Footprint: Power of Color

Without the matching column, below, the house ends at the corner.  With the column's matching brick color, the house ends at the column.
.
There should be a technical term, a word, describing this phenomenon.  It doesn't have to be matching materials, merely color.  The power of color.
.
Using color to expand the footprint of the home, the shutters, front door, siding/trim, are all fair game choices.  Each situation dictates a more-correct choice from the trinity of choices.


Pic, above, here.
.
Brick column, above, seems newer than the home, the brick is smoother than brick on the home.
.
Perfect choice for stone step, above, its color melding into the garden, and rough hewn edge adding welcome/warmth verses a saw cut edge, in this situation.
.
Garden & Be Well,    XO T
.
Off topic, below.


Pic, above, here.

Found this, above, a few days ago.  How could I not think of my best ever older boyfriend, by decades, crush.  Studying historic gardens across Scotland for 2 weeks, our group of 23 stayed in small hotels, most had been a hunting lodge, or some other interesting thing a century or 2 ago.   Since it was Scotland I had bought a bottle of Laphroaig.  After touring all day, our group would retire to fluff & puff for dinner, meeting in the parlor before dinner for socializing a bit, before the splintering off to our tables.  First, I must mention my best ever older boyfriend was quite married, and his wife, and her sister, were in our group.  Adored them too, his wife adored me for taking her husband off her hands for a few minutes at breakfast and dinner.  Heading to the parlor before dinner, my roommate & I would be carrying a tea cup.  
.
Sitting on the sofa, in the parlor, talking with friends, I felt a pair of hands on my shoulders from behind, then best ever older boyfriend dipped his head low over me.  He squeezed my shoulders quite tight, whispering into my ear, "Tara you're alright, you're just alright."
.
Best ever older boyfriend had an instinct.  Doubting my tea drinking, he was leaning in to smell my tea cup, and definitely got the mystery solved.  The color of strong tea, it was, of course, Laphroaig, neat.
.
Seeing the quote, above, brought back those halcyon days with best ever older boyfriend.

Classic Garden Design: For Every Price Point

They got the memo, below, siting urns on plinths.  Sitings, below, work equally well at gate keeper's cottage, head gardener's home, mid-century brick ranch burger, a new Spitzmiller & Norris.


Pic, above, here, Stoke Edith House.

Never think elements of garden design are not for your home, counterintuitively, classic Garden Design works at every style & price point.
.
Needed a huge stone plinth with ball finial at a client's project, to match existing.  Huge.  There was no budget for it.  Got it anyway, and with great age.  Built exact replica, to scale, using wire mesh meant for concrete road paving, used a glass ball from a light fixture, planted English ivy.  No one the wiser, OUR stone plinth, not stone.
.
Garden Design rules work everywhere.  It works if you work it.
.
Garden & Be Well,   XO T
.
It is gift & curse knowing what to do in gardens.  Driving thru any neighborhood, my 'eye' fixes everything.  No shutting it off.  Excepting rustic, farm, Nature, the beach, Stone Mountain, wide open prairie.  Already perfect.  The 'eye' is content.

Picture: Garden Design Course

Pulling the gate/columns forward, below, welcomes you from the wide world into their private world, elongates the entry, and adds a foyer to the front door.  Painting the columns same as the house adds them to the footprint of the home, enlarging the home's territory.
.
Painting the columns a different color, or if they were stone, still adds good features, excepting they become part of the garden, not the house.
.
Great wisdom leaving the tops of the columns empty.
.
Front door & light fixtures chosen well, they make the house seem taller.
.
Note the gutters, below.  Copper color, not the brick color.  Well done.
.
Roof, below, is like jewelry for the house.
.
Repetition of square shapes, below, highlights the fabulousity of the tall round urns at the windows.  Super contrast.
.
This garden design has been done for centuries.  Have seen it on several continents, and at all price points.  Done it myself, more than once.  Looks fresh & new with each reincarnation.
.
Even the front door handle was chosen with care.  Drapes vs. blinds, again, well done.



