Garden Gates are Meant to be Read

  Do you know why the gate, below, has its styling?

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 Think chickens.  

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This gate was designed to keep chickens from wandering away.

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Several times I've been hired to open a hedge at the front of a woman's garden.  In each instance a couple of plants were removed, a gate installed, a path added, creating a new entry to the front of the home.  Flow, open, welcome, beauty where there had been a hedge saying, 'Keep Away'.

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Welcome vs. Keep Away

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Most often, when I'm hired, the metaphors in the client's life/garden are dripping significance.  I'll say the obvious and get back, How did you know?

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You know exactly how I know.  Easy to see another's life metaphors.  It's our own dancing behind clouds.

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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

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If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.
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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon.

RUSTY vs PAINTED

Rusted was great until it became invisible. What to do? Paint. Found the 'gates' at Scott Antique Market years ago. They are late Victorian fence sections from Egypt. I put 2 nails into a post & with galvanized wire attached them. They're non-functioning, always open.
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The rusty gates arrived, below, with specks of Robin's Egg Blue.

Gathered a few chips to color match at Lowe's.

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Studying landscapes in France I loved how they painted most accents the same color. Good enough for France, good enough for me.

My newest gate, above, from Rustic Rooster in Loganville, GA. There is no fence only the abelia hedge. Yes, you knew what color I would paint it, posted here.

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Rusty things in a garden are soothing. But I wanted to SEE my things.

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Let's dish gate money. Bought the old gates for $80 ea. and have seen them in antique shops, since, for $400.00 ea. Newest gate was, $125.00, made in Mexico.
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No 'correct' answer to rusty iron vs. painting. Look inside your home. Often I'll see a color in artwork, fabric, wallpaper and use it for painting iron. Sometimes I leave it rusty. It's the house AND garden telling you which to do. Vanishing Threshold.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Letting Your Muse Play

For a week I knew Father's Day would be all mine, alone in the garden.  Anticipation was a drug.  Yesterday morning arrived, poof/voila, away he trotted and beloved time with Muse began.  The only concerns were possible snakes in the storage where I had to hunt/gather, and rain.
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Ahead of pulling the plastic back, below.  Cell phone clipped to hip, thick garden shoes on, I said to myself, You could die doing this.
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Hunting an old fireplace mantle, and a door to use as desk top, instead the first thing I found was a missing iron gate, below.  Tears erupted down my face.  Whoa.  Who knew it would mean so much, finding my missing gate.  Ridiculous yes, boo hoo, those tears, but they were hot and earnest.  Go figure, another learning moment about my relationship with my garden.



Carried the missing gate, below, to its partner that has been safely stowed the entire 2 years living here.



My previous garden, below.  Looking from sideyard, into backyard.



My previous garden, below, looking from backyard to sideyard.



Probably a year away from installing the gates in my new garden.  Their position already planned.  Other layers ahead of the gates.
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Time with Muse yesterday a gift.  Creativity is not linear thinking.  Alone, there were zero questions/admonitions, 'What are you doing in the garden today? ', 'When will you be done?' , 'Why?', 'No, don't do that.' etc.   Muse does not respond to that type of thinking.  Muse takes organically, all given from the heart, and sprinkles pixie dust from other realms.
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A twist on Rossetti's Blessed Damozel.  One lover on earth the other in heaven.  Muse, not bound solely to earth.
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Those days of anticipation about gardening yesterday?  If I had known the depth of joys to arrive, it would have been similar to anticipating Christmas, age 5.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO T
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MRS. POWERS GARDEN GATE

Mrs. Powers garden gate at Mackenzie-Childs has charmed me. No fence? Don't worry, set it into a hedge or hang it.I've always said, CHOOSE A THEME & OVERDOSE ON IT. Mrs. Powers door knocker, below, matching the gate. Ship Men already gave me a charming door knocker from Malta but this is tempting.

MacKenzie-Childs is a kindred spirit. Mrs. Powers door bell.

I have Mrs. Powers Door Bell and am still deciding where to place it. Until then it's in my office where I can see it.

pics above via MacKenzie-Childs

LANDSCAPE CAUGHT MY IMAGINATION

This little garden found on Aesthetes Lament stole my heart. A centuries old style. Do you see only a woman standing in gravel? Ha!

Gravel is cheaper than stone, doesn't require skilled labor and lasts as long as a stone terrace. Creating a planting bed in gravel is simple, place cobblestones as edging and presto---a planting bed.

The bed, below, is lush and has stakes ready for tall blooms and twine ready for, most likely, clematis.

A solid urn is a wise choice atop the brick column. Who wants to water a pot that high? Do you want to climb a ladder and replant a pot up there?

