#1 Landscape Coaching Tip

The best landscape for children is to deeply landscape for the child within YOU.

.

She, below, intuits pandering.  And, discerns delight, grace, joy, easily.

.

At a jobsite yesterday, Sunday my bad, the unfinished project has already received its Benediction.

.

In the new side garden 2 little girls have already held several wedding processions with rose petals strewn along their hours-old  #89 granite gravel path.

.

Their dad did not want the side garden.  Unfortunate man, I had already coached his wife.  

.

You understand what is at stake?

.

Happiness.

.

Tara Dillard's Garden Coaching: If your beloved questions a delightful element you wish to have in your landscape, answer, 'Because it makes me HAPPY."

.

In earnest.

.

Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

.

pic via Pinterest.  Will revisit their garden for pics and let you see !

.

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.

.

NOTE to my gardening friends... look for changes to come. 

Knew before computers/cell phones, sitting in Atlanta traffic on way to a client, 'I must reach a larger audience with the same amount of effort.'   Soon after that epiphany I signed my CBS-TV, and, books contracts on the same day.

.

Then I read an article in the NYTimes about something called 'blogging'.  Saved the article for a year before reading it.  Studied all the blogs they mentioned, hired a computer expert they quoted, and attended a blogging seminar.

.

Blogging 2.0 has arrived, my knowledge is 1.0.  A believer in copying the best historic gardens across the globe it flows into every arena of life.  Watching Maria Killam grow her career/blog/life over the past 3 years made its impact.  Signed up  for a year's course with her blogging expert, Jon Morrow. 

.

Changes will be slow, plodding is my adored method.  Pulling triggers here/there is spice in the mix.
.

What do YOU want?

.

Nothing is too small, too big, or too ego crushing to mention.

.

Passion lies in sharing what has filled me to the depths of grace, joy & atonement, the best landscapes created over the last 2,000+ years.

Just so you know...
 I  welcome your input.

Southern Matriarch: Good Advice

This view, below, is totally designed.  Preservation of meadow, wild wood, hedgerows.  If poetry has 'tone poems', indeed, 'garden poems' are drawn from a deeper well.  They can be heard, read, and seen.

How does this 'garden poem' reach deeper, grow in meaning?

"When the time is near, prepare the grave.  Do not wait until your pet has died.", her friend advised.  Rich wisdom gained from her mother, the rarest of breeds, a true Southern matriarch.
.
He is now blessedly abiding under the oak tree.
.
His passing changing this view for all who knew him.
.
Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
.
Pics shot last week.

Problem Slope, and Contractor

Hillside, below, at a client's yesterday.

.

Retained with groundcover.

.

Retained with great success for decades.

.

Her neighbor had the same slope, the builder put in railroad tie walls.  Of course they rotted & collapsed.  Worse, the 'fix' was more retaining walls.  

.

No need to be an expert to understand the math, aka expense.

.

Aside from which is more beautiful.

.

It is not uncommon for a percentage of my clients to go with another contractor, because they trust the 'guy' saying they must build a retaining wall.  The comfort zone of manhandling a situation.

.

Across Europe, studying historic beautiful landscapes for decades, eye/brain, aka beautiful/functional, noticed 'details'.  Especially in Italy.  No place better to learn about beautiful easy landscapes, surviving thousands of years.  I trust historic beautiful landscapes, and copy them.

.

After my longtime contractor died, and before my current dream contractor of several years, I had the guy-in-a-truck.  Good, but fearful of what he did not know, and crunching/squeezing numbers with every 'sale'.  

.

He refused to drystack stones into a slope I had designed.  Told client, and me, it could not be done.

.

Really?

.

Found the pic I had taken in an Italian olive orchard, over a thousand years old, and emailed guy-in-a-truck.  With a note, 'do the drystack wall or I'll never use you again.'

.

Because he had been an honest contractor at several jobsites, I continued to use him after this project, beautifully executed, as drawn.

.

