About beauty? The environment?
Place on a pedestal of found bricks or stones to the appropriate height. Place on axis with window views of your home or each side of a path's entry.
Dead & dying trees attract insects & fungi which attract song birds. Earth's eco system, a portion.
Then, as only real life can be, she said it was her Mom I was wanting to meet. Yes? Her Mom, Kathy Brooks, landscape designer, had emailed me ahead of the lecture asking me to mention vegetable gardens. Small world?
From head to toe Catherine Brooks is an artist. And her work? Gorgeous.
Above, last week in Richmond, VA's Museum of History. Understanding Morichetti's words. Living a gardening life is my normalcy. What lifts you?
They know meetings are about expert speakers not the minutia of topics best left to a board meeting. AND FOOD.
Food. I can never resist the real action. In the kitchen. Their talk & activities are a book. How they use language, their accents, topics, laughter, hushed tones, gossip. 
Over 20 years of Garden Club Food have spoiled me into expecting silver & china. At all neighborhood price points. 
And homemade cheese straws, below, are often on the menu. 
Nuts in a crystal bowl with a silver spoon. Overkill? Perhaps, but I do enjoy the love behind it.
And their decorating. Colors, art, comfort & attention to detail. The unspoken saying so much.
Below, the tables always set up to check you in, sell a raffle ticket or other type of fund raiser.
Tuckahoe Woman's Club had something extra, the pianist. 
And their sweet marketing, below. 
Tuckahoe Woman's Club has their own garden, below. Proving they're Cool Chicks, empty pots.
Pink dogwood, below, beginning to unfurl.
Visiting a private garden after the lecture, below, Mrs. Estes loves the classics
and is a serious plantswoman, the fragrant yellow magnolia, below.
The template of speaker, food, meeting kindred spirits, matchmaking, appreciating interior decorating and table settings, and touring a garden have been part of women's garden groups for decades. Seeing & understanding how communities are bound into civilization vs. chaos. 
What had been a solid hedge, below, became a hedge with a permanently open gate. Robbins egg blue! Stone steps were added to the gate and front door. 
Inside I made-over the mudroom. Adding antique drawers, and shelving with glass doors. Moving sets of china from the attic to the mudroom and onto the antique shelves. Organizing all of my wrapping materials into one of the large antique drawers. Putting paper plates, napkins, and plastic utensils into another. Pet supplies fill the last drawer.
Repetition is a huge landscape design tool.
Love this gravel. Elegantly tiny and a receding brownish color. Too often gravel is too large. Large gravel looks commercial. Think parking lot. And gravel too bright, think whitish, overwhelms most landscapes becoming an unintentional focal point.
Why is the focal point, above, placed exactly so? Why is the focal point of a subtle color? Why is there so much 'empty' dirt? This is a transition zone from the wild wood to the formality of the home, to the right of the gravel drive. Curious?
Each stone must be placed in relationship to the landscape. Each stone will tell you how it wants to be sited. Which is its top, side, bottom. Do stones talk to you?
As the tree grows its roots take life from the land returning beauty. Simple grace, form, function, and powerful.
Driving with this man thru his land as he shares its stories is to share in a benediction. Not once saying 'my' land, always 'the' land. Honoring his good fortune in being its servant. 
Wicked & knowing, HE made sure my trip home was perfumed with a portion of his delight in his landscape.
Little did HE know their beauty & fragrance would inaugurate a new teapot. A birthday gift from my Mom.
Subsidiary focal point example? A cast-stone cat in the trunk of a holly tree. 
Lawn, plants, stones, mulch, focal points, above, are hours old. HIPPIE CHICK wanted a landscape from the 1910's-1920's-1930's-1940's-1950's. 
Knowing to use rocks as jewelry, urr, low columns. HIPPIE CHICK loves rocks. 
Clothesline is new, custom made, based on memories. Rust color by choice. Tucked behind the new cottage.
Using what HIPPIE CHICK had on site. Her bench placed with the Tara Rule for focal points, Just Let It Touch. 
Knowing only I wanted finials on the arbor the search began. Found the pair of cast aluminum rabbits at Lowe's. Painted Robbin's egg blue they match all the other metal in my landscape.
