Do You Make This Costly Landscape Mistake?

Anti-mulch Landscape Design, below.

A mature landscape should not need mulch.
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Landscape Designing for dead brown mulch interspersed with green meatballs is a construct of USA garden centers & testosterone-on-wheels-mow-blow-go-commodify-all-I-touch.
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Landscape Design your garden to include covering ground with shrubs, groundcovers, perennials, bulbs, & meadow.  Enriches soil, increases pollinator habitat, decreases cost/labor.
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Significantly less to buy from the garden center & maintenance team.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic of an Arne Maynard garden found here.
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I did the dead brown mulch thing for decades.  Ugh.  Still catching up with the shrubs & groundcovers.  Where mulch is still needed I use leaf litter mulch.  Arrives free and alive with bacteria, fungi, earth worms etc.  Amazing, in hindsight, how lock-step I was with the dead brown mulch everyone-else-had.
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Most amazing landscapes, to me, employ ideas of killing all insects/fungi, mono-culture lawns unwelcome to birds/pollinators, need irrigation, nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium fertilizer toxic to ground water, require men in trucks with gasoline powered machines, aka totally man-made constructs.  Where are these landscapes?  At almost every large house of worship across USA.  Their metaphor shouts, "In this house we honor G*d but surrounding it 'man' is in control."  Where are their fruit orchards to feed the hungry, meadows to feed the butterfly/bird/etc, trees bringing eyes to the sky in thanks for Earth, opportunity to gather together in strength of hand/body/mind/spirit touching Nature while pulling forth Her Bounty, harvesting fruit to feed body & Spirit with plenty leftover to give to those in need?  Oddly, have never seen that at a large house of worship.  Have seen it in community gardens.    
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A slight neo-exception I have seen is The Cove, Billy Graham's conference center.  Much of the landscaping is the retaining of Nature.  When I was in their bookstore, many years ago, I was excited to look for the garden section.  You know what I found.  Zero garden books.  And, Life began in a garden.  Link, here, to see their green meat balls in dead brown mulch at the foundation of their conference center.  Terrible metaphor of words, 'foundation-of-their-conference-center.'  

For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

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Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

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Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

What Bunny Mellon's Terra Cotta Pots/Topiaries Can Teach Us

House, cabin, barns, pastures, lakes, meadows, orchards, livestock are part of her domain.

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Family, friends, church, community building, volunteering are more of her domain.

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She's recently asked for something 'small', local terra cotta pots, known not to freeze/crack, with plants.

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Property is ready for this layer but how to have this layer leverage her garden & life?

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Plainly, "How do they get watered & how do they not add more work to the farm?"

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Connected with a potted plant specialist yesterday, we will meet at the farm next week to see if it's a good fit.  Aside from maximum talent, need a team player, someone willing to build a long term relationship.  

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Once the 'fit' is finalized I look forward to sharing her work with you.

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My job, keeping things fabulous yet easy, demanding magic from my muse & each person on the team.

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Leaning toward creating 3 greenhouse zones for myriad potted plants, drip irrigation included.

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Caretaker will move the pots, as the owner chooses, for events.  To move pots from greenhouse to garden a 4-wheeled wagon with tallish sides that can be pulled with the Gator.

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1 greenhouse, small, in the courtyard next to the potager, for the owner to easily use for the house & covered porches.

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Live plants in terra cotta pots have been a missing layer in her home.  According to me, & of course I told her.  Go me.  (This type of thinking, and blurting, does get me into a pickle or two.)

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For sure, ivy topiaries in several sizes/shapes, orchids, old fashioned begonias-geraniums, whatever the client wants, and lastly the potted plant specialist creates wonderful potted plants we don't know we need yet.

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Exactly, teamwork.

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Have been a fan of Bunny Mellon for decades, she had many homes & a busy life.  How did she manage her terra cotta pots with plants?  With greenhouses & a caretaker.  Voila.  Caretaker is already part of our team we simply need to add the greenhouses with drip.

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If you see any disaster zones let me know.  If you see something fabulous to add, let me know.

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I wake up at 3am too often, but know to push my brain into a garden.  This morning at 3am it was 'this' garden.