An iron gate contrasts materials, shapes and has a keyhole view to another garden room. Ooooooh mystery, I must go thru that gate. Does your garden have mystery? No disgusting foundation planting ruins the front of this home. Obama should have included, Americans cling to their foundation plantings as a source of security. Lushness is espaliered on the house. Easier to maintain espalier 'whatever' than foundation plantings.

A pair of iron clamming baskets frame the sitting man. (Made that up, don't know what those iron baskets are.) Without plants they will hold the design-decorating together.

I want to smell this garden, hear the gravel crunch, meander thru the gate and ask to use the toilet (the English look at you funny when you ask for the restroom) then I can see inside the house. Assuming I'm on a garden tour of course.

Cecil Beaton's eye, the photographer, is knowing. Movie-set designer, gardener and writer he adored decadent amounts of fresh flowers in his home, cut from his garden.

He wrote, Here was the garden at its best & I lay in bed & saw the Picasso & Hockney engravings framed on my side wall, & the pictures were alliterated with the reflections from outside the window of roses blowing in the breeze, & the green marvel of the garden beyond."
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Photo from National Portrait Gallery

LANDSCAPE DESIGN: MOON GATE

Can you read the landscape design elements supporting this Moon Gate? Canopy trees, understory trees, coarse texture, fine texture, dark green foliage, light green foliage, cone forms, arching forms, horizontal forms, round form, branching forms, coarse stone, fine stone, plaster surfaces, wood plank surfaces, wood shingle surfaces, filled space, empty space. This picture, alone, a landscape design class.

Taken at Atlanta Botanical Garden last week when I taught a class.
The Japanese garden is looking the best I've seen it throughout many years.

A tiny garden, it lives big. Behind the wall, above? Covered seating to enjoy the view of the garden. It's another landscape design class with a pond, stream, bridge, plantings & more.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

EDWARDIAN IDEA TO COPY...SIMPLICITY

I've seen these steps across Europe. If they're good in someone else's landscape they'll be good in yours. Lutyens did them many times. A bit art deco?

Simple, a 5 bar gate. The Edwardian house understated but grand. Choosing simple wasn't due to low funds but good landscape design. Contrasting formal elements with the informal adds drama. A formal gate, easily afforded, would have ruined the effect of venturing into the Wild Wood. A pleasure garden. Their name before tv, internet, phone........

A stone step without mortar. Flagstone pavers and stone risers. They won't move dug into a gentle slope. The stone wall is drystack, no mortar. Contractors easily oversell this situation with mortar.

Garden & Be Well XXOO T

Foyer, Hallway, Doorway

Welcome to the foyer, below. Beyond the terra cotta urn on a plinth is a hall leading to a frontdoor (iron gate). Ah, creation of mystery & privacy.
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MORE, poppets, if you can stand it !!! Gate & terra cotta urn are on axis with the bronze hatted girl in the previous post.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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.
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About 4 years ago a client said she wanted a walled orchard.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Pic, above, here.
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       "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.
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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.
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT
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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.

Details

Multiple meetings with the mason, iron monger & carpenter.

Each with decades of experience.

Attention to details.

Each layer, their own voice.

You see, above, a messy wax myrtle too close to the gate.  By design, it will be pruned into a tunnel of green.  We are awaiting a bit more growth to prune.

Perhaps by year 3 a tunnel of green engulfing both sides of the gate.
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Yes, an idea from childhood, The Secret Garden.  I can still remember my 3rd grade teacher reading it too us after lunch.
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Garden & Be Well,          XO Tara
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Pics at jobsite this month.  Same garden as previous several posts.
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Attention to detail?  Learned quickly studying historic gardens across Europe for 2 decades.
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. Details are not restrictions, they are liberations.

How to Take Charge of Color in Your Garden

A future client sent me a note recently.  Her car needs struts, the garden will have to wait.  No, her garden will not have to wait !
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Garden Design begins in your head.  Much to resolve ahead of choosing the first plant, type of stone, etc.
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Choosing your color trinity, below, for starters.  For centuries, all the great gardens, now including yours, have an exterior color trinity.  Green-Brown-White is the most used color trinity, a never fail color combination.  More, it's never a repeat.  You get to choose your Green-Brown-White, while your soil, humidity, land shapes, predominant trees and more dictate how color is 'seen'. 
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If you're new to gardening this may seem the start of someone mentioning trite rules you must follow.  Headstrong about recreating the wheel?  Head on out, rawhide, snap that whip, you'll be on-the-road-again, over/over, until you come in from the cold.  Been there, done that. 
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Found this fabric, below, recently.  Made me smile.  A client, at first visit, already had chosen, without awareness, this color trinity, Green-Brown-White with subsidiary color, ochre.  Years later, we are still overdosing on her theme.  Plants, stone, house, barns, furniture, fencing, even her custom stationary.
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Another aspect I adore about choosing a color trinity, once done, color is, mostly, a no-brainer. 


