Pots Tutorial : Site & Client Specific

My team is installing a flagstone terrace and garden I designed at this home, below.

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Home is new construction atop historic foundation.

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Clients both work, young children, pets, and shade on the front porch with moments of intense light.

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Urns, chairs, tub already on the porch.  Of course I moved everything.

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The urns, below, had been too close to the door, 'squeezing' the front door 'smaller'.

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This family is too busy to fru-fru over caretaking pots.

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Deborah Silver's urn, below, is perfect for my client's urns, above.  For scale/height I would add a tee-pee of 3 bamboo canes tied with brown twine, with matching dried vines of base wreath threading up the tee-pee.

I moved the wash tub, below, in front of their library window.  Now, a focal point inside/outside.
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With potting soil in the tub, I would set

3 terra cotta pots with ivy topiaries, below, and also,

add whimsy, with a properly scaled animal topiary, below.

 I moved the white chairs, below, in front of their dining room window.
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On each I see a large terra cotta pot filled with ivy topiary.

Especially like these 'basket' ivy topiaries with space in the center left for a plastic pot to be slipped in with a flowering plant- of- the- season.

If we can't find the ivy basket, above, perhaps the ivy topiary at her feet, below.

These flowering terra cotta pots, below, would be pretty on the chairs, but I do worry about the amount of sunlight available to keep them thriving.

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Perhaps pot them anyway, do the ivy too, and swap them as desired.

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Tiny pumpkins, matching those in the black urns, in the tub/terra cotta too.

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Notice echoes of terra cotta, ivy, seasonal across all of the containers?  Repetition.  One of the strongest elements of Garden Design.

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Tara's perfect pots?  So incredibly fabulous they can remain empty. 
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 Reading Deborah Silver recently I had a planting pot epiphany, here.  Perhaps I'm harming my spirit by ALWAYS having my pots empty.  Thank you for that, Deborah.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken at jobsite yesterday, beautiful pot pics from Deborah Silver.
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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.

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NOTE to my gardening friends... look for changes to come. 

Knew before computers/cell phones, sitting in Atlanta traffic on way to a client, 'I must reach a larger audience with the same amount of effort.'   Soon after that epiphany I signed my CBS-TV, and, books contracts on the same day.

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Then I read an article in the NYTimes about something called 'blogging'.  Saved the article for a year before reading it.  Studied all the blogs they mentioned, hired a computer expert they quoted, and attended a blogging seminar.

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Blogging 2.0 has arrived, my knowledge is 1.0.  A believer in copying the best historic gardens across the globe it flows into every arena of life.  Watching Maria Killam grow her career/blog/life over the past 3 years made its impact.  Signed up  for a year's course with her blogging expert, Jon Morrow. 

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Changes will be slow, plodding is my adored method.  Pulling triggers here/there is spice in the mix.
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What do YOU want?

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Nothing is too small, too big, or too ego crushing to mention.

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Passion lies in sharing what has filled me to the depths of grace, joy & atonement, the best landscapes created over the last 2,000+ years.

Just so you know... 
 I  welcome your input.

Blueprints for Harmonious Gardens: Ebook Download

One of my hardcover books, Beautiful by Design, was published as a paperback too, Blueprints for Harmonious Gardens.

Discovered, this morning, Blueprints for Harmonious Gardens, is an ebook download.

Download my ebook, HERE.  

Update: Ebook site proclaimed 'free', service of $3.00 to get to 'free'.  Thank you readers who sent me private notes, indeed, thank you.  

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Hardcover, top, paperback cover, bottom.

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Double axis.   In the top view you have the birdhouse- on- a- post at your back.  In the bottom view you have the statue at your back.

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DOUBLE AXIS is one of my Landscape Design inventions.

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Every focal point must have a beautiful view in its opposite direction.

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Go me.

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Now, get off the computer, and, GO YOU !

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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.

.

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.

.

NOTE to my gardening friends... look for changes to come. 

Knew before computers/cell phones, sitting in Atlanta traffic on way to a client, 'I must reach a larger audience with the same amount of effort.'   Soon after that epiphany I signed my CBS-TV, and, books contracts on the same day.

.

Then I read an article in the NYTimes about something called 'blogging'.  Saved the article for a year before reading it.  Studied all the blogs they mentioned, hired a computer expert they quoted, and attended a blogging seminar.

.

Blogging 2.0 has arrived, my knowledge is 1.0.  A believer in copying the best historic gardens across the globe it flows into every arena of life.  Watching Maria Killam grow her career/blog/life over the past 3 years made its impact.  Signed up  for a year's course with her blogging expert, Jon Morrow. 

.

Changes will be slow, plodding is my adored method.  Pulling triggers here/there is spice in the mix.
.

