DO IT YOURSELF & WOMEN

Often I will look deeply into my client's eyes, and say, "YOU do this, don't let the crew do it."

Picking up acorns, pulling branches together after a storm to use in a wattle, planting a pot or a few perennials & etc.

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One client's husband refuses to let her garden in the frontyard. He thinks it looks, "low class."
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How could society create such a man? Gardening is luxury. For women wanting to garden.

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Manly help is hired, above, for things I cannot do.

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Why is gardening potent to gardeners? Oxytocin & endorphins.

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Yesterday I stained a pair of cedar adirondack chairs bought at the Smith/Hawken going-out-of-business sale last fall. Several hours on a sunny, warm winter's day.

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Ha, got my oxytocin & endorphins along with a pair of newly stained adirondacks.

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This is exactly why I tell my women clients, new to gardening, DO IT YOURSELF. Not an admonishment, A GIFT.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Top pic, taken in January while hammering, with a spot of tea, the tile around my old tub. Theories about what was behind the tile wall & under the tub were discarded once I began hammering. Yes, called a man. Bottom pic, taken in December when my frontyard became a gravel terrace.

FORMAL + PSO

Deep winter dormant, I still know what this garden looks like. And why it works.

Formal hardscape: hedges & lines contrasted with chaos of plantings + informal tree trunks.

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Italians have cone shaped shrubs, with scruffy PSO's, behind evergreen hedges. (My favorite!)

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French gardens are quite rigid with evergreen hedging enclosing, oh let's say, tulips.

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Ah, the English. Evergreen hedges exploding with herbaceous borders & flowering shrubs.

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Take this style, evergreen hedge +lines + backfill plantings. Make it your own.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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PSO? Plant Shape Only!! Yes, more pics I took recently at Wing Haven.

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My garden began as mostly English. Now, it's Italian + English.

SMALL CONTENTMENTS

Wallpaper, 24 years old & still adored.The urge, energy & creativity to bring flowers inside, below, was absent for years. Blooms outside these windows every day, all year, no effort. Of course I must tolerate birds, butterflies or honeybees everyday too. Camellias, blooming outside, below. The brown? Dormant hydrangeas. The green? Azaleas. (Tara's Trinity of the Southern Garden: Azaleas, Camellias & Hydrangeas.)

Old wicker from an estate sale around the corner 3 years ago.

The cloche had been in the garden over 5 years, until hellebores were cut last week.

After 20 years, my house was painted. A decorator, Susanne Hudson, hired to help with colors & interior design.

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I'm basking in the joy, serenity & energy my new spaces are giving me.

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Above, When stamens drop, I'm taken out of time. (Lucky me, I think some people need cocaine to feel like this. As the Sea Witch in Little Mermaid says, "...Poor unfortunate souls........")

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What mentors have shared with me the most? Small contentments.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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That fabulous cloche? TJMaxx, $9.99!

PURE ROMANCE

Deepest winter, camellias in bloom, a pierced brick wall, a boxwood sentinal,

perennials peeking through, the dormant vine enticing me to come back.

This bit of garden, last week in Charlotte, NC, displays many desires.

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I want to know how to make cast stone urns, a pierced brick wall, forge an iron gate, paint a watercolor of this scene, write a poem about nature's delight & of course garden here.

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Perhaps this is why my contractor told me, "You are a gay man in a womans body." Ha, most of my girlfriends want to do these things too.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic taken last month at Wing Haven.

GLASS POCKET DOOR

Why would she want a glass pocket door to the garden? The answer is clearly shown, above.
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Elizabeth Clarkson loved to roll her Steinway baby grand on the brick patio & play amongst her beloved birds.
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She left her home as a bird sanctuary open to the public, Wing Haven, in Charlotte, NC. Unintentionally, like Graceland, it stands as a time capsule of an era.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic via Wing Haven.

MISSION STATEMENT: Hank Williams

"Can you make people feel what you feel?" Hank Williams, below, asks,

in a song sung by David Allen Coe, below.

