SERENDIPITOUS BEAUTY

Serendipitous Beauty is one of my mission statements. Chinese Snowball blossoms snowing petals, below, 2 days ago in the rain on my Bay Terrace.

Going inside, below, a perfection of Serendipitous Beauty.

Tossing off my hat & setting the umbrella down, inside the door, below, more Serendipitous Beauty.

Jack, below, was attracted immediately to my Serendipitous Beauty for different reasons.

No, I'm not making this up as I go along.

Creating a life of Serendipitous Beauty is a choice.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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She invited me to tour her garden. No, I invited myself. I'm quite rude if I think it's important to see a garden. It was hot. Humid. Bringing us (I was rude enough to invite myself & entourage) inside she offered lemonade. Yes. Walking toward the kitchen she set down her straw hat & straw purse on a table without pausing. Beautiful still life. Without effort. The effluvia of her life was beauty. In that moment I knew. Serendipitous Beauty must effulge in my life too.

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Oh dear, now you know I go into a morning rain wearing my gown, and ugly shoes, taking pics of my garden.

Another Chandelier

10pm on a January evening this year, client & friend, SHIPMAN sent an email from Buenos Aires, "Do you want this, $100?" He brought it home in carry-on lugggage. He hung it in my new Butler's Pantry 2 weeks ago adding a dimmer switch too.

SHIPMAN has many fine chandeliers in his garden, home & conservatory. Mine, above, is only about 50-60 years old.

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SHIPMAN's garden has been in my books, on my TV show & on garden tours.

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He's addicted to plants, chandeliers, antiques, art. His work allows him to scour the globe for treasures. And Atlanta. Whenever there is a DEAL on a fabulous huge plant he calls me. He's an extra set of eyes.

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SHIPMAN saw my other chandeliers, bought for the garden, installed instead in my house recently.

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Hmm. Maybe I'll be getting more emails from SHIPMAN. It's time my crape myrtles are hung with chandeliers.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

A DIFFERENT 4 SEASONS

What is it about human nature

and the unique? Average American landscape statuary? TIRESOME.

A story of 4 seasons shared

in coiffeurs of stone.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken last week at Le Jardin Blanc. Statues, cast stone reproductions, are for sale. Didn't ask the price nor know from whence their story arrives. What century? What country? Whose idea? Was she a real person?

Best Lawn: TARA TURF

Moss & lichens are wornas jewelry upon this bench.

TARA TURF is its carpet.

Discovered over a decade ago during a study tour of Scotland TARA TURF is obvious.

TARA TURF: moss, lichens, mondo, clover, bulbs, dandelion, violets, fragrance, dwarf chamomile, scilla, muscari, dwarf daffodils, honeybees, ladybugs, fescue, what the wind blows in, 50%-75% less mowing, formal or informal depending upon mowing pattern & heights, zero fertilizer, zero chemicals, zero irrigation Mother Nature's rain only, unique to each zone & region world wide.

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TARA TURF, luxurient decadence. Earth poetry.

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Poetry of Man? Weekly mowing, insecticides, fungicides, their fumes passing thru your skin, stench, fertilizers, irrigation systems, poisoned ground water, dead mychorizal fungi, dead earthworms, dead lady bugs, dead honeybees, lawn cats/dogs/children must be protected from walking upon once treated, well, dahlings you get the idea.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken last week in CORPORATE WOMAN's garden. Pics of her POTTING COTTAGE soon.

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Sod manufacturers, heads-up. Many people have inquired where to purchase TARA TURF.

CHOOSING A WHITE LANDSCAPE DESIGN

Last Friday I was in Douglasville, GA, below, at Le Jardin Blanc.Completed by a doctor, as his private home, just after the Civil War it's close to town & the railroad tracks.

Friends Susanne Hudson & Jeri Farmer bought & operate this manse as a wedding, events &

tea house. Suzanne designed a white themed landscape. Their budget of nothing but creativity & resourcefulness produced a white garden beautiful & easy to maintain. (NOTE: Jeri & Suzanne are women-of-a certain age with only pennies to put into this landscape yet its fabulousity helps sell their venue. Indeed, their landscape is woven into their business plan. Moral? YOU CAN DO IT TOO.)

Doublefile Viburnum, above.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Other pics of the Doublefile Viburnum include dogwood & #89 granite gravel. Don't you love their white picket fence?

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Suzanne & Jeri also created the annual Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival. It's June 4-6 this year. A garden tour, vendors: plants-fine arts-antiques-jewelry-food-more, a standard flower show, shuttles available. Flower show & Main Street Market are Free, Garden Tours $25/person.

Potent Tool: Repetition

View, below, from a window in the master bath. View, below, from the Garden Room into the lower Woodland Walk.

View, below, from the Music Room into the upper Woodland Walk.

View, below, from the Garden Room onto the Natchez Terrace.