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Garden & Be Well,     XOTara

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Pic found online, no provenance.

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

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Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

How to Design Your Landscape --The Ultimate Guide

Lush in early summer, minimalist during winter.

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Views into the home considered, views from home into the garden considered.

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Canopy trees, walls of plantings, flooring with plantings - gravel.  Within this trinity are contrasting foliage textures, contrasting foliage sizes, contrasting foliage colors, a color theme, repetition, focal points, subsidiary focal points, pots so fabulous they can remain empty,  pots/focal points so fabulous they will be fought over at your estate sale, use of plinths for proper heights with urns, backdrop of the home included, color echoes of flowers to paint color on home, repetition of color on iron pieces fence-downspout-lighting-trellis-arms of bench,  seating with arms & back tall enough to rest the head/nap, transition zones from formal to wild wood, house/garden have a vanishing threshold, maximum pollinator habitat with its high density/low density,  ornamental plantings increasing potager yields up to 80%, sensory delights with visual-fragrance-sound of birds & wind thru foliage - foot upon gravel, historic-a template older than CE.

I see an entire Landscape Design course in this picture.  What do you see?
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Name it to claim it.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic via Pinterest, here.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

What Happens When the Turkey Looks Back

Bounty, beauty, thanks.  The Trinity I-choose-to-believe is the foundation of scenes on vintage ironstone & china.

Now, too, I see complete college courses at the intersection of agriculture & horticulture.

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For centuries 'we' looked at the turkey, above, in Thanks.

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The turkey now asks, "What have you done?"

Fruits, vegetables, livestock, enough to feed family, barter, sell.
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Letters would arrive, early 60's, when I was a little girl from my paternal grandmother.  Mom would call sister/me and read aloud the missive.  Her letters always included vegetable seeds from her own garden or a friend's.  To conclude the reading mom tossed seeds/letter in the garbage.  Her duty done.
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I ALWAYS wanted to grow the seeds.  Mom's disdain palpable, it was safer to let those seeds go.
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Dad never knew.  A brilliant NASA engineer with lives on the line, it was more unsafe to mention wanting those seeds to him.
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A sad story, then.  But, oh my, the joy it has brought to my days since.  FREEDOM from their ways of thinking, being, doing.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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In defense of dad, Ted Freeman, Charlie Bassett, Elliot See, Gus Grissom, Ed White, Roger Chaffee, co-workers, neighbors, friends, had all recently died.  USA remembers the successes, correctly so, many lived the losses too.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

The Nicky Haslam Guide to Lining Up the Pots

Do it like Nicky Haslam.

What is Haslam doing ?

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Copying.

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Specifically, below, he's lining up pots and statues/plinths, and repeating a minimalist color theme.

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Copy the copycat.  He's not original.

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Yet, totally original.

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Copy, it's the 1st rule of Garden Design.

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I discovered, Lining up the Pots, while on a tour of historic gardens across Italy decades ago.

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Been lining them up ever since.

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Not convinced?

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Still wanting to be original & unique?

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If it's beautiful in another garden it will be beautiful in yours.

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Every site is unique.

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Price point has no claim to this garden design rule.

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When choosing your pots to line up they must be so fabulous they can remain empty.  

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If the pots lining up do not match, their rims must be at the same height.

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 Liking a good sentence, it's not uncommon for me to bath with Nicky, below.

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Perhaps you should start bathing with Nicky.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Wall Street Journal pics of Nicky Haslam's home.  And, mine at bottom.

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

How to Layer Your Garden, Save Money & Create Less Work

Espalier apples, below, layered with flowering plants increase yields to 80%.

 Flowering trees, bushes, ground covers, above/below.  Chosen for sequence of blooms, toughness against drought/disease/insects, position for layers, and, attractiveness to beneficial insects & song birds.

Once mature, garden layers eliminate need for mulch & fertilizers, less or no mowing, prevent weeds, and enrich soil.        