Pic, above, here.
.
Copy, enfilade, axis, cross-axis, color, contrast, repetition, flow, welcome, focal points, ceiling, walls, floor, simplicity, has all the right Garden Design rules checked.
.
I have a weakness for Garden- Design- Course in a single picture.
Garden & Be Well,   XOT

Walled Orchard

With an engineering degree backing my horticulture degree there is always an element of wishing I had been there at construction while studying historic gardens across Europe for decades.
.
About 4 years ago a client said she wanted a walled orchard.
.
Oddly, I knew where it should go, how it should look, how big it should be, how many gates it should have, and what each gate should look like.
.
The Orchard is coming into its own this year, and will be ready for showtime pics next year.  I've taken pics starting with virgin pasture.
.
Sideways learning.  Knowing, with confidence, how to design the orchard.  Century old bricks, each gate custom.  Yes, the expense matches its wonder.  Building a pool or walled orchard, without confidence, I would have to step away.  Too much money on the line, for mistakes.  More, it's building someone's dream, one they will have to live with.  No margin for error.
.



Pic, above, here.
.
       "He started to worry though that he would get stuck in a job doing something he didn't believe in, so he quit and moved to Spain with his wife and he started to write poetry."            .

I come across sentences, above, humbly pausing.  Deciding to pin the safety of life's earnings upon a garden design career, with huge blow back & fear mongering from family.  Even years of pitiful earnings, never swayed my choice.  After 2008's debacle to the economy, and my career trajectory stronger/better, all the previous years mount into decades, it's obvious, best choice ever.
.
Joseph Campbell is right, Follow your bliss.  When you get into the pure groove, all types of unseen hands, the universe itself, partakes in your bliss, along the way you get private acknowledgements that you're indeed in your groove, someone asks you to design/build an old orchard, oddly you know exactly what to do, and already have the experienced talented team to execute.
.
Garden & Be Well,   XOT
.
There was a question about the orchard, one of the corners too close to the gravel lane.  One of my favorite aspects, the lane evolved around the orchard, not the reverse.    Corner & lane built as designed.

Designing the Faux Path

Many times I've used a bit of woodland, buffer between neighbors, as a faux focal point. Occasionally, space allows for this much meandering path, below.  Most of the time, the path is a few steps leading to a faux gate.  In each interpretation the path is 'real'.
.
In the moment, below, Nature's yearly leaf fall.  Took me an ancient amount of time to realize, the trees are fed and enriched by letting go.  And the same is true for us, if we'll let go.  During senescens the color of photosynthesis is lost, and the true leaf colors appear.  Another story written in plain view, by Nature, another metaphor.  Beauty in letting go.  


.
Pic, above, here.
.
Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

The Language of a Garden's Entry: Not What You Think

Are you aware there is a classic repertoire of garden design language?  You know, the one without words.

A witty welcome, below, shouting, 'Come in'.  Restraint, grandeur, provincial, elegant, color, while informing reams of information about the house and its owner/s.



The language of garden design is quite simple, contrasts.  Simplicity with decadence, rustic with formal.



Designing an orchard next to this garden room, above, is obvious or at least it should be.
.
I've known this fact for decades, since 1st studying historic gardens across Europe.  Only later, much later, an embarrassing slug's pace, did the epiphany arrive, Providence never separated agriculture from ornamental horticulture.  They are entwined, they are one.
.
Amusing, and sad, how many elementary school gardens are planted with vegetables & herbs, without their contrasting ornamental garden.  Why sad?  It is the ornamental garden adding up to 80% increases to agricultural yields.  How?  Pollinators.  Worse, the full language of a garden is not passed to the elementary school students, nor their teachers.
.
Another way to look at the top pic and garden design?  Most often, in USA, a stone wall leading to an estate or high-end gated neighborhood is fabulously planted with a cornucopia of ornamental plants & monoculture lawn, everything irrigated, chemicaled, maintained.  Ironically, copying the best high-end apartment complexes.  Often, also, a piece of farm acreage purchased to construct a fine home, builds a couple of stone plinths connected with a gate then a few plantings tossed in.  Their new neighbors wondering, "Did that land sell-out to build a starter home subdivision?"  
.
Oh my, the language of garden entry ways.
.
Garden & Be Well, XO T
.
Pics from NaramataBlend.