Pic, above, here.
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Green and white have been chosen with specificity for my garden, brown remains to be chosen.  Adoring brown transfer ironstone, I must bring several of my favorite pieces into the garden, siting them different places for sun/shade, north/south/east/west, and pull the trigger for my perfect brown.
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One of many Garden Design layers, the color trinity, requiring zero funds.  Be aware, full brain amperage, with extra kicking in, required .  Once chosen, your colors, must be backed with full confidence. 
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Pic, above, here.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Earlier this month our dining room finally painted.  Beloved is a yellow man, several yellows already in various rooms, but he is not a front-end chooser of specific colors.  Gave him 7-8 yellow choices, with chips, for the dining room.  Dining room is large, north facing.
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Walked him through the house, with the chips, holding them to the various existing yellows.
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Of course I had my favorite, but said zip.
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At each room with yellow, he easily axed some of the chips.
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Last room, dining room, and 2 yellow chips remained.
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He easily chose the yellow he liked for our dining room.
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A delicious funnel, shaped exactly like an armadillo trap.  Beloved choosing 'his' yellow.
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Ahead of me choosing color chips for him, I researched Mount Vernon, Monet, and Monticello.  Have been to all three homes, and knew they all had a good yellow, almost matching each others.  Nancy Lancaster was swirling in the mix too.
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Pic, above, here.
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Yes, Beloved chose, Pure Joy by Benjamin Moore.  My first choice.  I would have been happy with any of the chips he chose from.
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Pic, above, here.
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Almost 20 years ago I bought a vintage book with ikebana floral plates, done in color blocks.  Dozens of pages of  plates.  Choosing their frames, a no-brainer,  below.  More synchronicity, our dining room table is a large drop-leaf gate leg, and against a wall another drop-leaf gate leg table, folded down.  I bought them separately at antique shops long ago, realizing once in our dining room, they can be put together for larger gatherings, exactly as Monet did. 
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Pic, above, here.
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A portion of this story was skipped.  Several coats of kilz and primer were needed ahead of painting our dining room, once Pure Joy yellow was a first coat, and Beloved saw it, he freaked.
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Ever seen a feral cat brought inside, and they literally bounce off the walls?
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Have handled that situation. 
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This color 'freak' wasn't my first rodeo.
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In addition to choosing our 'brown', a subsidiary color must be chosen.  It will be one of our yellows.  Great joy in anticipation of choosing.
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT

Landscape Mix

Old gate, below, in a new fence.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Another pic from yesterday's post. This lucky girl sleeps with her carpenter & yardboy. Aside from putting in the old gate in their new fence he also designed/built their deck & more....

Fruit at the Front Gate

At my front gate

my apple orchard with H. 'Tardiva', above, and R. triloba, below.

In person the visible is a working class neighborhood of closely set homes each with green meatball foundation plantings and lawn.
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Amongst this setting my apple orchard & flowers are outrageous.  A negative to neighbors.  And some who love me.
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Go figure.  Gardening is subversive?
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Merely following my heart towards the beauty it desires.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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pics taken last week in my garden.

SEVERAL LANDSCAPE DESIGN TRICKS

Do you think this is an accident? Just Let It Touch. My landscape design trick with focal points. Foliage barely gracing the edges of a focal point.
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Think the azaleas 'accidentally' bloomed on the chair? Hardly. I designed it to happen.
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Pruning to the event.
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Siting the Well-Placed-Chair. It's on axis in the woodland walk from the back gate, and the front gate. It's on axis from inside, Vanishing Threshold: downstairs breakfast room & living room, upstairs library.
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More than a home run, the chair has 5 axis views.
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And you thought it was just a chair in the garden?
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Landscape design skills used:
...........Tara Inventions............

1. Just Let It Touch
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2. Vanishing Threshold
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3. Well-Placed-Chair
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4. The-More-Axis-Focal Points-Have-The-Better-They-Are.
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Traipsing continents for decades seeking what makes a landscape work. Seeing universal patterns across space/time. Copying them. Naming them.
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In college my landscape design classes had none of this stuff. Why not? Perhaps it's what the Founding Fathers discovered. When truths are Self-Evident they need to be written.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Small Space Gardening

Small space gardening has it all. Seasons, evergreens, deciduous, focal points, ceilings, walls, floors, doors, details. Aaah, details. Details are intensified in small spaces.
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Under 150 square feet, below, this little frontyard lives big. In the garden & from inside the house. A backdrop hedge creates walls of the room & blocks views of the street. A gate, door to the room, opens the space and extends the architecture of the house. Urn/plinth are focal point & create an enfilade (view thru to a view) in 2 directions, double axis.

