of hierarchy.  Who knew they would make me laugh, daily?    Plus, egg ministry.  Ridiculous, it's fun giving eggs away.  How wonderful my garden soil would be if it had had chicken poop for 3 decades instead of 3 years.
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Without effort, these chicks humbled me in arenas I did not know existed.  They gave something no garden, no garden writer, no garden speaker, no garden classes, no horticulture degree, no garden book, no PBS garden show, no garden center, no garden website, no garden blog, no garden Youtube, no garden Facebook wall, even hinted toward,  Stewardship.
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Until chickens, as enriching as my garden was, it was merely amusement compared to stewardship.
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Amusement with my garden felt like going to church, tacking onto its religion, reading the bible, making strong efforts to become spiritually filled.  Stewardship, gives hints at hearing the author of the bible, knowing Nature as the 'written' structure of Providence.   And the spiritual well?  Filled beyond measure, without effort.
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Wendell Berry has written of stewardship in essays, poetry, fiction, for decades.
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Stewardship cannot be given.  But, like Tasha Tudor chose for her motto, she read in a poem, Take Joy,  Stewardship is there to be taken.  Whenever you are ready.  Stewardship is far more than caretaking chickens or a garden.  It is metaphor.

What does stewardship mean to you?

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I settled for amusement with my garden, not knowing there was more.

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Stewardship.  You have it for your own life, whether you think so, or not.

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Great amusement in knowing my chickens gave me stewardship.  Greater thanks in the depth of the gift.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Do you know what processing a chicken means?  Killing & eating.  Never named my chicks, knowing I was a tough girl and would process them.  Of course those thoughts were toast long ago.  

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Alpha Girl has major physical trauma but is eating, pooping, alert, and I'm hand feeding.  Yesterday she pushed away, in her total alpha girl 'attitude', another chick.  Of course I had to tell Beloved how noble Alpha Girl is and I could only wish to be as noble in a tough situation.

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Beloved tried to remain speechless at this new fact about chickens.  

Why Boring-is-Good is Your Best Design

"Build your own prison", he said at the start.

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She laughed.

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3 years later, pieces of the start have already been undone.

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She laughed then too, remembering his words.

Boring is Good

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I design gardens for a living, he of build-your-own-prison, installs gardens commercial/residential, for a living.

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We have 60+ years in our livelihoods.

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Take our words at the front end.

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If you don't, the epitaph is not propitious.

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Worse than money lost, you will have frittered time.

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Money can be earned.

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No one can earn time.

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Build your own prison.  Boring is good.

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Keep it simple sweetie.

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Outside a client's hedge, below.

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It's packing a punch.

Inside the same corner of hedge, below.

Several cars park here, on view from every back window of the house.
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Boring is good, but includes intellect, wit, function, delight to the eye in every season, attractiveness to pollinators, easy to maintain, raises property value, lowers HVAC, & etc....
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Counterintuitively, wickedly boring gardens showcase your inner joy, laughter, intellect, and are more unique than any garden you could conjure with your lizard brain.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

This client now sees into the soul of person as they walk/talk with her in her garden.  What they see, or don't see, and spontaneously respond/react to informs reams about their heart.  

Ralph Lauren Garden ca. 1988

Do you like this garden?

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For many years I could not abide these types of gardens.

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Clipped, formal, severe.

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Already laughing, because you know what is coming?

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I love adore honor & am humbled by this garden.

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Design them for clients.

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Evergreen, simple, easy to maintain, inexpensive, functional for games-parties-tents.

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Of course there is a garden room next to it with 'flowers', maybe a fruit tree orchard, or a 'shrubbery', perhaps a 'wild wood', a meadow with mown paths. 

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For many years I was clueless about the narrative of these gardens.

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Thought gardening was all about ME, what I liked, wanted, narrated.

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Garden Design, in USA, is too young, too righteous in proving, Tocqueville, without effort, correct.

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Slow down, did you smirk at the dry humor, above?