Overhearing a Garden Conversation

The BBQ restaurant was closed every time Beloved & I drove by, since June.  Yesterday, the parking lot was overflowing.  Of course we parked.  Stood in line, finally sat down to eat, and it was worth the wait, literally & figuratively.
.
Then, amongst the din I could hear conversation behind me.  Gardeners, of a sort, not mine.  Past middle age, it was obvious they were thrilled knowing a few botanical names, and what a plant tag suggests or the obvious stated at a master gardener lecture.  Excruciating.  Their gardens, good gardens acceptable to every mow-blow-go crew across USA.  Foundation plantings, lawn and the incurves/outcurves a good college teaches about garden design.  Aka, everything sending me to study historic gardens across Europe for 2+ decades.
.
The closest comparison would be describing the Grand Canyon as a 'ditch'.
.
Gardens say so much, below.  This narrative, below, has been written for thousands of years.  Gardens lasting centuries?  This is their trinity, below.  Woodland, meadow, stone focal point.  Another way of saying the same thing, high density next to low density.  Yet another narrative, below, maximum pollinator habitat.



Pic, above, here.

Fruit trees, meadow, below, woodland.  Bucolic, and maximum pollinator habitat increasing fruit yields by 80%.  Tall meadows for fruit trees are correctly named, guilds.  The path scaled for wheelbarrow & gardener.



Pic, above, here.

Vanishing threshold, below, garden & house.  Enjoying both.



Pic, above, here.

Vanishing threshold, below, a proscenium for meals, alone time, or tete-a-tete.

  

Pic, above, here.

 

Gardening many years ago the epiphany arrived, "You choose the plants in your garden, choose the people in your life."  Memo received, people ejected.  Zero regrets.



Remember, when the leaves fall they enrich the tree.



Sometimes I wonder how G*d has time for other people.  Really, another lesson, for me, pinpoint accuracy, no less?


This bothers some people, above, in my life.  Really?



In the South, Bless their heart, covers this one, above.  What covers it in your region?



No matter how hard I tried, it wasn't real, decades passed, finally, I saw.  This one is a lot of fun, with kindred spirits.  Much laughter.



Saying 'no' is often more important than saying 'yes'.






These lessons, above, are writ large for each of us, yet whether we see them or not is on our own shoulders.  Once seen, garden lessons, oh my the laughter, realizing the years of not seeing.





A lifetime exists, daily, in my garden.  Having lived too many years for 'tomorrow' and losing all that was gained, everything, I live each day.  With zero fear about this choice.    



In my city garden, above.  I set the stage for poetry, music, lessons, narratives, etc.  Tell you how to dig a hole & plant a hydrangea macrophylla?  You're smarter than that, the Grand Canyon is not a ditch.
.
More, the path, above, led into my backyard from the sideyard, in a cluster home subdivision, the lot 8500sf.  Yet, my garden gave me acres of joy.
.
Today, my gate, above, waits with its twin on a pallet next to the dairy cattle pasture & lake.  Living, less than a year, on our little farm built ca. 1900.  Outward validation of learning the lessons, above, knowing more are on their way.
.
No worries, I have my garden.
.
And, you should see the stars here at nite.  They are like a blanket lightly dropping down and wrapping your shoulders.  Never considered the stars when buying our farm.  Yet, out they come, a present.  A benediction.
.
Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

