A LANDSCAPE TO MAKE HER CRY

"The Renaissance had a word for it: sprezzatura, the quality of apparent ease that the perfect courtier brought to all his high-wire acts: swordplay, flute-playing, poetry-writing, singing, love-making." Willard Spiegelman

SHE called me to design her landscape. Her sprezzatura lost momentarily with a previous designer.
At the frontdoor natural light and her books. SHE, "When the Barefoot Contessa sashays into her garden I swoon."

SHE called me to fix what others created.

SHE & my contractors, don't you love the body language? In her hand is my plan, fixing those walls.

String & flags to make the plan come alive. Below, SHE has a potager to sashay into.

Yellow string, above, being measured for the stone to create raised beds for her potager. Paths of small gray granite gravel to match her bluestone terrace.

SHE had boots ready to walk in the mud. SHE recently rescued Sam, below. Can you tell he already has her heart?

Talk went to wine & scotch.

SHE was dubious about the Giardino Segretto garden room. Until I said, It's where you'll drink scotch & wine with your girlfriends. Sold!

Colors, furnishings, books, lighting. SHE chose them all.

One of my landscape design secrets is to see which cookbooks are in the house. Why? They are a window into the soul. How you eat is how you live, and how you garden.

Interesting. SHE has 2 glass/metal tables. I copied the idea for enclosing a portion of her bluestone terrace. Using a mid-century modern greenhouse glass roof & folding door idea used at Callaway Gardens, Sibley Center.

An entire closet is devoted to dishes.

When I made the 2nd appointment, to draw en plein aire, I requested lunch.

Another landscape design secret, talking life. Knowing there will be a defining thought.

SHE went back to the Barefoot Contessa. "Every recipe of hers is foolproof. No matter how I forget to do something, don't quite beat the egg whites correctly, anything. Nothing I've cooked of hers, through the years, has failed."

Can there possibly be a better description for the type of landscape SHE wants? SHE's not afraid of wit. SHE's never cute.

Beautiful, foolproof, light & shadows, traditional spiced with mid-century modern, flavored with the Barefoot Contessa & the great works of literature. That was the landscape I had to design.

LANDSCAPES BEGIN IN THE IMAGINATION

A plain chair with a pop of fringe tells me more about designing her landscape.

SHE's not afraid of sunlight on her floor & furnishings. Telling me SHE's sensual.

And another landscape design secret, the guest bathroom.

SHE has drama with color, textiles, art from her travels and junking. A directive for any landscape.

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SHE's ready for her landscape to be DONE. Troubles with her 1st designer weigh heavily in time & money.

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Wish I could have an 18-wheeler show up today with everything in my plan. I know I've created a landscape to make her cry.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

YOU OWN THE SKY

LOOK UP & LANDSCAPE THE SKY. Questioning my sweet little garden a few hot, polluted summers ago,

WHY DOES THIS TINY LANDSCAPE CREATE THE FEELING OF INFINITE SPACE?

How can a landscape be tiny when it has the sky?

Technically you're looking at ceiling, canopy, understory, walls, floor....my garden room.

My garden life. I'm stealing-the-view. Some of the trees aren't on my property.

No matter the season.

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See the little birdhouse in the top pic? Cone shaped at the top it directs the eye upward too.

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It's an iron birdhouse from TJMAXX, on sale, near New Orleans, when I lectured at one of their parish libraries. After Katrina. Every chair filled. You should have seen their eyes. This audience that had lost so much. Their eyes full of excitement about doing something happy.

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Their landscapes were 'dragged off'. What does that mean? I didn't know either.

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After Katrina, equipment came into yards to remove fallen trees. As the trees were 'dragged off' they pulled away every bush, groundcover, perennial. Landscapes devastated by the storm were completely decimated by the clean-up.

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So many stories the news never covers.

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Anyway. Landscape your sky. It's been a tiny part of creating a nurturing life for me.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

THE QUEEN'S POT

Do you think this is an empty pot? At Glamis Castle, Scotland I wandered away from the group in the garden. A meadow & copse beckoned. Honestly, I thought it was off limits. Raising the siren call.
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Of course I went. Stopping first and investigating an area labeled, DO NOT ENTER. More about that happy adventure another day. On to the copse.
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In the frisson of meadow & copse, a pot. Tall, on a plinth. Big, you could bathe in it. Old, mortals could never afford it. Royalty? Obviously. And, GLORIOUSLY EMPTY.
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The pot was permission, YES, COME INTO MY LOVELY WOOD. I discovered an arboretum with every tree labeled and mature. I was walking in the pages of a picture book.
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No one from my group ventured into the copse. Those elegant trees were mine alone. One of the happiest moments of my life. This is when/where I invented, THE QUEEN'S POT.
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Tara's landscape design rule: your pots must be so incredible they can remain empty.
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Yesterday's snow & my Queen's Pot out the bay window.
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You can't bathe in her but she's bruised some men !
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

THE WELL-PLACED CHAIR IN SNOW

In the walled garden at Abbotsford, Sir Walter Scott's home, sat a well-placed chair. Its mission, aesthetic.
Place a chair in your landscape for aesthetics. Yes, a Tara landscape design rule.
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You'll find yourself there on a Saturday morning eating breakfast.
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When the 1st warm afternoon arrives you'll sit & have lunch.
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From a window you'll see a cardinal land on the arm and know, you're living a beautiful life.
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Imagine the picture,above, without the chair. A mush of snowy branches.

