Tuesday, May 4, 2010

HAY HOUSE, Macon, GA

Last weekend at Hay House, below. I adore tented plant markets. There was a garden tour too.
Hay House, below.

Completed at the beginning of the Civil War Hay House was originally stucco.


Original Minton Co. tiles, below, at a back service area.

For gardeners, in a world of the mundane, these events shine with character, intelligence, something new around the corner.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken last weekend, alas I kept getting separated from my camera. And I missed the garden tours, ugh. After lecturing the laptop beckoned with contractors & clients needing answers.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Greenhouse Contemplation

Greenhouse: old windows, 2"x4"'s, paint, translucent corrugated roofing panels. Not large, perhaps the size of the one, above.
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Should I?
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An eyesore has revealed itself in my garden; new scope for the imagination.
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Yes, a little greenhouse exactly 'there'.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken at Le Jardin Blanc 2 weeks ago. Don't you love the chimney!

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Mystery

Mystery is a landscape design tool. Does a garden keep you walking to see more? Exactly. That is mystery.
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Thru the camellia blossom/hedge a pruned peek-a-boo vista into my patio.
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Hmm, what will you look like walking your garden pondering more mystery? Ha, neighbors will think you're walking slow with that peculiar look on your face again.
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Sometimes I sit in my neighbor's frontyard to simply gaze upon my garden.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Friday, April 30, 2010

COMPOST CONTAINER

In the kitchen, below, circa 1930 pressed glass lemonade pitcher used for kitchen scraps headed to the compost pile. (No dairy/meat dahlings.)
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Rosemary Verey couldn't have been happier than I walking my gravel path to the compost pile once a week carrying this lovely pitcher scored for $10 at Scott Antique Market moons ago.
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Gardem & Be Well, XO Tara
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Soooooooooo Oooooooooooooooover store bought compost containers. Galvanized compost pail rotted thru, plastic pail too big too stinky too ugly, enameled compost pail rotted thru. None of those stupid 'compost' pails delighted. And they weren't cheap.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Stealing the View

View, below, from the Garden Room earlier this year. Same view, below, last week.
My tiny property lives large because I own the sky. How? Canopy & understory trees, walls of evergreens, floors of groundcovers/stone on axis from window views inside my home. Vanishing Threshold.
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And, Dahlings, this is big, I stole the view, above. Those aren't my trees. La-Ti-Da.
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Azalea 'George Tabor' is the pink flower you see. Soon blue mophead hydrangeas will be blooming. Later, rosy pink Sasanqua's will bloom.
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By December I'll have the 4 Seasons view from this window.
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(Tara's Trinity of the Southern Garden: Azalea, Hydrangea, Camellia. Plant my trinity and you won't go a day in the year without blooms. Included are oakleaf-Anna Belle-mophead-PG-Tardiva hydangeas & C. Japonica.)
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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23 years in my home & these are the first pics from this view. Why? Since January interiors have been painted, kitchen & master bath remodeled, furnishings redecorated. Odd, new interiors creating new views of the garden. Susanne Hudson was hired to choose colors. Ha, that flowed into other changes. Love everything she's done. Salient fact, I gave her free reign. Total control. A blessing to get out of my own way and let Susanne create magic.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Hidden on Purpose

Hidden in the trees, below, a gift from COLLEGE BOY.
A sundial I haven't noticed in years. It's placed 'off exhibit' knowing it's easy to have too much STUFF in my garden.
With Chinese Snowball petals falling

my sundial decided to be seen, if only momentarily. Sweet surprise.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken last week. Happy I made the choice to have a landscape wanting to delight & entertain me. You know the EM Forster choices in life. Music, books, walks, a cup of hot tea, pets, garden, friends & etc.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Focal Points in the Landscape

In your garden, below, your home is a big focal point. Your home says who you are, whether you think so or not. Consider: views into windows, paint color, shutters, vines/espalier shrubs on house walls, light fixtures, door hardward, roofing choices. All are focal points.

Peak of season hydrangeas, below, are the focal point. Winter? The table & ginger jar are focal points.

Choosing a color theme for furnishings in the garden is a focal point.

Paths, below, are always a focal point. Here, saturated with gate & peak of season blooms. Can you hear the crunch, below, of gravel?



When you buy a focal point ask yourself, "Is this so wonderful it will be fought over at my estate sale?"


Leave no aspect unconsidered in your landscape. An innocuous corner, above, at a garage with garden jewelry: vine, round downspout, dovecote.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Notes: 1 focal point/area, hence subsidiary focal points tucked into bushes. Balance plants for focal points vs. things for focal points.
Garden Designers Round Table !!!!!!!!!
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Today the incredible landscape designers, below, are each blogging on Focal Points.
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Enjoy.
Carolyn Choi : Sweet Home and Garden Chicago : Chicago, IL »
Debbie Roberts : A Garden of Possibilities : Stamford, CT »
Laura Livengood Schaub : Interleafings : San Jose, CA »
Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK »
Pam Penick : Digging : Austin, TX »
Rebecca Sweet : Gossip In the Garden : Los Altos, CA »
Susan Cohan : Miss Rumphius’ Rules : Chatham, NJ »
Susan Morrison : Blue Planet Garden Blog : East Bay, CA »
Susan Schlenger : Landscape Design Advice : Hampton, NJ »

MANSIONS & MOONLIGHT

View to the cupola, below, at Hay House, below, in Macon, GA.
Hay House will have garden tours, market & lectures this Friday 30th, Sat. 1st & Sun 2nd. Mary Braswell will be there with her stone cottages-pots-troughs, below. 2 are in my garden, Mary lives only houses away.

Lucky me, lecturing in the room, below. Luckier, I have the garden tours & market to peruse. I've adored Macon, GA since I went as a child in the 1960's shopping for clothes with my grandmother. Spending summers in Milledgeville with my grandparents during college I went to Macon many times with the boys I dated. Now, I go to Macon with a girlfriend for the Cherry Blossom Festival.



When rain lands upon a certain ridge in Macon, if it falls on the east side it drains to the Atlantic ocean. Landing on the west side it drains to the Gulf of Mexico.



This spring house, above, supplied many of Macon's mansions with ice & cold water during their heyday.
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Can't wait to see Macon's gardens.
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This is work?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara




Monday, April 26, 2010

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.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

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

Saturday, April 24, 2010

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?

Friday, April 23, 2010

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.