Holding up thru the seasons is imperative in small space gardening. No down time allowed.

Potted herbs during summer are gilding. The house & a pair of boxwoods are another wall in this tiny garden room, above. Gravel is the flooring.

Variegated boxwood, above, echoes, those planted in the ground. Raking the gravel is detailing of the carpet. Adding the interest of an oriental rug.

Cat tucked into a boxwood, above, is a hint of what you'll find inside. The urn/plinth were clues or was it the iron gate painted robin's egg blue? Subsidiary pots are all terra cotta. Repetition creates impact in any size landscape.

No big surprise, the classic ginger jar inside, below, when everything outside is classic. Vanishing Threshold, bring your inside out and your outside in.

How do you want to use your small space? A lovely view, a place to lunch, read or invite girlfriends for wine/canapes?

A season's detail. Chinese snowball blossoms coat furnishings & carpeting in this tiny garden room.

Use height in small spaces to reach for the sky. Vines, espaliered shrubs, understory trees. Pull the eye up. The sky creates limitless space in small gardens.

After the Chinese snowball blooms, above, an espalier oakleaf hydrangea blooms, below. Both are draperies when viewed from inside. Outside they add lushness to the wall of the house, draw the eyes up, harbor birds/butterflies, provide 4 seasons of interest.

Small space gardens, abutting your house, include the views into your house. No backsides of pictures, tv & etc.

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I adore the challenge of creating small gardens. Especially those abutting the house. They harbor our gaze. And they gaze back, with grace.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics from my front yard the past several months.

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Garden Designer's Roundtable: Small Space Gardening, more articles by the experts.


Small Spaces, Big Ideas!
June 22, 2010 by Scott

Today we focus on the challenges and opportunities of gardening in a small space. Small space gardening has its limits, but it doesn’t have to be limiting. Regardless of whether you are creating an intimate space within a larger garden or simply utilizing every available inch on your balcony, there is no reason your small space garden can’t be a well-designed masterpiece.

A small space garden lends itself to personal expression in a way a larger garden simply cannot. It’s easy to let your personality shine through in a small space garden. But the limited space means you are going to have to make some tough choices, every plant or design feature will need to do double duty. Of course the principles of garden design still apply, you just might need to tweak them a bit to make them fit your space.

Below you will find links to the Roundtablers who are participating in this month’s topic. Please feel free to join in with a comment here, on our Facebook Page, or on the individual blogs themselves. Your thoughts and experiences are always encouraged and welcomed and really do help us broaden our knowledge of this not-so-small topic.

Carolyn Gail Choi : Sweet Home and Garden Chicago : Chicao IL

Jenny Petersen: J Petersen Garden Design : Austin TX

Laura Livengood Schaub : Interleafings : San Jose, CA

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK

Shirley Bovshow : Eden Makers : Los Angeles, CA

Susan Morrison : Blue Planet Garden Blog : East Bay, CA

Susan Schlenger : Landscape Design Advice : Hampton, NJ

OWN YOUR SKY

Chinese snowball, Kwansan cherry, cypress + dwarf abelia hedge, below. Ha, now the dwarf abelia hedge is apparent, below. You see my gate.

Glimpses, below, of the Bay Terrace. Shot pea gravel, adirondack chairs, terra cotta pots.

The street view, above, of my tiny sweet garden. Excepting the sky. As designed; I own the sky. Nothing tiny or sweet about that.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken 3 days ago. Wish I could say all of the above is original. Nope. Historical landscape design: ceiling (trees), walls (shrubs), floors (gravel), hedge, gate, axis, pots, furniture, bloom sequencing, scale, flow, color, focal point, textures.

WHICH DIRECTION?

This crabapple, below, doesn't have a bad direction. Here, above/below, in Susanne Hudson's backyard.

Looking thru the gate, below, is a view from the frontyard.

Blossoms, below, each had honeybees. Wish you could hear this tree.

Classic Design Recipe, below. Path, gate, arbor, light, picket fence, color theme, bench, potted boxwood, leaf litter mulch, Tara Turf, focal point on axis. (Note: treat this as any good recipe. It works everytime & is unique everytime.)

Crabapple viewed, below, from the front porch. She fills the horizon.

Notice winter's bare branches? I adore the frisson.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken last Friday. My favorite direction is from the library, early morning. Alas, we were hard at work on our book project.