Happy Flowers

Planted for its happy early spring blooms, kerria gave the surprise of engulfing a post of the Summer House this week.

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Good garden accidents.  Revel in them. 

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Don't know kerria?  

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When I began gardening nurseries were concerned about getting you the best plants for your garden.

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Nurseries now push patented plants ( preferably  advertised in Better Homes & Gardens or Southern Living magazines) with better profit margin.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

Pic taken last week in my garden.

Inside One Woman's Garage

Inside my garage, below, at the back door.  There is something new.

My bike.  2 decades on the wall, I took it off this week.

 I rode down the street to my friend Mary's, above. 

A perfect spring day. 
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Told a girlfriend about my biking.  She said she was a biker when younger and biking gave a sense of freedom & innocence.
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Putting words to my exact feelings.
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Pics of bikes in gardens instigated my bike coming off the wall.  Providence knew I needed its simple pleasure.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara 
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Doesn't every normal person have an antique china cabinet outside their backdoor?  It gets worse, chandeliers, mantels, garden chairs, antique garden tools, and more.  Hard to imagine I pass up a lot of good finds because of space.  In the deepest recesses of my mind it's known I must start having Garden Garage sales.

5th & State On Mary Bairstow

 5th & State came to Atlanta recently to visit her friend Mary Bairstow, interior decorator. 

 You'll like Mary's interiors but I fixate on her exterior.  The woman has Vanishing Threshold.

 I swoon, above, at the diminutiveness of these steps & matched in scale boxwood and asymmetry.

 A taste of Mary's interior, above. 

Is there any doubt, above, you are about to enter a fabulous home/garden?  None.  When every element of simplicity/function are achieved you know you are looking at the work of a master.
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Garden & Be Well,            XO Tara
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5th & State took the pics.  Still pouting I didn't know she was in Atlanta, I would have invited myself along on this visit to Mary's magical home/garden.
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Did you notice the layers of green Mary uses in her garden?  Layers of green give you serenity & calm.

Small Lives Large With Axis + Focal Point

On axis with the doors, below, this tiny space lives large.  It has the potential for 3 more potent axis.

Purring at the formal lines + rusticity of plantings.
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At first I looked too quickly, thinking it was metal chairs.  No.  It's a bike & chair. 
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Don't you want to go inside? 
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That is Vanishing Threshold!
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Don't forget the Landscape Design rule: COPY
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Pics via Modern Country, taken by Shootfactory

Foundation Plantings & Front Porch Opening

Typical USA foundation plantings, along with incipient pruning, below.

 The Cottage has good bones.

 I have sure thoughts, below.

Plants have been moved to a tapestry hedge, rails removed and The Cottage is sighing in relief, below.

Next?  Granite curbstones will be placed as a step at all 3 sides of the porch.
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Next?  Gravel arrives, a potager, boxwood, brick painting.
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Adore this process. 
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Garden a bit slow, The Cottage needed new windows & pipes.  All the copper had been stolen.  Roof is beyond its life expectancy but honored heavily for its steadfastness.  A penny saved is a garden installed.....
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3rd pic via Griege Design

Front Porch: Before & After

 Landscape Design after, above.  A bit of work so obvious no one thinks a Landscape Designer is needed.  Afterall, the builder & previous Landscape Designer missed it, below.

Did you notice a pendant light was added too?  Top pic. 
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pics sent by the client from a jobsite last week.  She wanted to do this for years.  Her husband said, 'why do we need to do this?'

Technology In Personal Space

Home is newly wireless.  Do I want personal space used, below, for work?

 Spring arrived quickly/unexpectedly, 5 windowed walls surround the harvest table,  below.

 Mornings in my gown making calls (clients, contractors, vendors), emailing, blogging, birdsong, blooms, beloved Laskett in the chair beside me.

 Hours pass.

