Beautiful Gardens Have No Chores

There are no chores in a garden.  If you think a garden must be worked at, that is your privilege.
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 “It may be that when we no longer know which way to go that we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”  Wendell Berry   


Pic, above, here.
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“The teachers are everywhere. What is wanted is a learner.”
— Wendell Berry

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I travel farthest in my garden.  Beauty & epiphanies a chief delight, or perhaps the intellectual challenges.  There is nothing like using full brain power, and still, a chicken, outwits supposed IQ.  If your garden doesn't make you laugh, well, I can't imagine that type of garden.



Pic, above, here.
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"Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup." Wendell Berry
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April garden chores?  Chores?  Really?



Pic, above, here.
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"Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do". Wendell Berry
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What a day, below, Nancy Lancaster is having.  Arrayed in play clothes with Providence.  She's got her favorite wheelbarrow, beloved dogs, best clippers, plenty to occupy hands & heart while the brain flies, often into magical realms.  Hours spent, below, time nor hunger relevant.  Garden time.



Pic, above, here.
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"There are no sacred and unsacred places; there are only sacred and desecrated places. My belief is that the world and our life in it are conditional gifts." Wendell Berry
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In my garden there are no chores.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T\,
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“As I have read the Gospels over the years, the belief has grown in me that Christ did not come to found an organized religion but came instead to found an unorganized one. He seems to have come to carry religion out of the temples into the fields and sheep pastures, onto the roadsides and the banks of the rivers, into the houses of sinners and publicans, into the town and the wilderness, toward the membership of all that is here. Well, you can read and see what you think.”  Wendell Berry

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“Always in the big woods when you leave familiar ground and step off alone into a new place there will be, along with the feelings of curiosity and excitement, a little nagging of dread. It is the ancient fear of the Unknown, and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into.”  Wendell berry

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1995 I spent intentionally dervishly gardening.  4 friends with dire health, many prayers to pray.  At the start of 1996 all 4 already buried.  Praying for G*d's will, indeed, earned.
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“This, I thought, is what is meant by 'thy will be done' in the Lord's Prayer, which I had prayed time and again without thinking about it. It means that your will and God's will may not be the same. It means there's a good possibility that you won't get what you pray for. It means that in spite of your prayers you are going to suffer."  Wendell Berry
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Ca. 1982 I witnessed a customer cuss/yell/pontificate at my manager, ending with, "I'm closing my account."  Dear Elizabeth Purcell, tiny, 90lbs at most, deeply elderly, wildly sharp, replied softly after a significant Southern matriarchal pause, adjusting her thick glasses, looked up, with every soul in the room frozen, "That is your privilege."  The young, sallow skinned, girl, turned in her painted on blue jeans, and left, without a sound.  Vanquished.

Edith Wharton: Voids & Masses

"Proportion is the good breeding of architecture.  It is that something, indefinable to the unprofessional eye, which gives repose and distinction to a room:  in its origin a matter of nice mathematical calculation, of scientific adjustment of voids and masses, but in its effects as intangible as that all-pervading essence which the ancients called the soul."  Edith Wharton



Very nice fix, above, to scale, proportion, flow.  Yet there is an added design element not abiding to the rules of scale/proportion and landed onto the terrace from Mars.
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Which is the good fix?  Which is the ill conceived addition?
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First, brava to the terrace design flanking the entire back of the home, flowing in vanishing threshold from every window/door.
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Yet, that is not the 'good fix'.  Adding the checkerboard 'path' to the terrace is the 'good fix', a genius fix.  I sense it was not in the original design, yet makes the original design magic.  A nice reminder of, 'A landscape can be installed in a day, a garden takes a lifetime.'  Many layers of nice thought, above.
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Yet one zone, above, is awkward.
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Have you nailed it yet?  It was more common at the front end of the trend, but has tamed itself in recent years.  The fireplace.  Oh my.  It's a fireplace with a house, not a house with a fireplace.  Fireplace monument to the gods.  The monolith floating in space at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, ca. 1968.  A fireplace with no soul, merely a good salesman.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T