What Historical European Landscapes Can Teach Us About Our Own Landscape

Freshman year of college, aged 17 & having skipped my senior year of high school, I found myself in a cavernous classroom, with hundreds of souls listening to our puppet master gushing ad nauseam into the ether about macro/micro economics.  Except, for me, it was worse.  Little puppet master, obviously, held the secret to vast knowledge, yet his vocabulary was pure gibberish entering my brain.  Looking around, everyone else seemed to get-it.  Stress was building, my 1st college coarse, and knew the game was over.  Finally, I asked my closest amphitheater attendee, "What is a margarine, sounding like, 'marrghareen'?"  An hour spent locked on that word, nothing.  Smiling, she said, "Margin."  Decades later, it still amuses to think in terms of macro/micro.  A personal inner life joke.  How nice it would be to sit for an hour this afternoon listening to Little Puppet Master again, explaining the world's current banking & etc.
.
Years after the macro/micro pairing, I locked onto another, sacred/profane.  Most recent pairing to make waves, amusement vs. stewardship.  (If you've ever locked onto a pairing of words.....please leave them in comments, I would really like to know !)      
.
Moving on, into the macro about USA landscaping.  Lawn, foundation plantings, mulch, annuals, maintenance contract, fertilizing, insecticides, fungicides, irrigation, pre-emergents.



Pic, above, Pinterest.

With my starter home I immediately gardened as my father had, mowing, and, chemicals, faithfully, monthly, to kill bugs.  I'm not a rebel.  Within a year, I had stopped the 'method', I was trying to get pregnant.  Thinking to stop chemicals until the babies came.  The babies never came, infertility.  However, within 6 weeks of not using chemicals, to kill insects, I noticed I had fewer insects than when I was spraying to kill them.  Macro to micro.  I never used chemicals again, 3+ decades and counting.



Pic, above, Pinterest.

Within 5 years of zero chemicals, I had zero turf remaining.  Almost 3 decades without grass.  Recently moved to a ca. 1900 American farmhouse, there is no lawn, only meadow or woodland or gravel.  Studying the best historic gardens across Europe, it only took seeing 1 to know there is a template for landscapes, in the macro, trees/shrubs/groundcovers/stone focal point/low meadow cut at 2-3 heights/zero irrigation/no chemicals.
.
It took designing/installing historic European style landscapes, for decades, to learn they are not merely about no lawn/no chemicals etc.  The agenda is much greater, pollinator habitat, and balancing the sacred/profane, into stewardship of Earth, community, self.  Amusing, I had accepted micro as macro for so long.
.
Surprisingly came across a concise micro/macro about American agriculture in an article in The Guardian,  about Edward Luttwak, " Military strategist, classical scholar, cattle rancher – and an adviser to presidents, prime ministers, and the Dalai Lama. Just who is Edward Luttwak? And why do very powerful people pay vast sums for his advice? "
“Most people live such pointless lives,” said Luttwak as we walked toward his gate. “Not desperate lives – they have cable television – but pointless. For politicians, it’s not pointless, but it always ends in disappointment and bitterness. But meaningful? Their lives are not as meaningful as the Mennonites. The Mennonites are free in the Hegelian sense – they are self-consciously free. And they have unintentionally revealed the ongoing fraud of American agriculture. They don’t destroy the land, they don’t drug animals to death – they make vast profits using 18th-century technology. Personally, I cannot live that life, but I want it to flourish. I relate with Ulysses because I demand an interesting life. I demand it.”
Full article, The Machiavelli of Maryland, here.
.


Bunny Williams home, above.  Her garden resonates, it's the historic template, yet more.  Obvious she has demanded that her life be interesting.  Her book, An Affair With a House, is one of the few I tell my clients to purchase.  If you learn best via photos, her book is for you.  It's about interior/exterior, vanishing threshold.
.
Bottom line?  What kind of landscape do you want around your home?  The landscape of your heart, that makes you smile, or one fitting in with the neighborhood?  Choose in the macro.  Then follow the micro templates of your choice.
.
How do you choose in the macro?  Pinterest.  Create a board of pics for landscapes you love.  Don't stop the board until you have at least 100 pics.  There will be a thread amongst the pics, and your landscape will be that thread.  Promise.  Macro, create your Pinterest board, micro, deduce the thread from your Pinterest board.  More than putting in a landscape you'll be creating an interesting life.
.
Garden & Be Well,   XO T

