Design: Copy the Templates

Design isn't all magic, it's science too.

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Choose 30 front yards or 30 living rooms.

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Each will have a thread & template.

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Copy the threads & templates.

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I always ask clients for pictures of gardens they like, and must see their interiors.

At Yellow Belle, my satellite office/guest cottage the budget is zero to thrift store, or inherited.

Ironically, I've been forced to Yellow Belle with internet issues at my main office.

Living room template with a table behind the sofa + pair of lamps, has been oddly productive.  Laptop slid in without having to move anything.  Boom, working.

The dozens of pics I've saved for living rooms have a high number of screens amongst them.
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Never considered wanting or buying a screen, but there they are in myriad pics.
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Trusting the process, copying templates, this screen, above, was at my nearest thrift store.
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When I design gardens the humor never fails when a client says, "Oh, I like that .........."  Of course they do, it's in their pics.  I knew to copy their template.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics at Yellow Belle this week.  If you noticed the lamps, then I must tell you dozens were brought to my thrift store.  Ritz-Carlton Atlanta was remodeling and a contractor threw them on the street as garbage at his home.  His neighbor brought them in.  I bought 4.
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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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Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

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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.

Design Style: Arcadian Idyll

Hanging in her hallway, below.  

Her artwork is varied with a strong thread of serenity amongst every piece.
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In her painting I see clearly the design style for a tiny lake with island on their property.
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Arcadian Idyll.
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Thomas Cole's, The Arcadian or Pastoral State, 1834, above.
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A pastoral rustic poem of utopian life.  Harmony with Nature.
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Does her beloved quite understand where she's heading?  No, but he's trusting her thru the process, to results.
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My beloved puts pin to balloon, announcing more than once, 'you can't live in a perfect little garden world'.  Knowing the words have no value to my reality.  Centuries worth of other people too.
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Amazing how visceral, attraction or repulsion, a rustic garden affects people.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Top pic taken at jobsite last week.
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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.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

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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.

Design: Making Clients Cry

After a soiree we discuss how guests have experienced her garden of acreage from arrival/departure.

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How the sexes, ages, income levels interact with the garden.

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Some cross the threshold of the garden, others look say a few words, some say/see nothing. 

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What branch of psychology is this?

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Me?  I must know how people experience my gardens, not just how my clients perceive their garden.

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Stay with me, it's going somewhere. 

Tears.  What makes someone cry in a garden?  Unbidden.  How does a garden guest arrive with their cocoon-of-life yet leave knowing their decades long construct is rendered too little?  In fact, gone.
  

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I've had crying guests in my garden for decades.  At my garden lectures across the country, crying attendees, for decades, too.

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Have been in my friend Susanne Hudson's garden when someone burst into tears.

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Stories follow all the tears.  Words, incoherent, powerful.  And understood.

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So.  At the garden, above, we were talking about her last soiree.  A guest, a man, financially successful, no longer young, in tears.  

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He awakened to how a garden is woven into DNA, and home.  One of the few who could verbalize, during epiphany, 'I will have this.'
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken at jobsite last week.
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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.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

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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.

Vintage: Keeping a 1945 Landscape

  Yellow Belle, ca. 1945, 1 acre wooded/open, potting shed, carriage house.

Garden paths are homemade concrete with risers of miscellaneous concrete block & stone, aluminum awnings ca. 40's too.
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Can't get enough of this view, living/breathing/growing/watershed/pollinator habitat/fragrant history.
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The human condition hunts for unconditional love.  Oddly, at this point in the galaxy, I feel wrapped/bathed/infused with that unconditional love.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken yesterday at Yellow Belle, my satellite office/guest cottage.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Lunch: Spring Potager mix of Greens

Lunch preparations, below, at a jobsite yesterday.

Lettuces, violets, arugula, lemon balm, mint, 4 types of heirloom radishes, chives & vinaigrette.  Sour dough French batard bread with balsamic vinegar for dipping, cheese, finished off with tiny fresh mint infused sugar cookies.
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If I could bottle the fragrance of this fresh cut spring salad every bottle would sell.  More, the salad must be made into a sorbet.  A piquantly oddly fabulously perfect idea.
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Deeper, what did spring salads of centuries ago taste like with soil enriched from livestock not chemicals?  Her soil is 5 years organic, from when she bought her century old farm.

Chinese snowballs passing peak, top & above.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Pics at jobsite yesterday.  We are finalizing the siting of a timber frame barn.
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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.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Words: Use with Caution in Styling

With some people, years ago, I learned not to share joyous news.  They took delight in diminishing my joy.  Another epiphany, not too long after, 'I choose the plants in my garden, choose the people in my life.'  Within seconds eject button pushed on several persons.

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Lightening life's load was instant.  No regrets decades later.  

Words in the garden, be wary of using them.  Words, most often, dominate any mood, any narrative, weather, ephemeral delicate beauties, etc.
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Gardens speak, without words.  It is the human cheapening their language.
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Instead of admonishing with a picture proving my 'words' I've chosen an exception.  Words in a garden providing pleasure.  If my garden needs a sign, 'Spring has Sprung', do not ever, in a lifetime galaxy of black holes, hire me.  My garden decadently overflows spring's bounty.  Front door, above, is not my home/garden, it belongs to a young woman.  Her mom renovated/styled the home, to perfection.  'Words', included !
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Love exceptions, and breaking rules.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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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.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival: Downsizing Conservatory to Chicken Coop Bike

Conservatory, below, I created for the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival with Susanne Hudson.