My bad.  He defaulted on money he owed his partner, and me.  Two clients, who did not know each other, called me on the same day, saying he was a misogynist, and they had paid him all his money and never wanted him back on their property.  

.

Only tell you this little story as a heads-up if you are in the industry, and if you are hiring someone to help you in your landscape.  

.

Hope the back story is as helpful as the landscape design picture.

.

Let me know.  Oddly, I'm hesitant including it.

.

Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

.

Pic shot yesterday in client garden.

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.

Beautiful Easy Landscape: Green, Brown, White

At her kitchen porch, below.  Her color theme is the beautiful landscape classic: green, brown, white.
.
With 300+ acres everything must be simple.  No care.  More than pretty & easy, her landscape must leverage her life.  What does that mean?
.
Your beautiful landscape must work for you.
.

A large local nursery advertises it's- fun- to- play- in- the- dirt.  Really?  That is a landscape?
.
Beautiful landscapes, in my realm, work for me.  How?  Increase property value, decrease HVAC, attractive to pollinators/guests/me, little time 'playing in the dirt'.  Instead, hours are spent in my garden reading or having meals in the Conservatory, cutting flowers to bring inside, having lunch in the potager on a sunny winter's day, awakening to the scent of tea olive, playing with my pets, or enjoying the harvest table on the patio as I've spread out materials and laptop to create a power point, and etc.
.
Play in the dirt?  Sure, a part of my realm to enjoy, but merely a sliver of what beautiful landscapes provide.
.
Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
.
Pic shot at a client's home yesterday.  Would love a flower show display of 12 landscapes all with the green-brown-white theme set on a small terrace with 2 chairs + table.  Same story, new each time.

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.

Chris Evert + Ralph Lauren: Copy the best in your Landscape

Before & during teen years, I copied everything Chris Evert.  This dress, below, hangs in my guest closet. today.  Amazingly, its metaphor, now, 180 to the winning reasons for saving it.  

.

Copy.

.

It's that simple.

.

 Graduating college with engineering & horticulture I could not design a beautiful landscape to save my soul.  Off to Europe, 2+ decades, studying the best historic beautiful landscapes the world has experienced.  

 # 1 Beautiful Landscape design idea, COPY.  Copy the best landscapes.  You will not recreate the wheel.  Better, it's already created for you.  Trust this concept.
.
Why did I forget copying Chris Evert?  Never a talented tennis player I retired a 2 time district 4-A singles champion amongst other titles won.  Seriously, I was not a gifted tennis player.

Habitually Chic posted Ralph Lauren's new coffee shop recently, and it had me laughing at all he COPIED so well.
.
Fern in a terra cotta pot, above, is the same concept I add to client's homes.  Bring life to a room with something ALIVE.  Look at all the best interior decorators of the past century.  Plants brought inside, as if, just from the conservatory.  COPY.
.
Don't just copy, Copy the Best.
.
Green-Brown-White is the best and most used beautiful landscape design color trinity of the past few centuries.  Which green is for you?  Personally, I'm using Ralph's coffee shop green.

.

Harvest table with a pair of urns?  This pic had me laughing AND dialing Susanne Hudson, the interior decorator on my team.  She taught me this idea decades ago, and have copied the concept since.

.

Huge secret about copying the best ideas and talents.  

.

When you copy the best, for yourself, it will be unique to YOU.

.

Be brave, 'copy', is guaranteed to work for you.

.

Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

.

Notice Chris Evert's lace panties & ribbon in her hair?  Totally what I did too.

.

Ralph Lauren's pics by Habitually Chic.

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.

Beautiful Landscape: Seeing 'After' at 'Before'

Can anyone abide another magazine caption mentioning all you see?  Note, below, ivy clad walls, shuttered French doors, and etc ad naseam.  Why do magazines do this to beautiful garden pics?  A Tara Dillard caption, below.

.

This garden, below, is a college course in vanishing threshold, combining home and garden into a moat of grace & joy for living.  (For starters.)  This garden, below, is pure narrative of the owner's character.

.

