Gravel To The Foundation

 

What is the incessant USA love affair with foundation plantings about? 

Bushes are either leggy hags or green meatballs.
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Ugly, requires maintenance, depreciates the value of a home.
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Garden & Be Well,         XO Tara
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Adore the gravel solution, above.  Pic from Deborah Silver who owns Detroit Garden Works.
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I left USA for Europe to study gardens once horticulture degree was firmly in hand.  Was taught how to be a guy with a truck mow-blow-go.  Worse, they taught  how to landscape design from the street looking at the house.  Europe was a grand teacher.  Will never forget the first time I saw gravel to the house foundation.  GOT IT.  Love moments of epiphany.

Choose A Theme

The 1945 Florida room with 3 walls of jalousie windows

 will be decorated in blue & white.  Using Bunny Williams style.

 Like the garden, the room has a theme.

Until the theme was chosen the room was stuck.  Now, hunting/gathering are easy.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pair, pics above, custom down 18" square pillows found at my favorite junking haunt, $6.75 ea.    

Science: Tree Power vs. Solar Power

Trees increase pollinator habitat increasing yield on crops, decrease HVAC bills, increase property value.

 

 Fruit trees feed wildlife & people.  Evergreen trees to block winter winds.

Trees are a known resource to improve health. 

In the eastern USA what would happen if the average front lawn were replaced with the design, below?  In addition to the benefits listed, no weekly lawn mowing, no watering once established, 2-4 x's/year maintenance needed.

Where is the science & math on this simple solution?
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Have done this design numerous times thru the decades for clients wanting low maintenance.
Garden & Be Well,             XO Tara
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Deciduous trees, evergreen trees, canopy trees, understory trees.
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Pics Architect Design.  Small house living large with its garden.

Immigrant Labor

For my Landscape Designs to become fabulous gardens there are many to be named a prophet-without-honor.

 

 This week we lost one at a wholesale tree nursery.  He was bush hogging with a tractor.  It turned over & the mower hit him.  Hours passed before this hardworking man was found.  A wife & children are left behind.

Most of the men making my career possible are immigrants.  Their laboring, striving, leaving home/country, attitude, humble me.
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Garden & Be Well,              XO Tara
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Went to a lecture luncheon last month at DK Gallery, Gina Hurry is the artist, above.

Lamp in the Landscape

 

Women who have these lamps, I thought as a child, are wacko.  Ticky-tacky gold leaf, gaudy.

Was there an exact date I grew up to be 'wacko'?
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Even in the afternoon I can see the sparkly light bulbs from the house, and they make me happy.  More stupid, about this lamp was its price.  Found at my favorite Antique shop I waited several visits for its mark down.  Not.  I made an offer & you see my trophy!

French Garden

 

In France, below.

 I count this, below, one of my greatest joys.

 Because in this garden, above & below,

You aren't in France anymore.  You're in my garden, Stone Mountain, GA, USA.  In a subdivision of tiny lots.  Without my garden, bottom 2 pics, I would see neighbor's houses-driveways-air/conditioner alleys etc...
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In my garden, I am free to be where ever I want to be.  Any era.
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Pictures don't lie.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Top pic Our French Garden.  Bottom pics my sweet garden.

A View of Central Park

Atop the Metropolitan Museum, below,

 

 an art installation I visited this summer. 

 With its views of Central Park.  How I wish I could sleep in its various pods.

I imagine its views in different seasons & weather.  And, in my imagination, I have a telescope.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Oddly, these thoughts only arrived once I got home.  Yes, this artist did their work on me !

Arne Maynard

Arne Maynard gardens simply.

 

 He listens to the soul of a site.

 He beckons in the language of formality or raw Providence.

 Lush simplicity.  There is no age only the ages.

 A fierce love of landscape is unafraid to look 'not done'. 

 A man willing to copy from the past.

Clothing a home, below.

A drive could have been put in, below.  Without, it's timeless.  Restraint.  Voluptuous.

Arne Maynard.  A light touch with a sure mission.
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Garden & Be Well,                XO Tara
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Pics via Arne Maynard. 

Landscape Design for the Butler's Pantry

At a Landscape Design this summer we landed in the butler's pantry.

She had thoughts of keeping the 'closet' style light fixture and installing as many built-in cabinets as possible. 
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Of course her Landscape Design included a chandelier for the butler's pantry AND an entire wall for plates.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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pic via Habitually Chic.  Ironically it was the husband hiring me for the landscape.  Once wife & I met he was toast !   Though he did get a barn, 2 garden pavillions, and a winding woodland garden path with a bridge over his stream.  At his age I've occupied him fully till the rapture. 

Simple Garden Fix

A simple solution

 to a couple of tons of problem.

Car tires.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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pics taken at a jobsite last month.  Granite cobblestones.  New, I think from Mexico.  Can't wait till the groundcover, liriope, fills in and there is no more dead brown mulch.

Oswald Chambers

In my garden is where I listen.  Learn.  Let go.

 

"Determinedly take no one seriously but G*d, and the first person you find you have to leave severely alone as being the greatest fraud you have ever known, is yourself."  Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest.
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Have been reading this daily devotional book for years.  
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Best $1 junking find ever.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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pic via Linen & Lavender.

Shaping Groundcovers & Paths

Why did I EVER pay attention to gardens with mulch?  Mulch is brown, mulch is dead, mulch is expensive, mulch is labor intensive. 

Evergreen spreading groundcovers take care of ME.  I don't take care of them.

 (This is the mature attitude to take.)

 

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New groundcover planting, below.

 

Shaping gravel paths with  spraypaint, below.

 

 I could never put in groundcovers or gravel paths/terraces without shaping them 1st. 

A guest expert decided to help shape the new gravel paths, below.

Mr. Timber Rattler lost his head soon after this pic.
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Garden & Be Well,           XO Tara
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Pics taken last month in a client garden.  Once shaped I walk out of the garden to view then walk/meander in the garden from all angles.  Many times I need to go upstairs and look down at shaped beds.
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  I take my time to shape beds for groundcovers or gravel.  Bedlines are HUGE to what your eye sees in a garden.