Susanne called last week about creating another garden together, "No."  Rains every week since mid-December have decimated my schedule.
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I'll be contributing a bicycle doodied-up as something drug from the Chicken Coop and the witch will be riding !  (Silence, well aware when one must doody-up anything, especially past a certain age, the robot is repeating, 'Danger Will Robinson.) 
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The distance from 'no' to the Chicken Coop Witch's Bike was under a minute.  Insanity.
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Anyway, the plan is to put the bike in my Chicken Coop when it's all over.  
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Susanne's garden will be on the tour.  MUST SEE.
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Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival, 7th annual, Friday - Sunday, June 6th - 8th, 2014, in Douglas County, Georgia.
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This year's theme is, The Wizard of Oz.  There will be wheelbarrow gardens, scarecrows, vegetable gardens, tour gardens, vendor booths, judged flower show & more. 
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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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.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Front Door Color: Safe is not on the list of Choices

She loves coral.  Loves.

Of course her home is an orange brick.  White front door lost amongst white windows/eves.

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Perhaps the white front door is not lost, merely, safe.

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We're aiming for a coral with browns, yet pops.

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Rich anticipation.

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Cote de Texas had this pic, above, recently & I wanted to grab the drapes-pillows and take to the orange brick house.  I know her coral is in this room.

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In Hawaii I bought 2 coral necklaces, a blood red brown coral & a lite salmon coral.  You know the reason for both.  A summer coral & a winter coral.

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What we need for her front door is neither.

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Remember, from the garden looking at your home, I must clearly know who you are.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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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.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Alexander von Humboldt: Note to Self ca. 1801

Today, ca. 1940 Atlanta backyard, below.  In the city, you can see a fly-over freeway ramp.

Our lead man Victor, above, and magnolia tree.

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Too many rabbit holes with my work, note to self, Focus.

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Hard to focus when Man & Tree become iconic, if for a moment.

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Alexander von Humboldt, "I was spurred on by an uncertain longing to be transported from a boring daily life to a marvellous world."  

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Exactly, THAT is Nature, a marvellous world.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pic today at a jobsite

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Views In: Conservatory at Dusk

 Looking into my Conservatory at dusk this week, below.  Your home is the backdrop to the garden.  Views in must be seductive.  Inviting.  Every view in must tell me who you are.

Returning from a lecture I gave in Chicago/Moline Wednesday there was a little pile of cards & gifts on the harvest table in the kitchen.

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The best present was working, aka lecturing, on my birthday.  Adore a job on my birthday every year.  Gift to myself, loving what I do.

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Back to the little treasure trove.  Had Beloved gather everything, I grabbed the champagne, and we trotted off to the Conservatory.  Fine way to spend a late afternoon.

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This morning, and the Conservatory pic, I realize pics must be made for every window of my home, from the garden, at dusk.

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Game on.

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Tick Tock

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Deadline, Dec. 2014.

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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

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First time to Chicago/Moline, far too short, grand hospitality, will go back.  

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

How to Copy your Interior into the Landscape

 Tables, mantels, buffets, chests, demilunes, with toppers, aim my Garden Designs.

Scale, proportion, flow, color, texture, and balance.

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What?

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I copy your table top arrangements, in plants.

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Look around you.  There is a thread of continuity with your table toppers throughout your home.

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Laughter is included with my job.  Every time, every & each time, I finish a garden design the client says, "I love that!"  Well, of course.  I copied YOU.

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Which I think is hilarious.

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Then I get a check.

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You must admit this deepens the humor.

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Of course, too,  I use the right plants for entries, foyers, halls, parlours, double axis, focal points, staging of blooms throughout the year, fall color, berries, fragrance, ease of care, shading the house......then I want to exchange some of your windows for French doors, change the paint colors, & etc.

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All while the 'husband' was worried you hired a garden designer and he was going to have to pay for flowers.

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Flowers?  My stealth is far more wicked than 'husbands' comprehend.  Until it's too late, which means they've come on board as full team members.

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That satisfaction is my favorite bit of humor to savor.  

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Husbands call me 'that woman' to their wives, at first.  Within a month, generally, the wife will email or phone and say, "My husband said, 'ask Tara'....."

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At that point the poor dear man is within the clutches of 2 Cheshire cats!  

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And likes it.

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Yes, my job is quite humorous.

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Garden  & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pic found on net, lost provenance.

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Advantages of a Mossy Roof

The first large garden design & installation job I had, 2+ decades ago, was on Wieuca Road in Buckhead.

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A well-divorced woman & her sparkly happy/smart daughter on 2 acres in a 1940's charmer stuffed with antiques decorated to make Bunny Williams jealous.  

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Nearby, over the fence, a turn-of-the-century A-frame, somehow still surviving, with gobs/gobs of lovely moss on its roof.

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I told her how lucky she was to live near that gorgeous mossy roof.  She agreed.

Weeks into the project she told me I was not the first garden designer called.  The 1st one told her the house next door with the mossy roof should be torn down, an eye-sore.
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What she did not tell Mr. Testosterone-on-wheels-mow-blow-go-commodify-all-I-touch is that she owned that house with a mossy roof & her daughter lived in it, its interior like a Nicky Haslam folly.

Life conspired, above, to finally give me a mossy A-frame roof, diminutively.

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A potting shed at my office/guest cottage.  A short walk from my house.  With a concrete floor it must have been the well.

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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

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Pics yesterday.  Miss Wieuca Road met a man at a funeral, married him, moved away.  Her daughter married that man's son.

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Designed another garden on Wieuca Road a few years ago, a new home, and realized it was on the property of the house in my first story.  It had been torn down to build cluster mansions.

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Design Equation: Double Axis

 View from my office window, below.

Standing on the terrace, above, looking up to my office window, below.

Double Axis Equation: 
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View Out + View In = Double Axis
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Pics in my garden.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: home renovation, interior design, exterior design, painting & color choices, hardscape, pools, ponds, lawns, irrigation, patios, decks, 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.