I could write 5 fabulous captions with this pic but it's not where I'm going today.  Can you 'see' to create this when it does not exist?

Earlier this year I designed a landscape for this home, below.  A second garden design for this family, they popped out of their first home when baby #2 was born.  

.

Realizing the need for flow, below, was instant.  How to achieve it too.

.

Most homes have, below, yet most homeowners want, above.

.

What would you do, below, to achieve, above?

.

There is zero connection from steps to lower back door, and there is a stoppage of flow with distance to lower back door.  Aside from zero invitation to be in this zone.

Soon, a flagstone terrace will stretch from steps to end of the home, French doors will replace the double-hung windows, and the terrace will infill under the covered porch.
.
Flow.

Obviously more than Flow needed in their Landscape Design.  Notice, above, how their new terrace is wrapped in privacy from the neighbors.

.

Hand drawn Landscape Design, on site.  Myriad more brain regions tapped than sitting in an office at the computer.  

.

Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

.

Top pic via Pinterest.  Bottom pics taken at jobsite this week.  Edited drawing to remove client info.  Designing on site, by hand, does not make me a better Landscape Designer than anyone.  But the science holds true of methods used vs. brain regions tapped.  Need all the help I can get !

.

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.

Maya Angelou: Beautiful Landscape + Beautiful Life

A client recently asked, "That crape myrtle tree at my patio is too messy, is it ok to cut it down?"

.

A beautiful crape myrtle it was planted before we met.

.

Alas, they are messy.  For weeks.  Very messy.

.

My answer?

.

It's important to be tied to the land, follow its progression through the seasons.  Devote unencumbered time, just you and your garden.  No phone, no agenda.  Let the body work in your garden, while your brain is finally using regions untouched.  Answers to questions you didn't know you had will arrive.  Plants emit wavelengths absorbed through your skin, let Providence work into you.  Literally.

.

At the front end, it seems like work.  But that's wrong.  It is grace & joy waiting for you to tap their powers.

Part of my inner strength, pure grit, arrives sideways as I putter in my garden.  Body responding intuitively to doing the next-right-thing while mind has left the shackles of this Earth.
.
Maya Angelou knows why my answer is counterintuitive, below.

.

I believe in more than a beautiful landscape, I believe the action steps of creating/keeping a beautiful garden are the key to a beautiful life.

.

Beautiful garden, beautiful life.

.

Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

.

Pics via Pinterest.  Top pic from Penelope Bianchi's fabulous garden.

.

Told the client to use an electric blower with extension cord, Toro.  Notice, stewardship begins with you for the garden, changing to the garden in stewardship of you.  

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.

Garden Design: Aging in Place

Keep- it- Simple- Sweetie works, every time.

.

Perhaps my Garden Design rule breaker, Overdose- on- a- Theme, is how you want to garden design, in spots, instead.

If this were the only garden space, above, I had until age 89 it would be my life's goal/mission to be the sole soul maintaining this sweet garden.
.
Why?  Means I would be climbing a ladder to clip the espalier fruit tree or gather fruit, in season.  Oh my, the joy of clipping the low hedge and spiral.  Puttering about with the pots, bulbs, mentally deciding thru the years how to out-perform the previous year/s in fabulosity.
.
If this little garden design did need a hired helper it merely needs unskilled labor twice a year.
.
 Beautiful, low maintenance, mentally stimulating through the years, no chemicals or watering needed, fruit to eat, turn into jam or give away.
.
These little doorway gardens are quite common in historic gardens across Europe.  History is the best teacher.
.
Lawn with foundation plantings, fertilizer, insecticides, pre-emergents, and a plop of colorful annuals twice each year?  Mr. Mow-Blow-Go-Commodify-All-I-Touch on contract to arrive weekly?
.
Not for me.  Mentally & spiritually soul crushing along with being bad for my physical well being.
.
Aging in Place.  Make the choice in your garden for type of garden design, the beauty, mental paths and joy in the maintenance whether you do it, or a helper.  Take the joy.  Joy, it's always there, whether you think so or not.  Take joy, Tasha Tudor's favorite saying.
.
Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
.