Need to leave for jobsites, administrative errands.  Putting away every bit of technology/work.
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Technology has changed but not how I take, for 26 years,  joy-grace-energy from being in this spot.
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The moat of grace I've surrounded home & life with, the garden, supports me emotionally & creatively.  So far it's working, honoring this new spot, clearing it afterward & using the Conservatory & other areas for work when I return from jobsites.
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Scoping new phones.  Make the switch from 3 ring binder, pics above, to connect calendars with my guys.
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Wish all this were 'done', want to think about & work in gardens.
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Garden & Be Well,             XO Tara   
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Not a Luddite but if it weren't for gardening I would be slower updating technology.  Perhaps I'll have time to get pics from all 5 of those walls mentioned above.  Need to hurry, azaleas, camellias, kerria, hellebore, akebia, viburnum, rosemary.....all abloom. 
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Notice the gorgeous English antique ironstone soup toureen?  Found at a shop in Augusta, GA when I lectured there several years ago.  Alas, no lid.  The chandelier is ca. 1950's Italian, 1/2 of a pair, bought at an estate sale in Nassau Bay, Texas a couple of years before hurricane Ike.  Oddly, I was shopping with my Dad.  He hated that kind of stuff.  Lots of good memories.....

Formalities & Rusticities

A woodland entry was added to their property, alleviating traffic issues at the family entry.  Formal aspects abound elsewhere.  Keeping RUSTICITIES balances the whole.  Don't know about Formalities & Rusticities?  Read your Jane Austen again, she certainly understood.  Her sanctimonious characters were certainly of the formalities-only-school.

 I used cedars, enlarging a natural drift.  Stone from the site & fallen tree debris, above.

 What you won't see along the lovely Woodland Entry, below,

is what I've hidden.  Modern necessities: satellite, power box & etc. 
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Since we've created this entry & completed the Landscape Design, amplifying Rusticities, she told me it's now her favorite way to enter her property.  A new way of seeing her home.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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pics taken last month.  This is a large area and I adore using the potency of Rusticities in a manner learned from my mentor Mary Kistner, who said, "It's what we do with what we have."  And thankful for a client trusting me with a few rocks, tree debris & her own wild cedar trees.  Rumpelstiltskin was conjuring the wrong form of gold.  This is the gold.

Bathroom In The Barn, For The Help

Her jobsite is a bit far & I had to run for the powder room in her home every time I arrived.  Now, she's put a bathroom, below, into the Dairy Barn, for the help.

 Attentive in all she does I know the door was chosen & hung with care, below.

 Accouterments are perfecto, below.

 Incredible shower, below, and the right amount of whimsy with the milk can. 

 Good accident reflecting more lite, below.

 One entry to the Dairy Barn, a century old, below.  Made of

terra cotta blocks, painted its original white.
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Was on site yesterday placing flags & laying string for new plantings & drives.
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I must stop thanking her every time I come for this bathroom, for the help, in the Dairy Barn.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Who knew I would grow-up and WANT to be the help.  It means I'm doing another garden.  Doing what I love.

Stone Step At The Frontdoor

We only needed a bit of a step, below.

 With great joy we found the perfect stone

on site.
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It speaks of rivers, dinosaurs, time.
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Landscape Jewelry for sure.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic taken at a jobsite last week.

Custom Iron Railing

Real iron railing, below, with a bundle of intellect.  The eye picks up quality & detail.  And this is a stunning detail.

 This is what you get, below, in a gated community with strong homeowners association & excellent property manager.  Dreadful plant choices & even worse pruning.

The yellow sickly things, above, are Southern Indica azaleas in toxic Georgia red clay subsoil.

Wish there were an award for driving the ugliest vehicle but loving it the most, above, it's me.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Pics taken at a new jobsite last week.  I'm not out to change their HOA but I want the landscape to reflect, fully, the gorgeous home & its property value.  Yes, we must submit my new Landscape Design for approval.  Ironic, HOA's often lower what their aim is to raise. 

Kitchen Lighting

Leaving at dusk last month I could see, from beyond the Ancient Orhcard, these lights, below, on.

 Retro fitted lighting ca. 1880.  The light bulbs mimic gas.

I'm a Landscape Designer & demand every view into your home be fabulous.
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Lighting, window treatments, furniture, art & etc.
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If I can see it from the garden it is within my domain.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic taken at a jobsite last month.  The primitive piece next to the marble island is called a biscuit board.  Never seen one till here.  Wish I had the type of camera to have shot from the garden, past the Ancient Orchard, across the Lawn & into her windows.  Susanne Hudson is helping with interiors.