How to Take Charge of Your Landscape

How to create your landscape?  Do you have a vision of it in your head?  You've begun.  First visions are mostly quaintly wrong, with a sweetness of effort, childlike in obvious desire, with no awareness of the complexities, across myriad layers, yet within, your deepest soul knows what is good, and can create a beautiful landscape, once it informs the brain, "unlearn your assumptions."
.
Describing myself, above.
.
What happened?  Went back to college for a horticulture degree, still not learning how to design pretty gardens, instead 'the-machine' taught how to design residential gardens with every layer, lawn-shrubs-annuals-fertilizers-chemicals, saturated in the hype they must be tended by a man in a truck arriving weekly, and you pay him monthly.  Landscape as commodity, Nature removed.
.
Decades later, after studying beautiful historic gardens across Europe, the patterns/templates/math/simplicities of beautiful good gardens, surfaced, and spoke.  With pride, I can say, no garden I design is original they've all been done before, and proven themselves across centuries, and cultures.  More than working with the owners of gardens, long dead, and their garden designers, I know I am working with their muse.  Landscape design is not voodoo or 'feelings' it is a path of science, elevated into art.  Simplicities strung together.
.
Then, a big event, teaching me, after years of delighting within gorgeous landscapes, they are merely sparkly ephemerals, pure amusement.   Beloved gave me 8 heirloom chics, less than a week old, for my birthday, along with a custom built Chinoiserie coop/run.  Once they were large enough they were taken from their garage kennel and put into their coop in my lovely mature garden.  Walking away, that first time, a new awareness made me stop and look at my garden with fresh eyes.  A new concern, the chicks.  I had to keep them alive, healthy, happy.  Stewardship.  Yet it was hardly one sided.  The chicks, aside from eggs, give pleasure in their antics, sounds, even how they walk, yet more.  Somehow, they work in stewardship of me, greater than I for them.  Finally, Nature's circle.  Took me a few decades, but I connected the dots.  G*d almighty first planted a garden.  Men come to build sooner than to garden finely as if gardening were the greater art..... for sure.    
.
Metaphors of the bible are writ large tending livestock.  Who knew?  Rare I'm in the chicken coop and they don't make me laugh.  Hen pecked, pecking order, the cliches roll deeper, but chickens aren't my topic, will stop here with the chics.  Getting back to simplicities.  
.
Gardens are designed in order of garden math.  An equation, Trees + paths/lawn/meadow/hardscape + focal points + shrubs + perennials/herbs/groundcovers = Beautiful easy landscape.  Trees/large shrubs, especially, must be placed to reduce HVAC expenses.  Include blooms/berries/fall color to cover entire year, add mystery & delight.  Gardens are installed in this order too.  Contrast every element, big leaves next to small leaves, rustic/formal, etc.   Create garden rooms, start your garden design from inside, looking into your garden.  Know how to break the rules of the garden design equation.  Don't choose plants you love/adore, choose plants that love/adore the site.  Your home is involved too, paint colors, lighting, views into windows, style of interior/exterior furnishings must flow.  There you have it, every garden design simplicity.
.
The genius involved is trusting the simplicities and ignoring the genius-of-the-lizard-brain.



A client's farm gave the opportunity to site a barn into a similar setting, below.  And, guess what we did?  The view remains the same, no barn in view.  We created mystery, and delight sighting the barn into its own world, ever so close to the pristine pasture.



Via Pentreath-Hall, above.

Can you 'read' the perennial garden below?  Total formulaic, in use for centuries.  Perennials backdropped with large shrubs, and low meadow/lawn in front, contrasting flower shapes spikey/round, and the obligatory focal point urn/sundial/bench.
.
About a decade ago I stopped doing so many perennials, using flowering shrubs instead.  Why?  Deer, drought/flood, dead-heading, dividing, down time.  Perennials seemed gorgeous, but not able to pay their rent.  Want to enjoy your garden, keep it low maintenance?  Shrubs instead of perennials, mostly.




