Front Porch Dining

Built before air-conditioning (near Athens, GA) there was a REASON for this long & deep 'L' shaped front porch.
With morning sun, it's perfect for evening dinner.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Table/chairs arrived recently, sourced/ordered by Susanne Hudson. Big surprise, there are 2 of these tables/chairs. Alas, my pic was awful. Will try again and post the whole front porch for you. Team Tara includes Susanne Hudson on this project.

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Susanne & I are teaming in a garden at the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival in Douglasville, June 4-5, 2011.

Stone In Your Landscape

Rose Tarlow, below, interior decorator, furniture designer & a master with stone in the garden. It's a rare landscape that cannot benefit from a tree trunk base & stone top. Tom Wilhite's book, below. Amazing how many of my clients already have this book at our first appointment. If you're thinking of DIY with stone, or not, this book is for you. Buy it here.
Sir Hardy Amies garden in England, below. With stone this good it would be difficult to get the plantings wrong.
Stone Mountain, GA, below. Nature's stone. Teaching stone. The wildflower, front of pic, growing on the stone, Mother Nature's patience adapting a root system/foliage/flower to growing in shade with trace amounts of soil & less water.
Then there is Michael Eckerman. His ideas in stone
changed mine.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Top pic via Rose Tarlow, bottom pic via Michael Eckerman.

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All about STONE today with Garden Designers Roundtable.

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Deborah Silver : Dirt Simple : Detroit, MI

Sunny Wieler : Stone Art Blog : West Cork, Ireland

Debbie Roberts : A Garden of Possibilities : Stamford, CT

Douglas Owens-Pike : Energyscapes : Minneapolis, MN

Ivette Soler : The Germinatrix : Los Angeles, CA

Jenny Petersen : J Petersen Garden Design : Austin TX

Rochelle Greayer : Studio G : Boston, MA

Susan Cohan : Miss Rumphius’ Rules : Chatham, NJ

Gravel To The Door With Vine + Table

After designing a landscape Saturday I perused Brabourne Farm, a favorite blog. Here, below, I stopped.I had just designed this EXACT garden. Less than 2 hours earlier.

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Client has 5 acres with woodland, gravel lanes, open meadow, barns, horses. And a home with a daylight basement needing the 'zip' (zest?) above.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic from John Granen. Molly, is this what your mother's bistro set looks like? Wish gardens could be installed this fast.

Enlarging A Front Porch

Ubiquitous rectangular home with a jailed-in front porch. American Builder's Special. Ugh.Remove chunks of railing and disgusting foundation plantings, widen steps, add flagstone landing.
Now, a front porch to enjoy.


I've removed so many porch rails for clients I've lost count.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Same garden as previous posts.

Bedrooms On The Lake

Off the master bedroom, below.

And,
off a guest room.

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Yes, I've been lucky and stayed here.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics from same garden as previous posts.

Most People Are Afraid Of This.

Carl Jung, "Our lives are about getting the outside to match the inside."Tucked in a woodland, on a mossy stone, unseen by most.
Are you brave enough to put what resonates in your heart into your garden?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Same garden as the previous posts.

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It's odd, I design landscapes but often feel like I liberate adults into their imagination.

Seating On A Deck

Pair of matched chairs. Works every time. If it's wood in her garden it's painted her special green.Directly below this deck, pathway to her rescue run. She rescues & fosters dogs.
From this portion of her deck, below,
you can see her wooded frontyard or the backyard & lake.

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Seating areas are throughout: garden, porch, deck, dock, woodland.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Same garden as previous post.

Birdhouse Condos

Before, birdhouses were on fencing, rocks, tables, trees, chairs, ledges, everywhere & nowhere.Birdhouse Condos. Will rent for a song.

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Look closely at her stone edging. Wine bottles !

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic from the same garden as previous post. She was on the Lake Coweta Garden Tour last Saturday & I took the pics on Friday. We laughed and hugged our way thru her garden. Exciting to design a landscape that becomes an intensification of the owner. Teamwork at its best.

How To Create A Bedroom

Bed, lamps, tables, art, canopy tree ceiling, shrub walls, pillows of dirt wrapped in burlap, brown/green color theme, wood chip carpet, a book for night time reading,
stone box spring, and a quilt of twigs-ferns-moss-ajuga-ginger.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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She already had the ubiquitous bed-of-flowers in the sun. This is an ENCORE ! Same garden as the last post.

How To Color Echo

Most important, below, Landscape Design feature? SIMPLICITY. Nothing between view, meadow, lake. (Bushes seen were already there. Client asked for more bushes! Puppet Barbuda KNOWS Mr. Testosterone-On-Wheels-Mow-Blow-Go-Commodify-Everything-I-Touch would, indeed, put more bushes here. CHA-CHING. )
Those chairs? Ubiquitous plastic wally-world cheap. Painted, they become HERS.
At the top, above, of her drive, colors arranged to PERFECTION on a simple bottle tree.
Colors Echoed in the chairs beyond.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken yesterday at my client on Lake Coweta, she's DIY, in Newnan, GA. Her garden is on tour today. Can't wait to show you more of it.

Italian Simplicity: Are You This Brave?

A vine & 4 pots. Voila, lush, done.No foundation plantings, no lawn.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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I took this pic over a decade ago in Italy, outside of Lucca, and haven't wavered in my awe of its simplicity.

Faces Vs. Words

I don't like 'words' in a garden. Too 'fixed'. Limiting. Why look at a stupid doormat that says 'welcome'? Your home, frontdoor, colors, plantings, focal points, lights, knocker, views into windows & etc. each say 'welcome'.At my backdoor, above, a Christine Sibley piece. Bought from her 2nd's table, the only way I could afford her things.

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I've never tired of her face; through the years she's spoken volumes.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Christine Sibley, artist-gardener-business woman. She left this world too soon.