Pic, above, from the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, here.  Remember well, and not understanding seeing 2001 at its premier, not far from the Astrodome & Gulfgate Mall.  Oh my the joy of growing up shopping there, especially, Sakowitz.  Their clothes & shoes, and their fabulous decorations at Christmas.  Neiman's was a wannabe back in those days !  Odd to learn, just now, below, Gulfgate housed some of NASA before it could be completed for workers.  Helping mom choose dad's crypt the salesman shared his story of painting NASA buildings as fast as they could because NASA workers were sited all over Houston/Pasadena awaiting their buildings.
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Wikipedia, "It was the first regional mall in the Houston area, opening as Gulfgate Shopping Center on September 20, 1956 with Joske's,Sakowitz, Weingarten's, J.J. Newberry and W.T. Grant.^[2] The architects were John Graham & Company.^[3]

Gulfgate Kiddieland opened in the mall on March 21.^[4]

In the early 1960s, while the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) was under construction in the Clear Lake area, NASA personnel opened temporary offices in center in about 3,000 square feet (280 m²) of floor space donated for the purpose by the Gulfgate management. MSC had a continuing operation there until additional office, engineering and laboratory space could be leased and made ready for occupation. Operations at the Gulfgate offices were largely concerned with procurement, personnel and public affairs.^[5]

The shopping center was enclosed around 1967 and, after years of decline and competition, shuttered in 2000. In 2001 the original mall and the former Mervyns (across Woodridge) were demolished and redeveloped into a strip mall configuration, anchored by H-E-B, Best Buy, Office Depot, Marshalls, and Lowe's "

Take it Easy, Mon

What is your landscape to you?  What role does it play in your life?  How does your landscape leverage your life?  Is your landscape a monthly check to someone else?  Is your landscape full of chores?  Your landscape informs the world of your views, what information is your landscape telling me?  Have you ever thought to ask yourself, "What does my garden say about me?"  Are you to be patted on the head for keeping the HOA happy with your landscape, and no more?  
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This spring, for your landscape, choose your own perspective.
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This perspective, below, is my favorite idea of a landscape.
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In a word, do you know what that perspective is?



BACKDROP
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I want my garden to be the backdrop to my life.
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Who wants a garden, typically installed by the builder, to be endured?
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A garden backdrop to your life is leverage, joy, and grace.
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Green meatballs are usually a negative, yet look how many green meatballs are behind Tory Burch, above.  How smart her urns, never need planting or watering.  Ever.
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Green, brown, white is the most successful garden color trinity for centuries.
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If you maintain lawn/bushes, why not choose them as beautiful backdrop?  Delight in thinking, how to go beyond builder installed plantings, how to make magic from HOA rules.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Obviously this post is about certain ages of life.  Have had several clients this year, moving from their many decades family home, into retirement communities.  All of them, landscaping is provided & maintained as part of the 'package'.  All are in their 70's.  Each of the phone calls quite hard for both of us.  Life must be faced, and they are doing it in grace & elegance.

Don't Design Bifurcate: Interior & Exterior

For years I would write the editor of a specific interior design magazine asking why they would show beautiful interiors with terrible views out the windows.  No reply, ever.
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However, the month arrived when that magazine had every interior photograph edited/photoshopped to its exterior views with a brightness as if a glare of a beautiful garden, all the ugly views, poof/gone.  And, the magazine has continued editing exterior views for years.  Nice story, yes?
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This, below, is not that magazine.
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Great interior, yet a bifurcation of decorating styles, life choices, from inside to outside.
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What to do?



Quick thought, without seeing the rest of the home's interior, stain the deck a shade, or 2, darker than the walls, above.
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Poof, interior/exterior no longer bifurcated.
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Another solution, add a shutter to lower half of the window, leaving only vistas of sky, trees, birds...
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Money is no issue solution?  Enlarge the deck, choose a new rail, stain same color as walls, turn window, above, into French doors, fix a drink, put a new album on the turn table, enjoy.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic, above, here.