Whether you think so, or not, yourlandscape speaks reams about you.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics via Star Pulse

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Hearing Meryl Streep in , Out Of Africa, "If I know a song of Africa, does Africa know a song of me?" Realizing, via Hank Williams, the depth is in knowing a song of yourself.

SPRING IS EASY

This garden, below, gets it right. How do you know?

The bones (evergreen structure, axis, focal point, hardscape) hold together in deepest winter, above.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Top pic from Wing Haven. Bottom pic I took last week at Wing Haven, Charlotte, NC.

SOURCE

KARL LAGERFELD is a source for landscape design inspiration. (No, dahlings, I don't ask the gods why. I simply accept the gift.)

Cathy Horyn, New York Times fashion writer, equally inspires my landscapes.

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She wrote of Lagerfeld's work, yesterday, "But at its best, it means a wonderful sense of composition with random bits of history."
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Should any landscape aspire to less?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics via Luxist

SASSY ATTRACTION

PUPPET BARBUDA adores sassy. Especially these poodle-puff-on-a-tail topiaries. Though plinths would be nice. Antique cobblestones, dear ones? The evergreen hedge? ODG. Improper pruning & voila a scraggly hideous dreadful ugly ridiculous base.
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Perhaps the pruner wears a polyester white leisure suit, a lightening bolt & TCB symbol on its back? PUPPET BARBUDA hears Elvis...."we're caught in a trap...." Exactly, the hedge is trapping this gorgous home.
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PUPPET BARBUDA would keep the hedge, moving it of course, pruning it properly creating dense evergreen lushness top to bottom.
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It's one thing to prune your own hedge, and screw it up, but PUPPET BARBUDA holds great contempt for anyone paid to prune this badly. It harms the reputation of her BELOVED LANDSCAPE INDUSTRY.
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Of course more but gotta go, PUPPET BARBUDA is busy this morning.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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ODG? Unbidden from the soul. PUPPET BARBUDA loves this house, in fact wants to live in it, yet the hedge, oh dear God.

4 ENFILADES + 4 AXIS

Simple at 1st glance, below, looking at the sundial on axis with the frontdoor.

From the frontdoor, below, looking at the sundial.

From the side of the house, below, looking at the sundial.

From the other side of the house, below, looking at the sundial.

At first glance simple. Haaaaaaaaaaa. Can you use 1 sundial & create 4 enfilades + 4 axis?

Elizabeth Barnhill Clarkson, a childless matriarch, makes it seem easy. Her garden, Wing Haven, is now a public garden in Charlotte, NC.

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I lectured at Wing Haven yesterday morning. Elizabeth Lawrence, another childless matriarch, wrote, A Southern Garden, lived a few houses away from Wing Haven. Wing Haven acquired Elizabeth Lawrence's garden & it's open to the public.

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Katie Mullen is in charge of restoring Elizabeth Lawrence's garden & is blogging, Elizabeth Lawrence Garden, about it.

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Oooooooh yes, dahlings, more about these 2 women, their gardens, their homes......

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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I took the pics yesterday.

THE GARDEN IN WINTER

Design your landscape for winter & it will be pretty all year. Design for May & you're apt to have only May be beautiful. Peonies, foxglove, clematis, roses, hydrangea, verbena are fabulous but they don't pay the rent.

2 weeks ago, above, in my sweet little garden. A sideyard exposed to a cul de sac of neighbors.

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A reality I've chosen to obliterate. A tiny garden rich in garden rooms. Yet it lives big.

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Why? Look closely at the top pic. I own the sky.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

THIS OFFICE CAUGHT MY EYE

Don't you adore something attracting your eyes like this?Once a single car garage, below, this office indeed caught my eyes.

With sooooo many antique chandeliers the flourescent tubes became stage props.

No, the cloche, below, wasn't old, old. But pretty, yes?

Soooooo much stuff, nothing in the wrong spot.

Objects taking your mind thru trips to France,

Italy. More.

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This office is the headquarters of, The Garage.

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Salvaged architectural & landscape artifacts from across the globe.

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Go. Your landscape will thank you.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Top pic from the movie, Marie Antoinette. The rest I took earlier this month.