Houseplants 101

Why I don't, below, have houseplants. Except, 2 years ago 2 Christmas cactus 'spoke'. My 1st nursery job (required: red shirt/kaki pants) was director of houseplants. When my 1st order arrived, a full 18-wheeler, you know who unloaded, into overtime, the whole truck. (Poppets this was before the days of immigrant labor. A college degree punching a time-clock & unloading trucks. Should we discuss my parent's horror? To this day, they abhor my career choice.)

It wasn't long before I was an expert on houseplants. Great JOY when Amy Leigh of

GROWING PLANTS INDOORS was discovered. This girl's ON FIRE !!

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If you are growing plants indoors then go to Amy Leigh for inspiration or help.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Happy to have the Christmas cactus but I've yet to wear a red shirt or sweater again. And I loved the job. Don't miss the 2 1/2 years of going to bed at 8:30pm everynite, bone tired; in my 20's.

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Top pic: Henry, newest member of my family, he arrived early last month. Found in Susanne Hudson's garden in Douglasville. Perfect provenance !!

Increase Your Welcome

See, below, the front door? I didn't think so. 'Landscape Design Trick: Increase Your Welcome' should be in your quiver of tools. Boulder steps, above, seen from the parking court. A few days ago there were no boulder steps.

Same steps, above, seen from the home.

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If you can extend the welcome of your front door, into the garden. DO IT.

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Increasing your welcome, & function, creates enfilades too.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics from the woodland hilltop of Rooster Cogburn, Katharine Hepburn & Handy Man. I created a landscape design for them early last month. Landscape Design Trick: Increase Your Welcome, ha, should be a new lecture title. It's a trick I use a lot.

Tara Turf & A Big Mouth

Tara Turf, below. Meadow of whatever the wind blows in & bulbs-clover-herbs-whatever you want, mown at different heights. (Discovered during my first garden study tour in Europe almost 2 decades ago.) Sunday, a client's soiree. She invited dozens. Meeting a delightful man & describing to him Tara Turf. Further,

telling him 'some locals' did not want her to have Tara Turf, aka meadow. Too many problems with tall meadows 'they' said. Full sail, go Tara Go, describing Tara Turf's fabulousity.

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Tara Talk personified, fully Tara'izing.

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Dahlings, you KNOW what's coming.

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That man? Quietly said, "I cut these fields for decades."

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Hmm. THE local. Hmm. Exit quickly. Silly girl, into another social pickle. Find Rabbit Hole in the meadow quickly....

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken last Sunday at Hedgerow Farm. I adore Tara Turf: pollinator garden, no irrigation, no chemicals, fragrant, little mowing, gorgeous, fabulous. Tara Turf has worked for centuries throughout the globe. I adore history.

Are Your Window Views Paintings on the Wall?

In the original part of her century-plus home, below, Hedgerow Farm is taking her time with interior decorating. With the garden, she is on speed dial.

Incomplete, the music room is not lacking pastoral views.

Pecan trees, above, with tall meadow. Hedging at the far side of the house, above, encloses a potager. Both, viewed from a pair of windows in the music room.

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Do you think these timeless views were here? NOT.

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Design techniques used to design views from the Music Room: Hedges, potager, tall meadow, short meadow, copy-scale-axis-historical-enfilade-line-color-form-texture-simplicity-repetition-contrasts-Vanishing Threshold-deer/bug/drought proof plants-pollinator attracting plants-unskilled labor for maintenance.

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And you thought it was a trinity of: pecan trees, meadow, hedge?

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Adding simplicity is an art.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Oooooooooooh, Poppets, learning to let go of my ego for simplicity took time. Knowing the landscape at Hedgerow Farm must look as if I was never there. More, as if time stood still; from a century ago. Yet, creating a vital, serene, exciting, kinetic, everchanging landscape to delight the eye and grace the soul.

Katharine Hepburn & Rooster Cogburn

Earlier this month my car landed at the wooded hilltop home of Katharine Hepburn & Rooster Cogburn. You know who hired me. Upon seeing the plan Rooster grumped, saddled in the chair above, "Why should I do any of this?" Kate let me hang in the humid lifeless air, alone. Raised by the Great Santini, darlin' Rooster didn't ruffle my feathers.

Rooster crowed again, "I don't care what anyone thinks...." Poppets, you know, Rooster became the red cape........ My passions inflamed, "Your home is beautiful, sublime interior architecture, antiques from across the globe, rugs, art to delight, books & more. Your exterior isn't you darlin' Rooster, it's good but not fabulous like your interior. I want you to be who you are inside, & outside, Vanishing Threshold."

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Enter scene, Handy Man, he arrives weekly at the wooded hilltop. Who knew I would desire Rooster running my own contracting services division?

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Top pic, look into the house at right. A checkerboard floor covers Kate's office. Obviously, I designed a checkerboard floor flowing into the garden.

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Incomplete, bottom pic, it's shaping up nicely. Pot & St. Francis were already on hand & aren't the permanent focal points here.

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Rooster & Handy Man have done much more throughout the wooded hilltop. Yes, I'm-a-likin' this Rooster.
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Kate's been styling the entry, decks, terraces & more. What a Dame! Making it work, married, a very loooooooong time, to Rooster Cogburn.

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Who knew Rooster Cogburn was such a good gardener?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Overdose Your Theme

Contemporary home? Contemporary rails.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Atlanta numbers few contemporary style homes, yet can claim to be the capital of contemporary homes with colonial rails. PUPPET BARBUDA wonders, is that disgusting, embarrassing, or both?

Surprises Tucked In

Adirondack chairs as focal points. Easy. Unless, perhaps, you've put too much junk in your garden?

Oakleaf Hydrangea blossom stealing the spotlight.

