What To Do With A Bad View

Of course the dining room, below, has an awkward view. 

Swag of curtain, below, in the downstairs window is the dining room.

Same swag of curtain, below, in the dining room.

Do you see the triple air-conditioners?  Do you see the industrial generator?  Do you see anything fussy to maintain?
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No.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Pics taken at jobsite last week.  Dining room opens into central hall of previous 3 posts.

A Central Hallway

 Over a century old, the home has a long & wide central hallway copying the dogtrots of old.  Back-in-the-day it was 'air-conditioning'.

Now, it's a place for extra chairs.  Easy to grab for gatherings in other parts of her home.

Cannot imagine the first matriarch of this acreage outside Athens, Ga.  Summertime with no cooling, cooking dinner, and breakfast, daily.  No cell phone, internet.  Only her man, children & workers for interaction.  Laundry, with clothesline, a great effort + time.  Harvesting the kitchen garden, canning.

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Epiphany.  No wonder rural Southerners were tightly bound to their church.

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Women taking the edge off.  Meet & greet comrades in life, unload frustrations, share joys.  Get the gossip, trade successes/failures on life topics.  Hopefully get a good sermon.  Enough to manage another week.

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All this from a dogtrot.    

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pics taken last week at jobsite.  Same foyer as previous 2 posts.

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Women In History was an elective I took for my engineering degree.  It ignored physical discomfort & religion.    

A Foyer View

Doorways, rooms, and an upstairs landing, a myriad of garden views, flood natural lite into the foyer.

I must get each of those garden pictures, from the foyer, next time at this jobsite.
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Garden views from this foyer are enough for a garden design book.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken last week at jobsite.  Same home/garden as yesterday's post.

Foyer & Front Porch

Foyer, below, with garden light.

Window, above, from the front porch, below.

It's my job, vanishing threshold, getting it right.
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This project  uses my entire team: interior decorator, general contractor, foreman, crew team & equipment, carpenter + team, mason+team, pruner+team & of course the homeowner.  We are 3 centuries of experience.
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With no weak links.  Communication flows.  Every ego wanting to know what is not right or not working, how else to get it right?
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And we all love getting dirty.  Homeowner too.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken at jobsite yesterday.

Contrast

Contrast shapes.

Shrubs, trees & flowers.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic My French Country Home.  What is better than contrasting foxgloves with mophead hydrangeas?  Several Italian cypress are going in a garden today.  The gravel courtyard is round and the nearby crape myrtles arc in silhouette.
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Hosta, fern & hellebore are my shade trinity and contrast to extreme.  Tara's Trinity of the Southern Garden: Azalea, Camellia, Hydrangea.  Contrast AND keeps something in bloom every day of the year in your garden.

Potent Across Genres

Ranking with simplicity, and copying is 

repetition.
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Hodge Podge Lodge is easy, repetition engages the intellect.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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30 years of clients and they all say, "It must be affordable & easy to maintain."  Repetition is a potent tool in your arsenal of skills.
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Pic Paris Through My Lens.

Use a Plinth

Not the bird.

The plinth is divine.
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When the perfect focal point is not the right height, use a plinth.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic Content in a Cottage.   Waiting at airports or restaurants Content in a Cottage is my go-to on the cell phone.  Love her pics and links.

The Best Time To Design

Design your garden for deep winter.

It will be pretty all year.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pic Belgian Pearls.
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Rosemary Verey wrote the best garden design book, The Garden In Winter.

Exterior Color Trinity

Choose a color trinity for your exterior then overdose that theme.

Shades of lead, green, white.
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Lovely.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Pic Greige Design.

Consider Everything

Really?

You think we don't see the grill killing the views?
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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I can hear the lovely terra cotta pots from here, "How dare they put that thing with us."
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Pic Cote de Texas.

The Camera Test

It's not often we get to see inside, below,

and go outside the same room, below, a century earlier.

Did you know this is how to test your garden?  Take pics in black/white, is the year obvious?  It shouldn't be.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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pics Ottoline Divine.

Rustic Simplicity

Simplicity is a choice.  

Rustic simplicity is a bold choice few Americans take.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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pics My French Country Home.

Tubs & Tours

Janelle McCulloch has put a garden tour together.  I've already been to most of the gardens but her trip may be worth the hotels alone.

One goal for the year has been, 'more baths'.  So you know the hotel room above is, 'yes, please'.

Have already more than quadrupled last years tally.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Top pic Janelle McCulloch.  Bottom pic, my tub, 'Daisy'.
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Take a peak at Janelle's garden tour, here.
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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.

The Creative's Office

 Don't you adore looking at the office's of creative women?  Seeing, somehow, a helpful narrative.

I travel miles & eras from the view in my office, creating new ideas from all-that-I-am.  Knowing, there are many layers of  'no'  getting to the layer of fabulous.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pic Daisy Garnett's office.
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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.

A Brick Trinity

  I have never liked the bricks on my house.  Red, that orange red.  Truly red bricks must be fired longer, and cost more.

4 sides brick, and backdrop focal point to every garden view.  When is the last time you looked at your home whilst walking the garden?
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Must find the correct 'white' to brush the bricks.
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Aside from 'aging' the bricks, the whitewash adds 'depth' & 'texture'.
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Sold, I adore trinities (and epiphanies): age, depth, texture.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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pic Better Homes & Gardens.
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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.

Bedroom View

Garden design begins inside your home on axis with main views, below.

I assume there is a better view on the opposite wall?  Otherwise, even if this is a B&B I would turn the bed.  It truly looks like advertising photography.
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Have been on the hunt for a diminutive round bedside table.  Must be 2 tier, lovely wood, vintage, French.  Those books, above, make me smile.  There is never a time a stack of books isn't by my bed.
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A girlfriend I never see enough has an incredible French style bed.  And home too.  When we do see each other it is me spending the nite with her and gossiping till sleep takes us.  Next time I'll get pics for you.
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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.

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.
.
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.

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.
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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.
.
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.
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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.
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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.