Noise & Smell of Expensive Neighborhoods

 

Decades ago, designing landscapes, I noticed expensive neighborhoods are noisy & lack many natural fragrances.

Noise of remodeling with hammers, air-compressors & maintenance mowers/blowers is ubiquitous where the money is.  Mono-culture lawns too.
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Designing a landscape near Agnes Scott College, at a charming historic middle-class bungalow, I revelled in the fragrance.  It was Tara Turf.  No deed restrictions demanding Bermuda or Zoysia.  Their lawns are fescue, moss, clover, ajuga, violets, & etc.  Smelling deeply of nourishment to my DNA.
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On the few occasions I can get to my Conservatory for a nap I know it won't be interrupted with mower or construction noise.  Ironic pleasure, yes?
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"I absolutely hate the sound of machines in the garden.  Mowers, Rotovators, hedge cutters are all a kind of torture.  I want peace.
     But there are some sounds that I do love to hear.  By late July the young buzzards mew and noisily complain in the fields by the river as their parents leave them to learn how to hunt.  A quiet garden allows the year to be measured by these sounds."  Sarah Don
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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pic via Cote de Texas.  Who knew noise in the landscape would be a bittersweet topic.  Much of the noise has gone away in this economy.  A few years ago a client lived next door to new construction.  It was a large home entirely sheathed in stone.  It took a full year to chip the stone. 
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Many neighborhoods now put limitations on mow/blow & construction days/times. 
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The worst 'noise' day ever designing a landscape I had to hear a client's neighbor berate, bully, cuss, & threaten his young son for over 2 hours.  I wonder how that little boy turned out, he must be past college now.
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More irony?  My business makes the noise in neighborhoods.  Hammers, saws, Caterpillar.......

Melding Design Layers

 

Garden rooms are created in melding layers: ceiling, walls, floors, aka, trees-shrubs-groundcovers.  In NYC this French restaurant has amazing melded layers.

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Is there anything worse than the ubiquitous Flower Show garden?  At a glance novice eyes sees stone terrace, shrub line, tree line, no melding of layers.  Why walk in to see the garden, you can see it all from the aisle.  (No I'm not forgetting those huge piles of stone called outdoor kitchens,  they are so bad I will not speak of them.)

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 I asked about the floor, below, and our server smiled.  He said the hand-made tile flooring cost more than everything else in the decor.  It was special ordered for their space from Morocco. 

With that attention to detail you know the food was good.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken this summer.  I keep fantasizing about creating a landscape with this flooring as inspiration !!

Pond House

At pond's edge we're deciding architecture.

 

 Historical American.  Large enough for small gatherings & fishing gear.

 A fireplace for sure.

Nature at the pond will remain, embellished of course, to look MORE natural. 
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Our pond has an island too.
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Delight, and amazement, to find kindred spirits with these pics.
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Cannot wait to post 3 corresponding pics of our Pond House.  Of course it will have to be 4 pics.  We have an area to create a 'rocky beach' for wading & pushing off with kayaks.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Found these pics looking for landscape pics of What Not To Do.  Title for the lecture I gave last nite at our state's largest trade group, Urban Ag Council.   
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Total brain fart, I did not save picture source.

Attention To Detail

 

200 acres.  Attention to detail.  Even hinges receive total teamwork

with owner, ironmonger, me.
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Garden & Be Well,             XO Tara
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Pic taken at a jobsite this month.  A pair of new gates with historical bones. 
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Don't think for a moment your landscape is worth any less attention.  If a hinge on 200 acres has a teamwork of input how much more does everything in a 1 acre landscape matter? 
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All the decades of studying landscapes across Europe it's easy to learn, leave no element undone in a garden.

How To Get This Landscape: Break Rules

Want this landscape in a year?  Skip directions about spacing, plant in fall &

 

prepare the soil with amendments.  Most importantly, (do you already know?), mound the soil.
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Life is short don't space your plants following what the books/tags say.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Exceptions abound, but for this garden (& a zillion others)  it WILL work.
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Pic saved without credit.  My apologies. 