Another view, below, of the Natchez Terrace.

Repetition is a potent landscape design tool. Get you some!

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Azalea 'George Tabor' ensorcells my home, and heart, this spring.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken in my garden last Monday.

A Garden View

This is the view, below,

from the library, below. It's upstairs facing the morning sun.

Decadence, below, as azalea blossoms caress both sides of my body. Alas, they're pruned after blooming; opening the path wider. No matter, by then the hydrangeas will be blooming.

Downstairs, below, kitchen views pour into the Woodland Walk too.

A WATTLE, below, runs the length of the Woodland Walk.

Subtle, above. Would you know a WATTLE was there if I didn't tell you? Not quite 3' high it's prunings & fallen limbs from my garden. A natural fence preventing leaves from blowing into the Woodland Walk once it's blown.

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Other parts of my tiny garden are quite formal. It's of utmost importance I overdose this theme of my Woodland Walk.

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The best landscapes are all about contrasts.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Learned about wattles from mentor, Mary Kistner. They were used on the apple orchard in upstate New York where she grew up in the early 20th century. Have been designing WATTLES into gardens ever since. They don't photograph well & verbally/written they seem repulsive, however, I've never had a client see a WATTLE without getting quite excited about creating their own.

Mission Statement: Oooooooh Wow !

This morning, looking out my bedroom window, below. Over 10 years ago decided I must look out all my windows & Think/See/Feel, "OH WOW."

One of the best LIFE CHOICES I've ever made.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken almost 15 minutes ago out my bedroom window. What's the mission statement for your garden?

STREET VIEW & GARDEN VIEW

Standing in the street, below, a view of my garden. Front view: Italian cypress, Chinese Snowball & Japanese red maple. Standing in the garden, below, looking into the street. Back view: Italian cypress, Chinese snowball & red Japanese maple. (Wicked delight, you can't see the street.)

Double Axis. Same line, 2 views. I noticed all the great gardens of Europe & my mentors had Double Axis. Dahlings, had to GET ME SOME !

The Well Placed Chair, above, under the Chinese snowball. A tantalizing hint of my charming potager. Oh, the tangents you can build from Double Axis.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken 4 days ago in my garden. You got Double Axis? No? Turn off your computer & go get you some ! A great epiphany gleaning Double Axis. My invention, La-ti-da. Not college, not books, not lectures told me HOW to get the gorgeous landscapes I was seeing. So. Many trips to Europe, dissecting gorgeous landscapes, gaining epiphanies. Naming them. Result? A landscape surpassing my fantasies.

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Well Placed Chair? Another epiphany, specific to Sir Walter Scott's garden, another invention. Place a chair for artistic merit/photographic content. Discovery, I use Well Placed Chairs to lunch, take a call, read, set a tool, watch birds alight & scope their world...
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I adore epiphanies. Most occur in gardens, sometimes reading or in the shower. They feel so good. You too?

TOOLS: Paths, Repetition, Axis & Entries

Your landscape cannot have too many entries. Install paths first, THEN your plants. Flagstone path fading into woodchip path, above, amplifies the effect of moving from one garden room to another.

Repetition of plant materials, color, pots, & paths create architecture of landscapes.

Double axis. Path, below, leads from backyard to frontyard.

Above, look close. It's same path as top pic, taken from opposite direction. DOUBLE AXIS.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Notes: pics taken yesterday in my garden. I prefer SCRUFFY landscape styling for my personal garden. Once blooms, above, fade hand pruning begins. Paths become more prominent. Is this important? Why? Landscapes with the average American paid maintenance crew have a neat but depressing, & property lowering, gas blown & electric pruned look.

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The look of cheap unskilled labor. Time is money hence gas/electric landscape style prevails. Sadly, a look considered the proper American standard. Alexis de Tocqueville, circa 1831, was all too correct about Americans.

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Why sad? The look promotes sales not landscaping. Selling lawns needing chemicals & regular mowing, annuals needing replanting 2X/year, 10' plants designed under 3' windows needing major regular pruning, plants/lawns needing an irrigation system, & the promise of a no care landscape for $25/week. What a deal, $25 bucks for a space many times larger than a home's interior with a $75/week maid.

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Why not choose a landscape design: requiring no chemicals, no irrigation system, no annuals, less pruning, 50%-75% less mowing, and shades your home in summer/blocks winter winds (major hvac savings) while improving property value?

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I feel like Alice Waters must have felt decades ago. Like her, I won't quit.

STORIES YOUR EYES CREATE

A beautiful lake view, below? A new home made to look old? An old home finished with rehab? The porch of a newly discovered B&B?

Is the porch completed or just begun?

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What is the story your eye has created for this porch?

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Did you know landscape photography manipulates your "story eyes" to this degree?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken this week at Pecan Orchard's. Do you want the REAL story of this porch or should I let you keep the story YOUR eyes have created?

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.