Old Trinities Are The Best

Don't recreate the wheel.  Choose successful trinities.

Penelope Bianchi sent this pic over the weekend.  She had a question about her vines.
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Epiphany for another Tara Trinity: Vines, Gravel & Boxwood.
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Vines, Gravel, & Boxwood have worked for centuries in the best & most charming gardens.
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Tara Trinities?  Shade perennials: Hosta, Helleborus & Ferns.  Shrubs: Azalea, Camellia, Hydrangea.  & etc.
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I'm sure you see trinities you adore all the time.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Recently received a 1940 cottage project.  Vines, Boxwood & Gravel?  You bet !!!!
 

Sir Roy Strong & Mirabel Osler

Sir Roy Strong & Mirabel Osler will be in conversation

October 19, 2011, Castle House Hotel.
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Both Strong & Osler are authors of  "life, gardens and travel."
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Please, go, if you can & put it all on YouTube for me/me/me.
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Look closely at the path, above.   Melts my heart.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pic & more information via Hereford Times.  A garden nerd I have Sir Roy Strong on google alerts.  Monty Don too.

Begin Inside

Landscape Design begins inside your home.  Site lines, axis, from your main views.

In college they taught Landscape Design from the street looking in.
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Beauty designed outwardly is beautiful in its opposite direction.  Something I had to learn on my own about Landscape Design.  Of course the historic landscapes of Italy began inside the villa.....
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From this desk, above, is my Woodland Walk, aka, air-conditioning side of the house.  With azaleas, camelias & hydrangeas, I don't see the a/c.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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At this desk I pretend I know how to watercolor !!!

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Appear Less. Be More.

"If you have a closet full of clothes, and nothing to wear, you don't know yourself very well."  Bill Blass

If you have a landscape full of plants, and not a fabulous garden, you don't know yourself very well.
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From Advanced Style, "Appear less. Be more."
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Landscape more.  Garden less.
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My career overflows with the type of  woman, on the blog, Advanced Style.  
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Look at these women, they equal fabulous landscapes, CONFIDENT.
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These women stretch me, expand my comfort zone, make me feel 14 years old as I approach their landscape design.  Russell Page, blessedly, said, a garden designer SHOULD feel a little fear with each project.
Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic of Mimi Weddell, by Bryant Woodd, via Advanced Style.
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Seeking creative inspiration is a daily joy.  Hunting/gathering from music, books, friends, solitude, exercise, pets, gardens, what I say 'no' to,  & more.

Stretch Chair

ABC Carpet & Home,

Stretch Chair, by Carnevale Studio.
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Of course I would need 6 in the garden.  At $89 I thought, "No, need to get the fruit trees & boxwoods first."
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You KNOW I was reading too fast, Stretch Chair, $895.00.  Ha, and I decided $89 was too much for me !
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic from the ABC Home site.

Creating Dining Spaces: Inside & Out

An odd thing happens when plans are drawn for the Landscape.

More dining areas are created inside.  Better views, drawing you toward them, if you're not already drawn outside to dine.
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It's a small drama, wondering, "hmmmm, where do I want to eat?", but sublime.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

Cottage Garden: Layered On Formality

Flagstones, edged in brick, below.  Bricks hidden for a few weeks in a cottage garden facade.

 Self-seeding blue ageratum were, indeed, pruned to create a narrow foot path.

 A look of the country, in this tiny subdivision with minuscule lots, within a metro area of millions.

 10 weeks, no appreciable rains.  Doubts the blue ageratum would bloom on schedule?  None !

Variegated boxwood, above, in a large formal terra cotta pot.  Engulfed in a sea of ageratum.  A temporary bouquet.
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A change for the season in color and style.  Soon, the formal lines of winter will return to my little flagstone terrace.  And the terra cotta pot will return.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Pics taken last week in my garden.  Yes, garden cat Torte De Shelle following me.  It was hard to prune the walking path, wanting to keep it solid meadow.  Ha, I had to get thru !!!  Reality intruded.  Plans for the fruit orchard are percolating.  Trees will probably come from the big box hardware store & boxwoods from a wholesaler.  If this sounds formal, it is.  Love a good meadow, cottage garden AND formal lines too.

Where To Shop & Lunch In Atlanta

Boxwoods has ambience, antiques, plants, urns, everything a grown child desires.

 Souper Jenny, around the corner, has the best soups, sandwiches, cookies & I always have to stand in line, and never care.

Between appointments this week, I got to Souper Jenny & saw her cute new food truck.  Made me want one for Landscape Design.
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POUTING, I had to leave Souper Jenny without a visit to Boxwoods.  Had to get back on-the-job with a client.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Top pic from Velvet & Linen while at Boxwoods.  More Pouting, I only get to do this 1-2x's/year, or less.

Name It to Claim It

Her face so lost I didn't recognize it.  Ellen Barkin is in a new movie, "____ Year".

If opera is an intensification of reality; a garden is opera.
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Manohla Dargis on Barkin's movie character, "....a refugee from the ordinary..."
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Quite nice.  A sentiment, a lifestyle I discovered in my garden decades ago.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic from Cam Archer/Cinemad Presents in New York Times.

Some Deaths Are Not Socially Acceptable

"...Sir Timothy...after a night of high wind had brought down 2 magnificent elm tress on the edge of the ha-ha.... It was a sad sight.  The trees were lying with their roots upended and their trunks slanting across the ditch to the ruin of broken branches and smashed twigs on the lower level.  Sir Timothy ...as much distressed as if they had been the only trees he possessed.  There were tears in his eyes as he kept repeating: 'Wouldn't have lost them for the worlds!  Known them all my life.  Opened my eyes upon them, in fact, for I was born in that room there. ....It's this damned sunk fence is to blame.  No root room on one side.  Wouldn't have lost them for the worlds!'".  Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford.

 Written of an era a century old, and a true story, I love Sir Timothy.

Clients & friends, calling me through the years, "Tara, my tree died."  Then tears.  Women of course.  But men too.  Successful men, trophy house, car, family, and they are still the little boy within.  In grief they remember me, someone who will understand.  I've cried with them all.
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No, not many will tell family, friends, co-workers, "Called my garden designer today, we cried about losing my tree."
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You do understand these are big trees, over a century, with energy giving spirit.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics from BBC

Squeezing In A Retractable Clothesline

Between Conservatory, below, &

 house, below,

finally, sheets drying on the line.
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Sadly, I win the blue ribbon for, she-who-waited-longest-to-put-in-retractable-clothesline.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

Awesome Beauty & Deer Proof

 Andrea Filippone, designs gardens & sells antiques.  Her garden, below, proof of prodigious talent.

More, her garden has a herd of 40-50 deer daily.  Boxwood are her solution, along with "allium, nepeta, Solomon's seal, jack-in-the-pulpit & hellebore."
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The New York Times had a lovely, rich article about her last May.  They have a slide show of pics with it too.
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You won't be disappointed.  This article & pics have stuck in my mind/heart since it was published.
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Garden & Be Well,           XO Tara
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Pic from New York Times, by Randy Harris