What do YOU want?

.

Nothing is too small, too big, or too ego crushing to mention.

.

Passion lies in sharing what has filled me to the depths of grace, joy & atonement, the best landscapes created over the last 2,000+ years.

Just so you know... 
 I  welcome your input.

Beautiful Easy Landscapes: Design Course Free in this Pic

Beautiful easy landscape design course, below, in a single picture.

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What is here?

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Scale, flow, invitation, axis, double axis, mystery, color theme, contrasting textures, path, mall, historical theme, lighting, focal points, canopy of sky, understory trees, pots so wonderful they can be planted- or not.

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  The most important landscape design element, aside from easy to maintain? 

 Creation of a beautiful backdrop to life. 

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Prior to age 40 most clients want gobsmacks of stuff in their landscape.  Past 50 most clients want strong editing in their landscape, and, demanding it be beautiful backdrop to their lives.

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This is you demanding your landscape leverage your life, in all layers.

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Favorite question I ask myself about every landscape design, "What can I take out, and it remains a beautiful landscape?"

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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.

.

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.

.

NOTE to my gardening friends... look for changes to come. 

Knew before computers/cell phones, sitting in Atlanta traffic on way to a client, 'I must reach a larger audience with the same amount of effort.'   Soon after that epiphany I signed my CBS-TV, and, books contracts on the same day.

.

Then I read an article in the NYTimes about something called 'blogging'.  Saved the article for a year before reading it.  Studied all the blogs they mentioned, hired a computer expert they quoted, and attended a blogging seminar.

.

Blogging 2.0 has arrived, my knowledge is 1.0.  A believer in copying the best historic gardens across the globe it flows into every arena of life.  Watching Maria Killam grow her career/blog/life over the past 3 years made its impact.  Signed up  for a year's course with her blogging expert, Jon Morrow. 

.

Changes will be slow, plodding is my adored method.  Pulling triggers here/there is spice in the mix.
.

What do YOU want?

.

Nothing is too small, too big, or too ego crushing to mention.

.

Passion lies in sharing what has filled me to the depths of grace, joy & atonement, the best landscapes created over the last 2,000+ years.

Just so you know... 
 I  welcome your input.

#1 Landscape Coaching Tip

The best landscape for children is to deeply landscape for the child within YOU.

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She, below, intuits pandering.  And, discerns delight, grace, joy, easily.

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At a jobsite yesterday, Sunday my bad, the unfinished project has already received its Benediction.

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In the new side garden 2 little girls have already held several wedding processions with rose petals strewn along their hours-old  #89 granite gravel path.

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Their dad did not want the side garden.  Unfortunate man, I had already coached his wife.  

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You understand what is at stake?

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Happiness.

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Tara Dillard's Garden Coaching: If your beloved questions a delightful element you wish to have in your landscape, answer, 'Because it makes me HAPPY."

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In earnest.

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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

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pic via Pinterest.  Will revisit their garden for pics and let you see !

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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.

.

NOTE to my gardening friends... look for changes to come. 

Knew before computers/cell phones, sitting in Atlanta traffic on way to a client, 'I must reach a larger audience with the same amount of effort.'   Soon after that epiphany I signed my CBS-TV, and, books contracts on the same day.

.

Then I read an article in the NYTimes about something called 'blogging'.  Saved the article for a year before reading it.  Studied all the blogs they mentioned, hired a computer expert they quoted, and attended a blogging seminar.

.

Blogging 2.0 has arrived, my knowledge is 1.0.  A believer in copying the best historic gardens across the globe it flows into every arena of life.  Watching Maria Killam grow her career/blog/life over the past 3 years made its impact.  Signed up  for a year's course with her blogging expert, Jon Morrow. 

.

Changes will be slow, plodding is my adored method.  Pulling triggers here/there is spice in the mix.
.

What do YOU want?

.

Nothing is too small, too big, or too ego crushing to mention.

.

Passion lies in sharing what has filled me to the depths of grace, joy & atonement, the best landscapes created over the last 2,000+ years.

Just so you know...
 I  welcome your input.

Southern Matriarch: Good Advice

This view, below, is totally designed.  Preservation of meadow, wild wood, hedgerows.  If poetry has 'tone poems', indeed, 'garden poems' are drawn from a deeper well.  They can be heard, read, and seen.

How does this 'garden poem' reach deeper, grow in meaning?

"When the time is near, prepare the grave.  Do not wait until your pet has died.", her friend advised.  Rich wisdom gained from her mother, the rarest of breeds, a true Southern matriarch.
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He is now blessedly abiding under the oak tree.
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His passing changing this view for all who knew him.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics shot last week.

Problem Slope, and Contractor

Hillside, below, at a client's yesterday.

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Retained with groundcover.