Pic by Clive Nichols, above.

Poems are an intensification of reality, hence, good landscapes are poems.  There was a lovely poem in Women's Voices for Change recently, I know nothing about writing poems or poetry, including this wonderful description, of a poem, below.  Really, iambic pentameter, hexameter, traditional sonnet meters, the poem turns like a sonnet, proportionately correspondent, patterned end rhyme, and more, just really?  How I would love to have a long leisurely lunch in a cafe garden with a real poet. Paper/pen at hand.  Connecting the formation of a poem into its parallel of a garden.  Might as well invite a musician to that lunch, poems & gardens are songs too.  Would want the chef at table in conversation with us good landscapes are a recipe.....you get the idea.

From, Women's Voices for Change, below.

Although this poem is written in modern free verse, my (admittedly sensitive) sonnet-radar detects in it a ghost of that centuries-old form. To begin with, anytime a poem is close to 14 lines (this one is 16), I have to wonder. Although “Kanpur” is not strictly metered, I found myself able to scan the first ten lines as iambic pentameter and the last six as hexameter, both traditional sonnet meters. More compellingly, the poem turns in the same places I’d expect a sonnet to turn. Lines 10 and 11 (proportionately correspondent with the 8^th or 9^th lines where voltas reside in Petrarchan sonnets) express a turn in consciousness, a shocked recognition that events once deemed “trivial” actually have “vast importance.” The poem’s last two lines (analogous to a Shakespearian sonnet’s closing couplet) contain an actual, physical turn in the phrase describing how Leo “turned on us.”  Finally, the poem does make very subtle use of the patterned end-rhyme conventionally seen in sonnets. Lines 1, 6, 11, and 14 terminate in near-rhymes (late/not/night/out), with exactly five lines between the second and third instances and three lines between the third and last instance. The end word “night” gains resonance from another near-rhyme in that line, “late” in “late at night.” A second series of end rhyme occurs in lines 13 and 16, concluding with “know” and “Leo,” respectively. Moreover, as in line 11, line 16 saturates and intensifies its end-rhyme with a proximate internal rhyme: “Leo was the first to go. It began with Leo.” How fascinating—and devastating—that the sound emphasized here at the end of the poem is the archetypal human utterance of shock and grief: “O.”

The poem describes an event that is a turning point in the larger journey, the moment when things begin to fall apart, and this function is supported by its placement almost exactly in the middle (34^th of 63 poems) in the book. As such, it performs a dramatic function in the larger text. Is this function also reflected in the poem’s genre or mode? I see it as predominantly narrative, with the speaker looking back and telling a story about an event in his or her past, but with lyrical (those sound repetitions) and dramatic elements (the foreshadowing and suspense that close the poem). In the end, “Kanpur” defies characterization as lyric, narrative, or dramatic and reminds us that when done well, the blending of poetic genres can produce an amalgam of story, music, and tension as compelling as any work of fiction, and I admire the poem for the way it makes me want to read on, to keep turning the pages of the book, SERIES / INDIA."

Pic, above, by Clive Nichols

Formal meeting rustic, above.  Mystery.  I want to see the house belonging to this gate, and investigate its meadows/woods.  Delight.

"The game is just to copy things, no more."
— Matt Ridley in Mendel's Demon

First rule of landscape design, copy.  I thought this rule, horrible, because my garden designs must be original.  Glad I got over myself and 'original'.  Here's the thing about copying, no 2 sites are the same, hence you get original each time you copy.  

Pic, above, by Clive Nichols.

Create garden rooms, above.  Welcome, come in.  

Have a talk with your future landscape.  Seriously.  Frame the negotiation, below.  Time, money are constraints to each landscape, lose this excuse, everyone has it.  How can you overcome lack of time/money?  Frame the negotiation.  You are the deal maker, and your landscape is making a deal with you in return.  What do you each bring to the table?  Zero difference here between designing a garden or making a business deal.  