                                         What garden center wants you to have this type of garden?  They cannot sell you annuals, weed killers, fertilizers, mulch.  Yearly.  For decades.
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When is the last time Suze Orman saved homeowners this much money, and costly effort/time, while benefiting Earth?  And put healthy, tax free, inexpensive fruit/vegetables on the table, with garden layers increasing property value while reducing HVAC expenses.  Suze, who?  Go me.  And you.

Did you know nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium fertilizers kill soil mycorrhizal fungi & earthworms, & are toxic to the water supply?

Unexpected 'majesty', aka stateliness-dignity-beauty, in my little garden's layers, above.

Through the apple orchard, above, Laura. 

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pics taken yesterday at the Bay Terrace, aka front yard.  Today, working at the table Laura sitting on, above.  Stopped for apples last month at the grocery store.  Asked the clerk if she had the product correct, each apple was over a $1.  Hello fruit trees, and veggies in my garden !!

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

The Minimalist Guide to Building Your own Conservatory

Better Homes & Gardens magazine recently put a Conservatory I built with Susanne Hudson for the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival in their magazine again.  Haven't read it yet but am curious.

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My garden is 8500sf total, including house.  This is for tiny gardens too.

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Conservatory in my garden, below,  best investment in 'me' ever.

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Salient facts: 12' x 18' is the minimum size, doors must be on 2 walls minimum, electrical outlets on every wall, chandelier, ceiling fans, wood stove.  Site parallel or perpendicular to your home.  

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 A 'moveable' structure meets most zoning laws allowing you to site properly.

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90% rescued materials, below.  Most, a century old.

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A decade of search/rescue + filling the piggy bank to pay for labor/materials/electrical.  Voila.

Choose a good carpenter, let their talent shine on your team.

Never tire of these French doors, they began life a century ago, 1 each side of a fireplace, in my grandmother's Federal style house.

Ground was not level.  Stone steps were rescued, and gravel chosen for the floor.  No worries getting finished interior grade level.

Conservatory, above, Susanne & I built, in the new BHG magazine.  Styling, above, is ours, the magazine has theirs.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Top 3 pics in my backyard.  Wanted a larger Conservatory but space did not allow.  Squeaked by with the minimum, 12' x 18'.  The day my Conservatory was completed and the men helped bring in all the antiques from the garage, then left, I sat in the finished Conservatory for the 1st time alone, IT BEGAN.  Life's tipping point.  Who knew?  Beware of getting what you ask for.  It WILL change your life.  What was seen thru a glass darkly will shine clear.  In that moment you will let go of every thing holding you back.  Fear that crippled will fall away as if you knew nothing of its existence.
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Lunch Ministry is often held in my Conservatory.  Amazing the amount of laughter, and tears, this blessed Conservatory has already harbored with friends.  Beloved, when he realizes I'm in the Conservatory, most often, will leave me alone until 'I' decide to come in.  Grace pulsating.
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Minimalist?  Mentored, as a little girl, by Miss Katherine Scott, "I can live without the necessities but must have the luxuries."  From age 7, wisdom understood.  An understanding never appreciated by my dad, a little more by Beloved.  Kindred spirits totally 'get it'.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

How to Fix the Porch to Patio Dead-End

Lovely porch & courtyard.

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Porch opens into house, not courtyard.

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Dead-end from courtyard to porch.

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Dead-end from porch to courtyard.

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Not in my realm.

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This will not be.

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Center section will soon be French folding screen doors with steps to the courtyard.

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Why 'folding' ?

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They entertain, French folding screen doors take less space.

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Have never seen or thought of French folding screen doors till this job.

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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

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Pic on the job last week.  Yes I wanted to take precious home !!  He stayed faithfully by my side as I worked throughout his garden.

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

5 Ways to Get Subsidiary Focal Points Right

Not a focal point, below, but a grand subsidiary focal point.

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Garden Design Rule: One Focal Point per Area.

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Not my rule, but agreed to.

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What to do?  Invent another rule.

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Focal Points are allowed subsidiary focal points nearby if they recede, touch foliage, don't draw attention.   Can be numerous if properly chosen & sited.

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Focal Points & Subsidiary Focal Points must both be so wonderful they will be fought over at your estate sale.