Florist Style in Garden Design

Florist Style.  Don't know what else to name it.  An assemblage of flowers or plants arrayed as if outside a florist shop, a charming florist shop, but in your garden.
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New client yesterday, and she's quite a challenge.  Children, grandchildren, she & her husband own their own business, and they have 3 homes, plus lots of travel.  Aside from mow-blow-go she has little to no garden help, unless it's the Gator.  And, she wants a delightful garden 'show' on her deck at the main home.  The deck is raised allowing for drip irrigation.  Thankfully.
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Florist Style for her deck.  Galvanized florist canisters for cut flowers, & plastic pots of flowering plants bought at the grocery store or a nursery, slipped into canisters too.  The story grows better, she loves ornamental grasses, I'll design a large prairie style grass garden for her to enjoy, and to have plenty for cutting.



Pic, above, here.

Her deck is large, and can handle several large evergreens, below.  Once they become 'tired' they can be retired to planting in her newly designed/designated cutting garden.

  

Pic, above, here.

Very little, below, yet confidently setting a 'tone'.  Exactly the top merit of Florist Style Garden Design.

 
Pic, above, here.

 
Pic, above, here.

Before our appointment I was at another appointment, with her sister.  Sister mentioned a place with an international supply of construction pieces from historic homes.  She showed me a few pics of the shop & I got the name & wrote it down.  Perhaps my new client can find a piece like this, above, for her Florist Style.
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New client mentioned a grown son and their gardening relationship since he was a boy, I'm sure she'll send him this post, for perusal and approval.  Too fun.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO T

The Language of a Garden's Entry: Not What You Think

Are you aware there is a classic repertoire of garden design language?  You know, the one without words.

A witty welcome, below, shouting, 'Come in'.  Restraint, grandeur, provincial, elegant, color, while informing reams of information about the house and its owner/s.



The language of garden design is quite simple, contrasts.  Simplicity with decadence, rustic with formal.



Designing an orchard next to this garden room, above, is obvious or at least it should be.
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I've known this fact for decades, since 1st studying historic gardens across Europe.  Only later, much later, an embarrassing slug's pace, did the epiphany arrive, Providence never separated agriculture from ornamental horticulture.  They are entwined, they are one.
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Amusing, and sad, how many elementary school gardens are planted with vegetables & herbs, without their contrasting ornamental garden.  Why sad?  It is the ornamental garden adding up to 80% increases to agricultural yields.  How?  Pollinators.  Worse, the full language of a garden is not passed to the elementary school students, nor their teachers.
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Another way to look at the top pic and garden design?  Most often, in USA, a stone wall leading to an estate or high-end gated neighborhood is fabulously planted with a cornucopia of ornamental plants & monoculture lawn, everything irrigated, chemicaled, maintained.  Ironically, copying the best high-end apartment complexes.  Often, also, a piece of farm acreage purchased to construct a fine home, builds a couple of stone plinths connected with a gate then a few plantings tossed in.  Their new neighbors wondering, "Did that land sell-out to build a starter home subdivision?"  
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Oh my, the language of garden entry ways.
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Garden & Be Well, XO T
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Pics from NaramataBlend.

Face Heads Correctly in Your Garden

Dogs, horses, lions, mostly, are the heads I have the joy of placing properly in gardens.  Don't I have the best career ever?
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Heads-up, these dogs, are looking in the correct direction.  



If you have a pair of heads in your garden, their correct placement is most often, above.
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Oddly, irritates me no end driving thru neighborhoods and seeing heads facing that grand morass-muddle-chaos of the great beyond termed The Public.  Wouldn't you rather give a lion's ass to the public?  Don't give the power of your garden away, facing heads the wrong way.  It's your life, joy, beauty.  Beauty.  There is a garden design secret I discovered about Beauty.  Designing your garden to be beautiful from every window of your home, yes every window, creates beauty in the opposite directions too.
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Got heads?  Getting heads?  Think it thru.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic via here.