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It was ME, in the early years, "..too righteous in proving, Tocqueville, without effort, correct."

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What happened?

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Hungry to learn, I went back to college and got another degree, horticulture.  Knew at the conclusion, it was rotten.  Off to Europe to study historic gardens.

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A rule for Garden Design, pictures of your garden must not place its era or continent.

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 Don't think your garden has a narrative?  Wrong, every garden has a narrative.  Best to make sure it's a narrative enriching to your soul.

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That's enough to keep anyone happily occupied for life.

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Photo, above, 1988 Ralph Lauren.

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Saw the pic on Pinterest this week.  Had to know more about it.  Once I saw, Ralph Lauren ca 1988, I smelled the garden. 

Freshmen year of college, ca 1977, this was the fragrance.  Dorm rooms, dorm halls, dorm lobbies, dorm elevators, dorm cafeterias, freshman mixers, classrooms, campus sidewalks, ALL, smelled of this.  Memory !

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Like the fragrance, it was just on too many girls.

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Perhaps, I should seek the fragrance, now.  Let it tell me more about myself.  Just as Ralph Lauren's garden, above, tells me, in great narrative, about a my life trajectory in  gardens.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

Complete Garden Design Includes Lunch Inside?

Hired to design the garden, I was headed here, below, too.

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Aside from Garden Design beginning inside your home, every window of your home, looking into the garden, must be art on the wall.

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As those layers arrive, the best Garden Design layer appears.  

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Lunch Ministry.  

My job, Garden Design, includes creating so many incredible places to have lunch, inside your home, it's hard to choose.
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True in the garden too.  But that's obvious, and easy.  My game is bigger than that.
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Change your garden, change your life.
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With a client this week, we had lunch too.  Cold & wind outside, she chose lunch for us, in the sunbeams.
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Work came first, then we sat for lunch, the table already set with care, aka joy.  Deer chili, hot on the stove.  Both chairs had vistas of 3 different garden rooms.
 

I chose the chair with views of the courtyard, porch, potager.  That was my job.  Those views need more work than the others.

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I trust my job, talents, skills, experience, and livelihood, operating beyond left/right brain, in this arena.  What is this arena called?  Don't know.  I label it Lunch & Sparking for the 'work', Lunch Ministry from Providence in what it brings in layers of epiphany.

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Once here, this Lunch Ministry layer, I ask my clients to have non-gardening friends, or new friends, to lunch.  And, if they don't belong to a Garden Club, I ask them to join the closest, and host a yearly meeting.

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Why?  Expose more people to a garden lifestyle.

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More, if their life/time allow, I encourage terra cotta pots with topiaries, or whatever is easy, on a vintage ironstone plate, on the lunch table.  As the friend leaves, pass the plate/plant to them.

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Pass along gardening, from lunch ministry.

Big news at this lunch.  Their daughter was engaged new year's eve.  The daughter is an old soul and she/mom have a relationship closest to that of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, & her mom, that I've come across.

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Infertility has given me a strange wonderful gift.   I adore hearing/knowing the stories of success with friends/clients children.  I'm on the inner loop for many, getting emails about awards, promotions, etc..  You know, all the stuff considered bragging in the outer world.  But great pride, joy, relief, to their parents.  

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pics shot this week at jobsite.

How to Keep Chickens Out of the Cutting Garden

Cloudy, cold, one of the coldest days, so far, this year, yesterday, and at a jobsite in the windiest county of the state.

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A thousand daffodil bulbs needed sighting, and design ideas for directing guests to the front door instead of their preferred choice, the back door.

In the cutting garden, above/below.  Last year we realized the chickens won, and we had to consider how to keep them out.

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Ironically, the solution was not a first thought.

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And, the solution made us laugh out loud.

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The solution is the evergreen hedging you see, above/below.

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Laughter at ourselves, thinking for decades, low evergreen hedging was an 'aesthetic' design choice from Williamsburg, VA,  England, and etc....