Tucked in, above, I adore old watering cans.

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A little surprise, tucked in, seen when you sit in my adirondack chair. Placement matters, poppets. Sometimes 2" matters.

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Don't create the gravest of garden cliches; all your baubles fighting to be seen AT ONCE. Ugh.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic taken this month in my garden. Again, you realize I do not like styled pics? When a design is good no need to style your pictures. Bottom pic: shot pea gravel, gray Cherokee flagstone edging & oakleaf hydrangea spilling over. Aaaaaah, love it. Calms me. Ha, whatever works, right?

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cliche: trite, hackneyed, desperate...............

Vanishing Threshold

Landscape Design takes advantage of everything you have, inside & outside. Repetition of form

is a subtle, potent, tool.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken a couple of weeks ago. Dahlings, you do realize I don't 'style' pics?

Covered Porch

An unused corner, below, in a covered porch. Inside the French doors, a pair of chairs & lamp. Hints the French doors are not used often. I knew she must have a table, wood & old, in this corner. The rest of the covered porch has mostly iron furniture.
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Days later she acquired this wormy chestnut dropleaf table, the size of the planks indicate age.
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Unfinished, she's already used the table to do work with her laptop. And the hydrangeas are fabulous from inside views.
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By summer's end this corner will be completed & I'll post again.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Dahlings, this is gardening at the speed of life.

Repetition

Puppet Barbuda took awhile to trust repetition, a landscape design tool. Wasted years. Puppet Barbuda was stubborn. Still is.

Puppet Barbuda was too smart to COPY !!!!!

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Alas, years in the wilderness, and Puppet Barbuda DID NOT recreate a new wheel.

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REPETITION, if it works in one landscape it will work in your landscape. Each time repetition repeats....................IT'S NEW & UNIQUE at each repeat.

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Of course poppets you must adjust for plant zone, money, maintenance, & time. Ironically, copying $$$ landscapes rewards you, often, with better results than the original.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics from Susanne Hudson's garden last month.

Small Space Gardening

Small space gardening has it all. Seasons, evergreens, deciduous, focal points, ceilings, walls, floors, doors, details. Aaah, details. Details are intensified in small spaces.
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Under 150 square feet, below, this little frontyard lives big. In the garden & from inside the house. A backdrop hedge creates walls of the room & blocks views of the street. A gate, door to the room, opens the space and extends the architecture of the house. Urn/plinth are focal point & create an enfilade (view thru to a view) in 2 directions, double axis.

Holding up thru the seasons is imperative in small space gardening. No down time allowed.

Potted herbs during summer are gilding. The house & a pair of boxwoods are another wall in this tiny garden room, above. Gravel is the flooring.

Variegated boxwood, above, echoes, those planted in the ground. Raking the gravel is detailing of the carpet. Adding the interest of an oriental rug.

Cat tucked into a boxwood, above, is a hint of what you'll find inside. The urn/plinth were clues or was it the iron gate painted robin's egg blue? Subsidiary pots are all terra cotta. Repetition creates impact in any size landscape.

No big surprise, the classic ginger jar inside, below, when everything outside is classic. Vanishing Threshold, bring your inside out and your outside in.

How do you want to use your small space? A lovely view, a place to lunch, read or invite girlfriends for wine/canapes?

A season's detail. Chinese snowball blossoms coat furnishings & carpeting in this tiny garden room.

Use height in small spaces to reach for the sky. Vines, espaliered shrubs, understory trees. Pull the eye up. The sky creates limitless space in small gardens.

After the Chinese snowball blooms, above, an espalier oakleaf hydrangea blooms, below. Both are draperies when viewed from inside. Outside they add lushness to the wall of the house, draw the eyes up, harbor birds/butterflies, provide 4 seasons of interest.

Small space gardens, abutting your house, include the views into your house. No backsides of pictures, tv & etc.

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I adore the challenge of creating small gardens. Especially those abutting the house. They harbor our gaze. And they gaze back, with grace.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics from my front yard the past several months.

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Garden Designer's Roundtable: Small Space Gardening, more articles by the experts.


Small Spaces, Big Ideas!
June 22, 2010 by Scott

Today we focus on the challenges and opportunities of gardening in a small space. Small space gardening has its limits, but it doesn’t have to be limiting. Regardless of whether you are creating an intimate space within a larger garden or simply utilizing every available inch on your balcony, there is no reason your small space garden can’t be a well-designed masterpiece.

A small space garden lends itself to personal expression in a way a larger garden simply cannot. It’s easy to let your personality shine through in a small space garden. But the limited space means you are going to have to make some tough choices, every plant or design feature will need to do double duty. Of course the principles of garden design still apply, you just might need to tweak them a bit to make them fit your space.

Below you will find links to the Roundtablers who are participating in this month’s topic. Please feel free to join in with a comment here, on our Facebook Page, or on the individual blogs themselves. Your thoughts and experiences are always encouraged and welcomed and really do help us broaden our knowledge of this not-so-small topic.

Carolyn Gail Choi : Sweet Home and Garden Chicago : Chicao IL

Jenny Petersen: J Petersen Garden Design : Austin TX

Laura Livengood Schaub : Interleafings : San Jose, CA

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK

Shirley Bovshow : Eden Makers : Los Angeles, CA

Susan Morrison : Blue Planet Garden Blog : East Bay, CA

Susan Schlenger : Landscape Design Advice : Hampton, NJ

Transition

Closer to the house the landscaping is more formal. Near the back of the property, below, the landscape transitions into natural woodland.
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Gravel drive & path drift/mingle with leaf litter mulch. No stone or brick edging, 'soldiers'. Not even tree limb edging.
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Landscapes are stories. Work the drama.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken in Susanne Hudson's garden last month.