Finally, A Funny Vole Story

"Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole.", William Boot in Scoop, by Evelyn Waugh.
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Have you walked across plashy fen, aka your lawn, and knew what your feet were feeling?  Have you considered the vole/mole who creates the squoosh?  Not me either.  Waugh's sentence, above, probably the funniest sentence I've read in 2 decades.
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In a client's garden, after noticing 'squoosh', I'll say, "You've got moles."  Quickly arrives the client's mole face, I-don't-know-what-this-is-but-it's-obviously-bad-look.
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Bottom line best option to get rid of moles?  A garden cat.  Traps or chemicals are not for me.




Pic, above, here.

Voles/moles do have a wicked sense of humor, manifested in an obvious manner.  Choosing gardens to dine upon they will choose the garden, above.  Why opt for the garden, below, zero impact to the owner.



Pic, above, here.
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My garden cat, Torte-de-Shelle, always brought her mole conquests to the back door.  I promptly tossed them under a bush somewhere to feed the soil.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

Consider Views into Your Home from the Garden

In a garden your home is the quintessential focal point.  Not content to leave this design facet forsaken and alone, views into your home are subsidiary focal points.
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Today, this moment, think with your mind's eye, walk in your garden, around your home, all the while, looking at your home.  No window view, into your home, can remain undesigned.  An unfinished basement window?  I don't care about the reality of the situation.  That unfinished basement easily becomes the guest suite, or perhaps the multi-media party room, in theory, depending upon your window treatment.  Again, who cares about the reality?  Reality, don't go there with me.  This is the reality.
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And, looking into your windows from the garden, you must be interesting.  I must want to know who you are from those views.
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So.  Who are you?  Do views into your windows tell me who you are?
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"Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.", "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.", Carl Jung.



Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic, view into my home of 30 years.  Cannot wait to start working on views into our American farmhouse ca. 1900.  Not to that layer yet.  Have done the fake it till you make it views into windows at present.

Overhearing a Garden Conversation

The BBQ restaurant was closed every time Beloved & I drove by, since June.  Yesterday, the parking lot was overflowing.  Of course we parked.  Stood in line, finally sat down to eat, and it was worth the wait, literally & figuratively.
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Then, amongst the din I could hear conversation behind me.  Gardeners, of a sort, not mine.  Past middle age, it was obvious they were thrilled knowing a few botanical names, and what a plant tag suggests or the obvious stated at a master gardener lecture.  Excruciating.  Their gardens, good gardens acceptable to every mow-blow-go crew across USA.  Foundation plantings, lawn and the incurves/outcurves a good college teaches about garden design.  Aka, everything sending me to study historic gardens across Europe for 2+ decades.
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The closest comparison would be describing the Grand Canyon as a 'ditch'.
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Gardens say so much, below.  This narrative, below, has been written for thousands of years.  Gardens lasting centuries?  This is their trinity, below.  Woodland, meadow, stone focal point.  Another way of saying the same thing, high density next to low density.  Yet another narrative, below, maximum pollinator habitat.



Pic, above, here.

Fruit trees, meadow, below, woodland.  Bucolic, and maximum pollinator habitat increasing fruit yields by 80%.  Tall meadows for fruit trees are correctly named, guilds.  The path scaled for wheelbarrow & gardener.



Pic, above, here.

Vanishing threshold, below, garden & house.  Enjoying both.



Pic, above, here.

Vanishing threshold, below, a proscenium for meals, alone time, or tete-a-tete.

  

Pic, above, here.

 

Gardening many years ago the epiphany arrived, "You choose the plants in your garden, choose the people in your life."  Memo received, people ejected.  Zero regrets.



Remember, when the leaves fall they enrich the tree.



Sometimes I wonder how G*d has time for other people.  Really, another lesson, for me, pinpoint accuracy, no less?


This bothers some people, above, in my life.  Really?



In the South, Bless their heart, covers this one, above.  What covers it in your region?



No matter how hard I tried, it wasn't real, decades passed, finally, I saw.  This one is a lot of fun, with kindred spirits.  Much laughter.



Saying 'no' is often more important than saying 'yes'.






These lessons, above, are writ large for each of us, yet whether we see them or not is on our own shoulders.  Once seen, garden lessons, oh my the laughter, realizing the years of not seeing.