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Wrongo buckaroos.  And not merely a 'little' wrong either !

For centuries the low evergreen hedging has been used to keep chickens out.  Aka, survival.

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Daffodil foliage is coming up, above, however patches of several thousand daffodils in the front garden are not showing a single daffodil spear tip.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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From childhood, this client & I shared something beyond our control.  Something this quote, below, captures perfectly.  Yes, I sent it to her when I found it.

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We had to create our own way.  Parenting during formative years forced it.

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Instead of anger, Providence gave us hearts wanting accomplishment.  And the accomplishment of our friends.  Benevolence.

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Knowing to be part of the pack, for our friends.

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Being thrown to the wolves, more than once, has been the best thing ever.

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With my girlfriends, who have survived, to thrive, being thrown to the wolves, whatever table we sit at, is the cool chicks table. WE like us !

Color: Banish Hodge Podge Lodge

Viewing the Great Smoky Mountains, below.

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The century old Glen Ella Inn would be inappropriate to its era if it were 'fancy'.

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Coming up from the garden, below, the owner's heart & intellect spoke, and made me smile.

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For many centuries the best gardens across the globe have shared an oddly piquant quality, and much needed.  The poverty cycle.

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My smile, below?  The air-conditioning units painted the wall color, and rocking chairs painted the door color.

Studying historic gardens across France taught me the connection of paint color and field gathered furniture.

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Been doing it in client gardens for decades.  I'm not one to ignore the brilliance of earlier garden designers.

Another smile, with color.  Have designed umbrellas into a client's barns/acreage.  Using any color amongst her exterior color trinity.  (Remember, every garden must have a color trinity.)

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Ironically, the chairs on the front porch of Glen Ella, yesterday's post, were created during a true poverty cycle, and now, are quite expensive.  Hence, the style change with the back porch rocking chairs.

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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

Best Place to Copy Front Porch Design?

Bed & Breakfasts speak to myriad layers of design.

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Their needs, specific.  They must be inviting, tidy, comfortable, safe, feed all your senses, and perform through all seasons.

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B&B's are on a budget of money & time.  

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Perfect, just like home.

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Glen Ella, below, has been welcoming guests for a century.  

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History, color, repetition, comfort, and welcome at Glen Ella's front porch, below.

One of the first rules of Garden Design, copy.
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Not your style, above?  Doesn't matter, the design rules apply.
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For 30+ years I've had the good fortune of having a family place nearby.  Better fortune, I've not been the one to buy the family place & pay upkeep !  Glen Ella is still beside a dirt road and its Smoky Mountain views not harmed by gentrification.  Throughout the years I've never had a bad meal here and know to make reservations.
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Now, whenever I go to Glen Ella a walk alone in the garden & meadows is deeply anticipated.  Enjoying the present, yet remembering other days/evenings/meals here with deeply loved friends, already gone.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

Design: See With New Eyes

Along a woodland path, below, in a client's garden.  Subtle.  Subsidiary focal point.

Saw a similar sewing machine, $12.00, at a favorite thrift store.  Liked it, but could not figure out a reason to buy it.
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Take this gift, as I did.
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See with new eyes.  In all.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Tara's books on Amazon, here.

Sacred or Profane in Design

Since last week, when I first saw this garden, below, I've been thinking about how simply designed,  within a framework of total design, by someone with a wisdom of Nature, time across historical perspective, aesthetics, grief, continents, the sky, tilt of the Earth, seasons, meals, human foot, cars, tractors, laughter, guests, owner/s, caretaker/s, solitude, children, galas, scent, sound, wheelbarrows, terra cotta, gravel, Tara Turf, human hands, mending of spirit, abiding, atonement.  For starters.  

Nothing major has been done, above, or every element is minutely chosen.

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Which camp are you in?

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My camp is organic design.  Everything minutely chosen to look like nothing major has been done.

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Design to feed Nature, and Spirit.

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As Bunny Mellon designed, "Don't let it show."