Yesterday, what it took to shoot a Southern Snow Storm.
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Garden & Be Well, XO T

ARE SHADOWS DESIGNED INTO YOUR LANDSCAPE?

BETTER THAN WALLPAPER. Like my shadows? Of course you do. I designed them.
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The epiphany of designing shadows was instant wicked potent delight.
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PLAYING WITH SUNBEAMS.
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Shadows to fall, fold, envelope, embrace & caress a landscape and you.
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Sensuous shadows alighting on interior walls of your home. Pitching art where there was none before.
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Hmm. I've never seen a landscape design lecture about creating shadows. Perhaps I should include it in my list of titles?
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Chair is in my summerhouse.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

WHAT INSPIRES & WHAT BORES

Vanishing threshold landscapes inspire me.
House, garden & life in perfect accord.
.......... INSPIRATION. Botanical garden glass houses BORE me when I'm in them. But their pictures resonate, later.

You can pick up a few ideas. Pots on a roof, above.

A dramatic display template to copy, above.

I wanted to go down the stairwell to see the heating system. No Entry...said the silly sign.

The path, above, shouting, Walk Thru & Go Away.

.................The inspirational picture, top, shouting, Stay--Enjoy Life.

Everyone 'WALKING THRU'. No invitation to STAY. Darling, this is BORING.

Enjoying the mechanics of drainage more than the expensively glassed conservatory landscape.

Ok, I was seduced by some curves!

Nice, above, but it's landscape design boredom.

Mechanical jewelry, above. A crank to open the glass roof. Who was the man placing beauty into its function?

In the States it's rare to see a beautifully pruned hedge, above.

Curves, above, are sumptuous simplicity.

Opposite side of sumptuous simplicity, above, amusement park chic.

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Have you noticed homes with AMUSEMENT PARK CHIC LANDSCAPES aren't really homes with a gardener?

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Have you noticed homes with SUMPTUOUS SIMPLICITY LANDSCAPES are the home of an exquisite gardener?

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Oh my, how quickly I traveled from What Inspires & What Bores, to, The Sacred & The Profane.

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Often, I have to 'SELL' clients less than they ask for.

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Steering away from elements of AMUSEMENT PARK CHIC. Knowing we all go thru the landscape design archetypes..............

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Yes, I'll write more of these things later.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Top pic via Euro Antique Market, remaining pics I took at Kew last month

VANISHING THRESHOLD: POTS ON ROOFS

Does it get any better than pots on roofs? What fabulously crazed person thought it up?
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Life is better living in a home with roof top pots-urns-finials, did you know?
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Enfilade = View from inside conservatory to outside architecture to landscape beyond.
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Pic from Kew taken last month during my lecture tour.
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Garden & Be Well, XO T

LATE VICTORIAN COLOR

Walking in London last month I saw this. Late Victorian tiles. Who knew? COLOR! PERMISSION! From curb to center of your house, vanishing threshold. Color, style, theme, intelligence, wit.
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Weedy looking 'weed' edging the path is Forget-Me-Not. Pure SOPHISTICATION.
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Can you imagine the blue blossoms spilling along the edge of the path? Calendar Shot.....
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This morning, watching the dawn thru my baywindow, I glanced up from reading the NYTimes. 'Oh my gosh, the sky is the same color as those pathway tiles in London.'
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A color splash lasting moments but still transmitting serotonins-dopamine-crack thru neural pathways.
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Does color affect you this way?

A WINTER LANDSCAPE--A LITTLE HOWARD'S END

Enter as I did. A gap in the hedge. No hint of what lies beyond. Curious? Standing in the gap, seeing a charming garden. A small Howard's End.

Echoes of the frontdoor................

.......in the back wall of the summer house.

More evergreen hedges, below, leading where? Mystery. A potager? Clothesline? Chaise lounge for sunning nude?

Flagstone terrace, not lawn, at the house. Extending the house.

This house doesn't have a back. Each side is delightful.

Lead horse trough now a rain butt.

All the sticks & browns soon to become blossoms, calendar shots.

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Winter's bleak chic more important than the ease of spring/summer blowzy caresses.

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I didn't want to leave this Howard's End-a new clip- world-life-feeling-energy-joy.

This dirt path is landscape design brilliance. A feeling of the country in the city & cementing the idea of being in another garden room. Leaving the garden through another gap in the hedge. Tara's Golden Circle: the ability to enter/leave a garden room through 2 or more doorways. A little design trick I observed in the best of old landscapes.

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This landscape is a several hour design class but you're busy. Thanks for taking the time to walk in the garden with me.

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I shot these pics last month at the Birmingham England Botanic Garden.

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Garden & Be Well, XO T