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Retained with great success for decades.

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Her neighbor had the same slope, the builder put in railroad tie walls.  Of course they rotted & collapsed.  Worse, the 'fix' was more retaining walls.  

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No need to be an expert to understand the math, aka expense.

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Aside from which is more beautiful.

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It is not uncommon for a percentage of my clients to go with another contractor, because they trust the 'guy' saying they must build a retaining wall.  The comfort zone of manhandling a situation.

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Across Europe, studying historic beautiful landscapes for decades, eye/brain, aka beautiful/functional, noticed 'details'.  Especially in Italy.  No place better to learn about beautiful easy landscapes, surviving thousands of years.  I trust historic beautiful landscapes, and copy them.

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After my longtime contractor died, and before my current dream contractor of several years, I had the guy-in-a-truck.  Good, but fearful of what he did not know, and crunching/squeezing numbers with every 'sale'.  

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He refused to drystack stones into a slope I had designed.  Told client, and me, it could not be done.

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Really?

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Found the pic I had taken in an Italian olive orchard, over a thousand years old, and emailed guy-in-a-truck.  With a note, 'do the drystack wall or I'll never use you again.'

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Because he had been an honest contractor at several jobsites, I continued to use him after this project, beautifully executed, as drawn.

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My bad.  He defaulted on money he owed his partner, and me.  Two clients, who did not know each other, called me on the same day, saying he was a misogynist, and they had paid him all his money and never wanted him back on their property.  

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Only tell you this little story as a heads-up if you are in the industry, and if you are hiring someone to help you in your landscape.  

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Hope the back story is as helpful as the landscape design picture.

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Let me know.  Oddly, I'm hesitant including it.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pic shot yesterday in client garden.

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.

Beautiful Easy Landscape: Green, Brown, White

At her kitchen porch, below.  Her color theme is the beautiful landscape classic: green, brown, white.
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With 300+ acres everything must be simple.  No care.  More than pretty & easy, her landscape must leverage her life.  What does that mean?
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Your beautiful landscape must work for you.
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A large local nursery advertises it's- fun- to- play- in- the- dirt.  Really?  That is a landscape?
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Beautiful landscapes, in my realm, work for me.  How?  Increase property value, decrease HVAC, attractive to pollinators/guests/me, little time 'playing in the dirt'.  Instead, hours are spent in my garden reading or having meals in the Conservatory, cutting flowers to bring inside, having lunch in the potager on a sunny winter's day, awakening to the scent of tea olive, playing with my pets, or enjoying the harvest table on the patio as I've spread out materials and laptop to create a power point, and etc.
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Play in the dirt?  Sure, a part of my realm to enjoy, but merely a sliver of what beautiful landscapes provide.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic shot at a client's home yesterday.  Would love a flower show display of 12 landscapes all with the green-brown-white theme set on a small terrace with 2 chairs + table.  Same story, new each time.

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.

Chris Evert + Ralph Lauren: Copy the best in your Landscape

Before & during teen years, I copied everything Chris Evert.  This dress, below, hangs in my guest closet. today.  Amazingly, its metaphor, now, 180 to the winning reasons for saving it.  

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Copy.

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It's that simple.

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 Graduating college with engineering & horticulture I could not design a beautiful landscape to save my soul.  Off to Europe, 2+ decades, studying the best historic beautiful landscapes the world has experienced.  

 # 1 Beautiful Landscape design idea, COPY.  Copy the best landscapes.  You will not recreate the wheel.  Better, it's already created for you.  Trust this concept.
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Why did I forget copying Chris Evert?  Never a talented tennis player I retired a 2 time district 4-A singles champion amongst other titles won.  Seriously, I was not a gifted tennis player.

Habitually Chic posted Ralph Lauren's new coffee shop recently, and it had me laughing at all he COPIED so well.
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Fern in a terra cotta pot, above, is the same concept I add to client's homes.  Bring life to a room with something ALIVE.  Look at all the best interior decorators of the past century.  Plants brought inside, as if, just from the conservatory.  COPY.
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Don't just copy, Copy the Best.
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Green-Brown-White is the best and most used beautiful landscape design color trinity of the past few centuries.  Which green is for you?  Personally, I'm using Ralph's coffee shop green.

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Harvest table with a pair of urns?  This pic had me laughing AND dialing Susanne Hudson, the interior decorator on my team.  She taught me this idea decades ago, and have copied the concept since.

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Huge secret about copying the best ideas and talents.  

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When you copy the best, for yourself, it will be unique to YOU.

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Be brave, 'copy', is guaranteed to work for you.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Notice Chris Evert's lace panties & ribbon in her hair?  Totally what I did too.

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Ralph Lauren's pics by Habitually Chic.

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.