Pots must be so wonderful they can remain empty.  This young man, above, has dead plantings and he's fabulous.
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More, he flows with the style of the home's interior.
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Dogs, 3 young children, parents each own a business, they have farm property nearby, and a lake house.
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Get the picture?  Zero time for the garden.

Designing for women 80+, taught me how to truly design with tough love.  A huge honor, and weight.  They demand beauty, must have unskilled labor to maintain & little of it, something coming into bloom every 2 weeks, focal points on axis from inside views into the garden.  Nothing can go wrong with the garden.  Nothing.  Health issues arise, the house needs a new roof, a toilet floods.  If the garden has issues, they may decide to move.  It is my goal, their garden gives strength & joy to carry on in their home.  
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic this week in a client garden.
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 For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

From Amusement to Stewardship

 This is what I sought, below.  Only recently, decades in, the mission is known to be mistaken.
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Garden Design, contrast round flowers with spikey flowers, big leaves with small leaves, dark green with silver, focal points on axis with the house, expose the sky - frame with canopy trees - dress the walls - cover the floors, a bit of woodland & meadow, something coming into bloom every 2 weeks all year.
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Go ahead, take the above facts and create your own beautiful garden.
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Sited properly HVAC costs lower & property values rise.
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Do the above & you've done a lot.

Done for myself, paid to do it for others.  Thought this was the mission.  Not a little wrong, wildly.

 With a knowing smile, I see others deeply into Garden Design, personally/professionally, aware that was me, in a past life.  Glad to leave it.

Garden Design is mere amusement.  Garden Design gives a reaction, there is much more to be had.
 

From amusement to stewardship, a relationship of atonement & abiding with Nature.

 Garden Design lesson above?  Copied from studying historic gardens across the globe for decades.  Never realizing it's maximum pollinator habitat & about survival.  Agriculture needed ornamental gardens.  What had been understood as pretty historic gardens & homes were machines for survival.
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What?  Combining agriculture with pretty flowers increases crop yield by 80%.

What I had sought as a beautiful historic Garden Design formula is instead the template of Providence.

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My garden, and Garden Designs have been organic & sustainable for decades.

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Organic & sustainable are not enough.  Stewardship is the key.

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Take the key, it's free & simple.

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Organic & sustainable, in the great USA manner, are something to sell.

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Stewardship is within you.

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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara

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Pics in my garden this spring.  Wish the chickens had been here my entire 3 decades.  Their poop goes into the garden daily.  Their eggs have become my 'Egg Ministry'.  And gave me Stewardship.  Understanding the relationship of Earth, livestock, plants, survival.

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 For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Nurture Your Creativity

Ca. 1950 ranch.  Front yard, house on the golf course.

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Drawn on site.  Folding table/chair moved a dozen times.

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Don't mess with how I work.

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How the potter molds clay, similar to how I design.

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Feet in the garden, eyes/mind/Spirit/hand, in symphony.

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Performing.

More regions of the brain activated, than sitting in the office on a computer.

Designing on the computer would be like playing the violin by hooking it up to wires and tapping on the computer keyboard to get the sweetest sounds played.  Not !

Whence my creativity, I know.  And, nurture.

Within that zone of creativity, is, I imagine, what others gain from cocaine.  Don't know, never tried it.  Don't need to, got better.  

 "Some get a kick from cocaine**
I'm sure that if I took even one sniff
That would bore me terrific'ly too
Yet I get a kick out of you."   Cole Porter

Each time a plan completed the awe in time.  Felt like seconds, yet hours passed.  Little in life allows me to forget time, or hunger.
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" My general formula for my students is "Follow your bliss." Find where it is, and don't be afraid to follow it. 

Joseph Campbell
The Power of Myth
pp. 120, 149 "
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Great fear, indeed.  Campbell should have added some in your life add to that fear, not trusting the path you've chosen.  
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My father was horrified at my career choice, and embarrassed.  And vocal.  My engineering degree unused, the horticulture degree supporting me.
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What I do for a living, and how I do it, are the best life choices, for me.  Bucking my dad literally made me ill at times.  
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Best choice I've ever made, and the hardest.
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Garden  & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics from jobsite this spring.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.