From the Harvard Business Review, below.

Control the Negotiation Before It Begins

by Deepak Malhotra

"...the costliest mistakes take place before negotiators even sit down to discuss the substance of the deal. That’s because people fall prey to a seemingly reasonable—but ultimately faulty—assumption about deal making. Negotiators often take it for granted that if they bring a lot of value to the table and have sufficient leverage, they’ll be able to strike a great deal. While those things are certainly important, many other factors influence where each party ends up."

Pic, above, Clive Nichols.

At the start I thought landscapes were about plants.  Partially, landscapes are about plants.  Landscapes are about you living your life.  Focal points, pots, furnishings, above, are part of the landscape.  Beauty is a landscape component, so is comfort.  And entertaining friends, with ease.

**********************************************

I've never had a client who couldn't tell me exactly what they want in their garden. Though they could not tell themselves.  Does this make sense?  All my clients/students understand the language of a beautiful easy landscape, yet cannot speak it.  Why?  Mostly, the lizard brain. They've turned from listening to their heart and listened to the lizard brain mentioning a landscape needing significant upfront expense plus a man in a truck coming each week.  What kind of thinker are you?  Keep the lizard brain in check, let the knowledge of your heart speak and be heard.     

COLLABORATION

What Kind of Thinker Are You?

• Mark Bonchek and 
• Elisa Steele

For example, on the big picture or macro orientation:

• Explorer thinking is about generating creative ideas.
• Planner thinking is about designing effective systems.
• Energizer thinking is about mobilizing people into action.
• Connector thinking is about building and strengthening relationships.

Across the micro or detail orientation:

• Expert thinking is about achieving objectivity and insight.
• Optimizer thinking is about improving productivity and efficiency.
• Producer thinking is about achieving completion and momentum.
• Coach thinking is about cultivating people and potential.

Pic, above, Clive Nichols.

Loving a meadow mowed at different heights, above, has been a chief pleasure.  Decades later I discovered having this type meadow in landscapes increases pollinator habitat, increasing crop/fruit tree yields, healthier livestock.  More, I discovered, having trees, meadows & garden rooms combined, or this could be said as 'high density/low density', are maximum pollinator habitat.  Then chickens arrived, and I learned Nature had been using me in her methodologies all along. The ultimate bit of humor, I have been no greater, or less, than a bee, or possum, going about their lives, part of the bigger picture of Nature.  When Nature is healthy, we are.     

I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls your success.

Thomas Edison

Pic, above, Clive Nichols.

Clive Nichols photography has been used with intent in this post.  Aside from his skills with the camera, he chooses the best gardens to use those skills.  Rusticities of the foreground, above, contrast perfectly with the formal stone folly focal point.  Low meadow encircled with trees/shrubs, maximum pollinator habitat of high density/low density.

.

How to take charge of your landscape?  Copy.  Use the best ideas proven over centuries.  Use plants loving your zone/micro climate not plants you love.  Choose plants deer resistant and needing little water and zero chemicals.  Follow the Landscape Design Equation, above, and install in that order too.  After copying, repetition is a potent tool.  Choose a minimal team of plants, repeat, repeat, repeat.  Include your home in the plan, its paint colors, light fixtures, views into windows, hardware, interior furnishings style & colors.

.

And, if you're planting bulbs or annuals, the rule is this, If you can count the number of flowers you do not have enough.

.

I've taught a 4 week class for decades at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, all of the above, and more, are in those 4 weeks, slide shows included.  Taught horticulture at the local college for years too. 

.

Nothing about taking charge of your landscape is difficult.  Nothing.  It's merely an assimilation of all the right things.

.

Now, with the, above, you have the macro tools needed to take charge of your landscape.  

.

Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

Fencing: Contrast Formal + Rustic

Garden Design uses contrast as a potent tool.  If I could only have 5 arrows in my quiver, contrast is one of the 5.
.
Contrast, everything.
.
Fine country estate?  Rustic fence, below.
.
Why?  More layers of narrative.  More metaphor.  A deeper story.  Intellect playing in grace.



Rustic fences, below, with fine manor houses?  Centuries of examples.



Charming, below, welcoming.  Formal fence, below, instead?  Fine.  But you've just created a 'walk-thru', get where you are going don't stop statement.



Elegant roses, rustic fence, below, is wicked.  I smell the fragrance.



Rustic, yet looks formal, below.



Rustic, reading formal, below, with the black stain.



Formal, reading rustic, below, with hog panel wire.




A little privacy, below, historic lattice.  

I

Beloved & I are building a deck at the back of our American Farmhouse.  We chose the formal reading rustic with hog panels.  We didn't want to block views of  softly rolling hills/open-wooded/lake/sunsets, yet needed a hint of elegance to bind to the house, while honoring the simple livestock barbed wire fence along a property line with dairy cows.  Contrast.  Need 1 panel of the lattice, above, with our railing.
.
All day yesterday we were building the new deck, just the 2 of us.  At our age.  Go us.  Late in the daylight, a ribbon of black birds flew over, the ribbon must have been a mile long, and they were all talking.  Haven't seen/heard anything like it since childhood.  Sunset was a stunner.  Having lived in subdivisions my entire life, without seeing sunrises/sunsets I'm easily distracted by a good sunset.  Hints of the Milky Way too.  More days ahead, working on the deck around the day job.  Soon we must decide roofing for portions of the deck and screened room.  Hard choices, not wanting to block sky views, yet getting protection from summer sun, and mosquitoes.
.
All pics linked from my Fences Pinterest Board.
.
Garden & Be Well,    XO T
.
Made the choice to build ourselves, and save $5,000+.  Beloved already had the know-how & tools.  Huge.

Designing an Enclosed Fruit Orchard

Working in the orchard, below, at a client's last week, edging fruit trees, their guilds, and a few vegetable patches.

.

A young orchard it has finally grown into some maintenance issues.  Client mentioned earlier this year she sees her man mowing in the orchard so fast she's sure he's going to sling himself off the riding mower.  Aside from asking her to youtube it, I was thinking it might be fun to mow the orchard fast too, once.

.

Parked my little work van just outside the gate, below. First time noticing this framed view.

.

She hadn't put in the pasture fence or sheep barn when the orchard was built.

Wrote a note on my drawing board for the Orchard, Listen to the Genius of the Place.  

.

Working at my desk, below, I heard a stadium full of people shouting bad ideas.  Sadly, they were all my own.  

Disgusted with rotten ideas, I said to the orchard, "What would David Hicks do?"  

(Hicks' gate, below, had already inspired the gate, top.)

Pic, above, from here.

Immediately, David Hicks answered, I was out of my chair placing flags/tape. taking his dictation.

.

Hicks said to put flags/tape at the walls first, below.

David Hicks then said to place flags/tape at the fruit trees, below.

.

.

  Spooky, below, just googled pics for David Hicks garden.

Pic, above, from here.  

Another surprise, above, from David Hicks garden.  Flying buttress.  I designed flying buttress into my client's Orchard after seeing them at an antebellum cotton warehouse in Atlanta, now a restaurant.

.

Pic above, from, News From Nowhere, in David Hicks garden.

.

Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

.

My pics taken last week.  Still abiding in our new garden.   Patiently waiting for layers of work to be completed, in proper order, before we can gravel the parking court, drives & lanes, finally shaping the pleasure garden, orchard, potager.  

.

Orchards, historically, were enclosed for several reasons.  They allowed earlier & later harvests, extending growing seasons, and kept predators out.  Including people.

.

Studying Sir Walter Scott's historic garden in England, was amazed to discover his orchard walls were double built.  Boilers placed at the corners distributed steam into the walls, adding length to growing seasons.