A lifetime exists, daily, in my garden.  Having lived too many years for 'tomorrow' and losing all that was gained, everything, I live each day.  With zero fear about this choice.    



In my city garden, above.  I set the stage for poetry, music, lessons, narratives, etc.  Tell you how to dig a hole & plant a hydrangea macrophylla?  You're smarter than that, the Grand Canyon is not a ditch.
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More, the path, above, led into my backyard from the sideyard, in a cluster home subdivision, the lot 8500sf.  Yet, my garden gave me acres of joy.
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Today, my gate, above, waits with its twin on a pallet next to the dairy cattle pasture & lake.  Living, less than a year, on our little farm built ca. 1900.  Outward validation of learning the lessons, above, knowing more are on their way.
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No worries, I have my garden.
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And, you should see the stars here at nite.  They are like a blanket lightly dropping down and wrapping your shoulders.  Never considered the stars when buying our farm.  Yet, out they come, a present.  A benediction.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

Not Hiring a Garden Designer? What You Should Know

I keep thinking, "It's spring, what's the most important thing to pass along to a new gardener, who won't hire a garden designer?"  The typical, have a job, home, family, little time, tight budget, new gardener.  If you've read this far I know you are a stubborn sort.  Headstrong.
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Gonna do it your way.  You will figure out the bonafides of a garden, and do it better.
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Yes, you, I'm considering you.
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Found both pics, below, recently.  Probably not at all what you are considering.  Yet, you should consider both gardens, intently.
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For starters, describe elements, below, of each garden.  You probably don't have a vocabulary to describe these gardens.  With your impatience, I'll give you some garden design words, axis, double axis, cross axis, fine texture, coarse texture, layers, high density, low density, focal point, focal point on axis,  views on axis, color trinity, flow, contrast, repetition, seasonal focal points, cross axis, evergreen, hardscape, deciduous, herbacious, pollinator habitat, property value, HVAC costs, seasons, walls, ceiling, floor, groundcover, backdrop, historic, modern, deer proof, low maintenance, drought tolerant, pleasure garden and etc.
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Name it to claim it.  Corny, and true in garden design.
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Both gardens, below, though different are the same.
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What is the most important fact about both gardens?  Hint, it's a single word.
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This important fact, is for you, the new gardener.  Peruse the pics, the 'word' describing both is at bottom.



Pic above, here.



Pic above, here.
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In addition to the most important word about both gardens, above, you have a personal arrow in your quiver of garden design.  A mission statement.
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Liking words, a few words, tossed into zero order, in describing what I want for/from my own garden design as a mission statement: thought opera, traditional notions, intellectual journeys, obscure, subliminal, engaging, layering events, penchant, gaggle, lacy melodies, cello, ruminative, densest moments, ravish, musical fodder, droll, matter-of-fact, jester, astute, hepcat, pervades, dance to their tune, dramatis personae, sprite, poignantly, and you get the idea of how I wish to live in my own garden design.
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So, you've had time, what is the best word, describing both gardens, above.  Why would I choose them for you, a new gardener?
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Fast.  Both gardens will give a 'fast' effect.  Too many garden designs take 5-10 years to be anything.  Both gardens are loaded with structure, trees, hedges, paths, lawn.  Notice what each garden does not have?  Loads of flowers.  Flowers are secondary in garden design, structure is primary.  Ironically, human nature is all about flowers.  This, at the front end, is strongest in my heart to tell you, the new gardener.
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Links for both pictures have slide shows of more good gardens.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

What is Special About this Garden?

What is special about the landscape, below?  Take away the lovely home, insert a 3 bedroom 1960's brick ranch with a carport, and still, every drip of special about the landscape remains.  Small input, huge output, in the garden, but specifically, why is it special?



Most USA homes are entered from the driveway.  Above, a garden entry leads you into the home.
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Normally, the garden entry, above, is lawn next to the driveway.  Perhaps you would like a pretty garden instead.  Welcome home.
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Note, too, layers of green.  Layers of green never fail, and succeed quickly.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic via Pinterest.