A New Garden Design Rule

Dinky is Stinky.

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Overdose on a Theme.

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Round Flowers with Spiky Flowers.

Today, a new garden design rule.  Every garden needs, at the very least, Hint of Chandelier.
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Garden & Be Well,               XO Tara
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With chandeliers inside, in the garden & in-waiting in the garage, Torte de Shelle brought to me this morning, placed upon the back door mat, a teenage rat in 2 pieces.  The top can be stuffed for a museum, its bottom seems to have been regurgitated.
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Is it already in your brain, Hint of Chandelier ?  Keep it there long enough and chandeliers WILL appear in your garden.
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pic Content in a Cottage.
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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.

Optimism

Cancer treatments had already taken her hair, and made the tips of her fingers & toes blue.  Walking was treacherous.

Hiring me to redesign her front yard, and install the ideas were a life lesson.

Near completion she asked, "How long till the azaleas cover the wall?"  "Well, with the drought......", began my reply before she interrupted, "Tara, we must be optimistic."
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Four words poured into my DNA.
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Polly Anna?  No, living fully.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics taken at a client's earlier this month, Dooley (the patriarch) & Jefferson (the newcomer).  Another life lesson!
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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.

The Poverty Cycle

From the garden.

Dried hydrangeas & roses.

Young, her garden produces for special gatherings.  Soon, her garden will be decadent in what she can use, and most importantly, give away.
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Garden & Be Well,           XO Tara
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Pic taken 2 weeks ago at a client's home.  About 100 years old, the garden had pecan trees & a few pears,  necessities of the Great Depression. The poverty cycle (yet another Tara invention!) so important to the look of 'new' gardens.  Incredible joy in nurturing these delayed Pleasure Gardens into being.  
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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.

Inside a Garden Design

Lunch at a jobsite last week.  New layers to be discussed.

Notes, sideways topics, hours of discussion.  Went back yesterday to design, alone.  Listening to the Spirit of the place.  I take nothing for granted & give it everything I have.  Gardens are intimate diaries of our hopes, hurts, & joys.  They speak of how we like to be alone, how we gather with friends, our relation to the land, stewardship of home & ourselves.    

A folding table/chair to design in the garden.  Moving  from garden room to garden room.  Serious concentration and much laughter.  Laughing in sinc with what the Muse performs.
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Muse had fun at the Well House yesterday, cannot wait to source the vintage shutters & icon.  The fig arbors with benches were a delightful revelation.  Of course I laugh while I work.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics at client home.  How does anyone live outside the camellia zone?
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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.

Ping Pong Garden Room

 "But of course!

 Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara

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Pic via internet, saved for a client, no provenance.

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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.

Vanishing Threshold

This, below, is a disaster.

At a minimum prune the crape myrtle trunks into elegance, add sasanqua espaliers & sconces along fence.

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This room stops at the windows.  Why settle for so little?

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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

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pic via Cote de Texas. 

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By the Glamorous Age you must be able to have a couple of friends over for a delicious lunch you prepared in a lovely setting of garden & home.

Pool Renovation

Their new dream home is quirky, dated, tired.  The golf course view has been obscured for decades.

Their tiny swimming pool & backyard are my destination today.

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These are exciting times.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic Habitually Chic.

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Ironically, did a backyard Saturday.  Premier golf course views in a gated community.  Their deadline is a PGA tournament this spring.  Stone terraces on 2 levels.  Moonlighting.  Furnishings.  I'm not worried about the stone terraces, but I was clear about the furnishings, "get out of your comfort zone, scare yourselves."  If they get piddling furnishings they cheapen their entire view.  And, harm my reputation.  

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Of course I went further, 'when you bought your home you entered a new chapter in your life.'  That is how seriously amazing their golf/lake/woodland views are.

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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.

Designing Joy

They had to downsize from the home they raised their children in, and thought would see them to the end.  Their business affected too greatly by the economy.

Their new home, on 5 sloping wooded acres, a good price because of the economy, was quite upsetting to him.  Ironically, she was the strong one.  He felt as if he had let her down, not being able to stay in their 'forever' home.
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From the house I designed flowing woodland trails, a river pavilion and a hillside pavilion, in addition to what he expected.
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She & I witnessed the child appear in his eyes.  Joy, arriving.  Providence holding him close, "You are safe, this land & home will nurture you, calm you, restore hope, give energy, peace."
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Garden house, above, is what I have in mind for their garden pavilions.  Of course they will be wood, but the proportions are correct.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic via internet, lost provenance.
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He seemed to think, at first, he could not afford the pavilions.  I let him know he cannot afford NOT to have them.  He's sourcing old windows/doors now.  Obviously I've watched Mary Poppins a few too many times, spit-spot.
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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.

Foundation Planting

Starter home to million plus, Americans love their foundation plantings.  Why?  Rows of green meatballs planted by the builder, pruned ad nauseam for decades showing off the enabling co-dependent relationship serving neither party. 

And the confidence of this driveway.  More than function, a feature.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic My French Country Home.
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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.

The Banquet

We completed her extensive garden & house renovation in 2011, she called us back for another layer recently.

Chatting inside, getting a little tour of our earlier work, I said, "You must have a banquet here."  Laughing, she said it was exactly what an earlier interior decorator told her.
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What are the chances of that?
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Garden & Be Well,            XO Tara
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Pic House of Turquoise.
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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 Wear This on a Garden Tour

Never wear orange on a garden tour.  You will be seen thru hedges, & everywhere, making a serious gardener, trying to take pics, rabid as an angry bull.

This happened to me in Ireland visiting Helen Dillon's garden.

At dinner that evening, at which point everyone in the group knew I was a rabid bull, excepting Miss Orange,

who commenced to order & drink an entire bottle of wine without sharing with the group as if she was the one thwarted in her picture taking.
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I was treated with great dignity by the group, condolences (for my photography being interrupted)  & respect for discovering Miss Orange needed to be totally knocked off our socially acceptable list.

After all, there is a protocol for sharing wine with the group (hello Miss Orange we all shared with you) .
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But this isn't where I was going with the pics.
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Puppet Barbuda, garden critic extraordinaire, needs clothes, hair, and apparently a ruff for her neck.  She already has a pair of leather lace-up work boot stilettos.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Top pic via Castles, Crowns, and Cottages.  Remaining paintings Diego Rivera via   It's About Time.
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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.

Vanishing Threshold

Vanishing threshold's 2 questions: 1) Is the garden so fabulous I MUST see inside the home.

2) Is the interior so fabulous I Must see the garden?
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Casement windows, library thick with sconces, terra cotta pots looking 'as if' they were just carried in from the conservatory, I'm wanting to be in the garden looking in at dusk with all the lites on......this room & garden have me.
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Want to read every book, see all the ironstone, types of silver.   What types of pots does she cook with?
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More than narrative, this bit of vanishing threshold is mentoring.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Thank you Cote de Texas for another great pic on your blog.  Look at those library sconces again, notice the multiple layers?  No need to ask, I KNOW they are on a dimmer switch.
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Do you want to be in your garden at dusk looking into your home?  I do.  And adore what I see.
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pic via Bumble at Home.  In a small garden, for above, I would use #89 granite gravel instead of lawn less maintenance.
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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.