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.

Garden Design: When is it Time to Change Bedlines?

I visit my childhood home often.  Instead of biking its few roads as tradition, I walk them.

.

The house originally on this site, below, was my favorite in the neighborhood.

.

A confluence of hurricane & money conspired for it to be torn down, another lot bought, and this home fills the new space.

.

Behind this home is Clear Creek meeting Galveston Bay, salt water meeting fresh.

.

Remember the time before these trees were planted.  Stunning to accept, trees grow, shade arrives, time passes.

.

Approaching, the classic color trinity, green-brown-white, never fails to delight.

.

Nor the evergreen groundcover, Asiatic jasmine.  Especially against St. Augustine lawn.

Proof of time's passage, below.  St. Augustine being shaded away.

.

Time to reshape the beds.

.

Instead of focusing merely on the present, reshape bedlines into the future, below.

 Now that you are an expert Bedline Garden Designer, you see your next project, below.

Curious, which visit will I walk by and they've reshaped their bedlines?
.
A small garden design touch with huge results.
.
Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
.
Beautiful landscape, above, ready for more than mow-blow-go.  Want my pruning expert to release the trees & shrubs from their prison of electric trimmers.  Take away the ca 1980's subdivision builder brain and enter into the myriad histories of le jardin rustique from across the globe, and centuries.  At this price range, more than a few dollars can be made in real estate value.
.
Ca. 1980's subdivision builder brain?  Still in use at new construction.  And, like a new car, value drops the moment ownership is signed.
.
Shot pics in Nassau Bay, Texas, my home town.
.

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.

Garden Design: Enlarging Color Echoes, by Pamela Harper

My team finished a student housing project last week in Auburn, AL, below.  

After, above, before, below.

Pure pride in our work, the most common response, is widened eyes and a comment, "Student housing wasn't like this when I went."  Zero comments about our work !

As the project completed, the interior team color echoed the exterior team.  Without collaborating.  A sign the owner chose his teams wisely.  Everyone, on mission.  Team players.

Pamela Harper wrote of Color Echoes in the garden ca. 1994, and I heard her lecture about this during her book tour at the time.
.
Of course my concept of color echoes is larger than Pamela Harper's,  Why?  Houses & gardens are equal in garden design in a vanishing threshold.
.
Interior decorator, above, put me on her team for a house she designed both architecture/interior.  You know the house, it's in the previous 2 posts.
.
Surveying our work, then seeing her interiors, this SMU grad sounded like a total Auburn Tiger.
.
At the pool table, above, is exactly what you must do for your interiors/exteriors, vanishing threshold.  AKA, color echoes.
.
Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
.
Pics shot last week and earlier in the summer.  Loved the day palm trees arrived on the bed of an 18-wheeler.  Perhaps the day the pool filled was better?  Notice the pool decking?  It's travertine pavers set in gravel.  They are echoed at the entry to the formal lobby.
.

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.

Garden Design: Use Axis to Site Stone Steps

Where, below, to put fieldstone steps, gathered on site, into the slope?

Fieldstone steps on a sweet slope in a meadow are both focal point and invitation.

At the crest of the slope, above, I face the house where every axis faces my eyes, front porch, side door, windows, back porch.
.
There, will be the digging-in of field stone steps.
.
The more entry ways a garden has the better a garden is.  The more axis a focal point has the better the focal point.
.
Those air conditioners?  Not a problem.
.
Solved that, below, at another client's.  Will do the same lapboard 'fencing', above.  Panels are removable.  Life is good with custom carpentry.  Better with a garden you adore around your home.

.

Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara

.

Same garden as previous post.

.

I know what meadows are, aside from status symbol.  A gift from Providence.  From a meadow, crops & livestock for our survival.  Free for the taking.  Toil?  Hardly.  In the process of taking from the land we are given metaphors for life.  Providence does speak.

.

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.