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Can you guess which country this garden is in?  Era?  More signs of a good garden.

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We can visit this garden, and spend the night, it's in Provence, a B&B, Chateau Talaud.  

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This, and more, on my Pinterest board.

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Organic design has no personal ego, yet total ego in belief.  More than designing a place of abiding & atonement, it is a sacrament.

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Read a title, years ago, creating simplicity in organic design, "The Sacred and The Profane."

Creating a Life of Roses

She sensed I was sinking.  I didn't know I was.

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With time, clarity.

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At the driveway between the Big House where she lived, and the Carriage House where I lived, backed by 50 acres of wood & pasture with horses & dogs & cats, and solitude, she slipped me a volume, 

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Flower and The Nettle: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1936-1939.

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A life raft.

Written at Long Barn, above, the home she rented from, Vita Sackville-West, Morrow mentions a moment.  Coming into the room, a climbing rose tendril & bloom had fallen inside the open window.

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In that instant I was crying, heaving cannot breath tears.

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My life was horrible, and no where near having something as beautiful and sweet as a rose blossom falling into my house from the garden.

Jumping forward a decade+, I walked into my home office, upstairs, opened the window, and a climbing rose, dropped tendril & blossom softly onto my desk.
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This rose said, "You've been flying for quite awhile, you grew the wings you needed."   Until that moment, I had forgotten those heaving tears a decade earlier.  New tears, as unexpectedly, with the same heaving force, except I was catching breaths between laughter.
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Jumping forward 2 decades, I'm still in awe of these 2 roses, anchoring a decade, and the start of living.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pics from Yale library, here.  This is my Janus, January, story, what is yours?
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Of course I read all of Morrow's books after the 1st gift.  Have given them as gifts.  Paying it forward.  Giving it your all?  Not happy?  Buy the book, hit the link.

Name Your Garden Rooms

Went to a new client's home yesterday.  They are moving to Georgia from Texas to be closer to children and grandchildren.

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We talked of many things walking their wet Georgia red clay grounds.

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Realized, last night, we did not discuss naming the different areas of their garden.

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And it 'needs' names.  Their front porch is large & perfect for truly using, and they have a covered, screened porch at the back.

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Veranda, Porch.  Done.

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A large side yard will be the Upper Allee  & Lower Allee.

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Two bluestone patios will be on site.   Courtyard.  Terrace.  Done.

They want a magical zone for their grandchildren.  Potager.  Wildwood.  Orchard.  Done.
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She likes curves and does want some turf.  Oval Lawn.  Done.
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Their driveway will have a strip of groundcover in the middle, of most of it.  Drive Trail.  Done.
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An extra area of drive will be poured for easier turnarounds.  Parking Court.  Done.
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Once the house is complete I will post interior pics.  They have put decades of wisdom into their floor plan.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic of The Laskett Garden painted by Jonathan Myles-Lea
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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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                                        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.

NOTE to my gardening friends... look for changes to come. 

Knew before computers/cell phones, sitting in Atlanta traffic on way to a client, 'I must reach a larger audience with the same amount of effort.'   Soon after that epiphany I signed my CBS-TV, and, books contracts on the same day.

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Then I read an article in the NYTimes about something called 'blogging'.  Saved the article for a year before reading it.  Studied all the blogs they mentioned, hired a computer expert they quoted, and attended a blogging seminar.

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Blogging 2.0 has arrived, my knowledge is 1.0.  A believer in copying the best historic gardens across the globe it flows into every arena of life.  Watching Maria Killam grow her career/blog/life over the past 3 years made its impact.  Signed up  for a year's course with her blogging expert, Jon Morrow. 

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Changes will be slow, plodding is my adored method.  Pulling triggers here/there is spice in the mix.
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What do YOU want?

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Nothing is too small, too big, or too ego crushing to mention.

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Passion lies in sharing what has filled me to the depths of grace, joy & atonement, the best landscapes created over the last 2,000+ years.

Just so you know... 
 I  welcome your input.