Nantucket Meandering

Cousin Cathy is in Nantucket.  These pic gifts arrived today.

 

 Never been to Nantucket. 

 Every place Cousin Cathy stopped I know we would have had all kinds of conversation.

 Pointing things out to each other, the other hadn't noticed.

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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pouting, I'm missing lunches, dinners, junking in this fabulous place with Cousin Cathy.  Hi CR.

Monty Don on Garden Design

"All our buildings fascinate me and have influenced the structure of the garden more than anything else.  I have to relate the garden to the house, and the house to the garden.  The view from a window will influence the positioning of a pathway and a doorway at the end of that path.  I have a primitive need for symmetry and balance."  Monty Don

Excellent advice.  Vanishing threshold.
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Garden & Be Well,            XO Tara
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I never tire of learning how others design landscapes.   Asiatic jasmine groundcover, above.  Mother Nature smiles.  Thick in areas yet still spreading in others.  Pair of columns on axis with the front door.  Can lights are placed in the porch ceiling away from ceiling fan blades.  Who wants that spinning shadow pattern!

Penny McHenry's Quotes To Live By

Penny McHenry, founder American Hydrangea Society, had 2 newspaper clippings on her bathroom mirror.

Below, is one.

The 2nd said, "It is more important to be kind than to be right."
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She was in her 70's when they were taped to her mirror.
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Active, Penny was forever getting into 'pickles'.  At least once a year she forgot these quotes, thoroughly. 
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Her charm lay in immediate repentance & contrition.  I drove Penny a lot of places thru the years & it was always a thrill when she would begin, "Perhaps I shouldn't have told....."
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Pics via my bad.  Apologies for not saving the sources.   

Conservatory Built With Existing Wall

Too many garden walls haven't had their

Conservatory attached.
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Today's assignment: walk your garden, exactly as Mrs. Wilcox did at Howard's End, and decide where your Conservatory is to be placed.
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Garden & Be Well,        XO Tara
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Pic via Belgian Pearls.   

Happy Short Story

Happy call yesterday, they bought it!  A client, living in their dream home, found another.

She called a couple of weeks ago about the 'possibility' of the new house, & would I do a drive-by. 
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Older, it looks like a miniature version of an embassy home in DC.  But it's the backyard that sold them! 
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Proud of this couple.  They are thriving in a bad economy the old-fashioned way.  Hard work.
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Garden & Be Well,                XO Tara
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Pic via Things That Inspire from Architectural Digest.  Adore this part of my career, knowing the stories of so many happy events.

Bruce Barone Shot Queens Pot

Pots must be so fabulous

they can remain empty.
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The Queen's Pot!
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Sustainable before Christ was born.  Been doing it myself for decades.
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Touring the grounds of Glamis Castle I saw a huge urn in the distance.  It beckoned my name.  The urn grew larger the closer I got.  Upon discovery it was sentinel to an arboretum over a century old.
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What garden center advocates empty urns?
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic by Bruce Barone.  Love & adore inventing garden concepts & The Queen's Pot is mine....!

Bedroom Changes

My bedroom is in the hunting/gathering stage.  26 year old carpet was removed & heart of pine flooring now matches the rest of the house.  Researched headboards on Velvet & Linen, and, Things That Inspire.  This headboard, below, is what I ordered. 

 A couch & ottoman will be ordered for the foot of the bed.  Need a couch in the music room too. 

Debating if the 2 new couches should 'match' in case they end up together in a new space.
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Need the lampshades, above, too. 
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The bed was moved and I'm loving new views into the garden.  Can't wait for the couch, it's views are thru a different window.
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Decades planning/planting in the garden it seems strange to be fixating on the interior.  After a quarter century has passed, it's time.
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Garden & Be Well,           XO Tara
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Top pic via Things That Inspire
Bottom pic via Velvet & Linen