Front Door: Create Your World

Your front door must create its own world.  What does this mean?  Block views that are not part of your world.  Do you see the neighbor's garage & parking court, below?  It is there.

Kitchen view, below.

2 decades of a holly hedge were shaded into sparseness & removed.  Anise, shade loving shrub, will be planted this week.
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At the end of the day,  it is understood, we must all create our own world.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pics taken at jobsite last week.  This client fascinates, she does not like blooming shrubs in her garden.  Layers & swaths of evergreens in mixed textures.  Quite smart, low maintenance, gorgeous all year.  She does have a sweet perennial garden.  We are adding evergreen ground cover at her front door zone, large boxwoods with square stone edging for each, a low brick wall with stone cap behind her perennial garden.  And she's choosing a historic garden gate for my carpenter, Magic Man, to make a pair.
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
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Details about online design services.
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Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
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Details about lecture titles here.
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I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Vanishing Threshold: Roof

This room is not about: textiles, lamp, table, chair, woodwork, paint, carpet, hardwood floor, scale, placement....

It's about the view.
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A wildly successful interior decorator hired me for his private garden.  His dining room view was asphalt roof & ridge line.  Disaster.
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He had been enjoying the tour of his home he was giving me.  Until I stopped in horror at the view.  It-was-a-moment, is understatement.
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You know what I designed, at the end of the ridge line, atop gable's peek, a lovely urn.
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His garden needed few tweeks.  He was horrified at his omission of the dining room view.
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Garden & Be Well,             XO Tara
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This interior designer, little story above, is off the radar of publicity.  He works for those with several homes, & deep pockets, across the globe.  Googled him before writing this post to give a link.  Not a single image online.  And, he's probably the best I've ever seen.  
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Pic via Cote De Texas.
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Don't Overlook the Mundane

In the garden & inside you must have cloches.

Seeing, above, I knew my predilection for the unusual inside-a-cloche completely ignored the mundane.
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A good day includes at least 1 epiphany.
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Garden & Be Well,        XO Tara
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pic Paris Through My Lens    
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Design Tools

Trinities are often a good template.

If you don't have matching pots, make sure the rims are each the same height.
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Of course this is also a marvelous display of repetition.  Your most important Garden Design tool.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic Janelle McCulloch, Country Estates of Australia.  Visit Janelle's Library of Design.
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Conservatory Dreamtime

You must have a Conservatory in your garden.  Direct connection to an experience of Australia's Dreamtime.  

Too many busy days had passed without being in my Conservatory.  I feel its loss in my spirit.  Yesterday's 14 minute lunch had-to-be in the Conservatory.  Short & out of proportion to what is gained.  Spiritual well is filled.  No words to describe this direct line to Dreamtime.  

Moments in the Conservatory are atonement.  And abiding.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

All Creatures Great & Small

All Creatures Great & Small, by James Herriot.

Original episodes.

Sets, lifestyle, characters, pets, livestock, gardens, cricket, clothes, food, cars, scenery, romance, architecture, a way of life, change of seasons, humor, drama, it's all here.

If you don't know who they are, above, buy the dvd's.

Meet Tricky Woo, and you'll want to order the books too.
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Enjoy.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Chandeliers

Often I'm designing a garden when the interior is being renovated.

I adore seeing the lighting chosen.  Breakfast room, above, master closet, below.

A chandelier in my music room will soon grace the harvest table on the patio.  Beautiful & violent it has hit  many people in the head.
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Anticipating the new harvest table & chandelier on my patio is a January joy.
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Sourcing chairs now, table must seat 10.
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And which bonbon from the garage will grace the harvest table center?  Yes, this is fun.
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I'm not impatient.  This layer, the hunt, is excitement.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Pics taken last year at a client's home.   Before pics are already taken of the patio!
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Choosing the Best Urns

Urns that don't need planting are the best.

Rustic invitation leading to greater simplicity at the house.  My favorite template.
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What is the USA fascination with lawn to the street?
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pic via Old Long Island  
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Front Door Pendant Light

Endangered object, below.

Sweetly scaled pendant light.
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A front door is always a focal point.  When architecture & materials are already good why compete?  Beware 'too large' exterior lighting at your front door.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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pic via DIY Home Staging Tips.  You'll love the link, it's the best tips of Home Staging for 2012.  Of course, too many decades of USA homes lack good materials/architecture, mine is one, so you want to consider the possibility of large exterior lighting.  Then, beware of lipstick-on-a-pig.
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Color vs Light

 Pulled to color or light?  Both?  Yes, both.  I would love to see this room, below, when it's raining, at nite, in fall, winter, a storm.....

If you're fortunate a garden colors your light.

In your home, does garden light stop you in your tracks on occasion?

If your garden isn't doing this for your interiors it's time to rethink your garden.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Top pic via House Beautiful.  Bottom pics last week in my bay window.
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Historic Template

Shelf-steps, terra cotta pots, topiaried evergreens.

Big impact in the garden & easy resource for your interior.  A historic template.
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Recognize her?  Bunny Mellon.  I adore everything this woman does in her gardens.
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Garden & Be Well,                XO Tara
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Create Enfilades

My childhood home was built around an open courtyard, many were during that decade on Galveston Bay.

When the courtyard is designed to be part of the interior an Enfilade, a view into a view, is created.
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Enfilades are the most common photograph of gardens to be chosen for hardcover books & magazines.
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A fact I noticed decades ago, and began then, creating as many enfilades as possible.
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Why should YOU create enfilades?  Copy what the best garden designers & photographers do.  Enfilades are historic for a reason.  Great impact with little input.
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Garden & Be Well,            XO Tara
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Pics  of Pablo Paniagua's work.