Checklist to Create Your Beautiful Easy Landscape

Since childhood I've adored walking 2 houses from my parents, to my piano teacher's house.

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Life is good, I was able to see my piano teacher this week.

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Air-conditioning repairman came to do her winter check while I was visiting.  He's done this for her since 1982.

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After his work we had a chance to chat and his viewpoints about his industry were fascinating, and instructive.  Stay with me, won't go there now.

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Prior to starting his own company he was in the Navy then NASA.  A normal trajectory for most of the men, in the 60's, where I grew up.

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He did editing & printing of any words needing editing, or printing during his years with NASA.

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(Found this pic, above, of Neil Armstrong on the ESA website.  Don't know that?  European Space Agency.  Went to several locations of ESA during the summer of 1976, dad was working the space shuttle payload avionics systems.  6 weeks of heaven for mom/me.  And my introduction to the garden of Versailles.  Dad added, of course, to his per diem, and we stayed in delightful places across Europe.  And, oh my, the food !  Had my first champagne, at The Lido, in Paris.)

Not long before NASA's 1st lunar landing/moon walk, several men came to the air-conditioning repairman's office requesting a checklist.  They were concerned Neil Armstrong would forget some of his assignments, on the moon.

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Checklist, not a problem.

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How, they asked, to keep the checklist easily visible, safely attached, to Neil Armstrong during the Moon Walk.

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Hilarious task, for an editor, printer.

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But, you must remember the era, and the men.

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Give them a task, they gave results.

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He suggested a type of printing, attaching it to a sleeve or lanyard around the neck.  NASA chose the sleeve, and his printing choices-methods.

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Hearing the story, I told him this should be in the Smithsonian.  He said, "It is."

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Normal.

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Leaving, he asked my name, "Tara Sayers", I said.  Before he said anything, I knew by his face, he knew my dad.  

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Before NASA, dad was a test pilot at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base where I was born.

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Famous for many accomplishments, the Flight Checklist, was created by WPAFB & has done more than aid work flow, it saves lives.

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Before every childhood trip/vacation, that I can remember, dad had a 3x5 index card with a checklist.  By college, he told me I needed one.  You know I scoffed, until this week.

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It's time to create, Checklist for Beautiful Easy Landscapes.  

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Not for you, though that will a lovely benefit.  It's for ME.

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Color, light fixtures, seasonal bloom, contrasting foliage, views into windows, views out of windows, focal points on axis, focal points with double axis, maintenance schedule, fragrance, front door, planted pots, empty pots, scale, flow, & etc.

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Sideways, inspiration.  AKA, too stubborn to listen to good advice.  Decades of stubborn, apparently.

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And the terrible irony, I started at WPAFB.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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My dad was sole author of the request to Congress for funding the Space Shuttle.  I must find the document/pamphlet, saw it years ago amongst his 'boring stuff', and ask the air-conditioning-repairman if he was responsible for getting it into 'print'.

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When, Beautiful Easy Landscapes: Checklist, is reality, it will be a course.

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30 years in the learning, it must get rooted everywhere.

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Excited to have it at jobsites with me.  Very.  Excited.  

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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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

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

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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.

Blank Wall: Innovation in Design

Pinteraddicting, a few weeks ago & discovered this, below.  Image/idea will not leave mind/heart.

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Such a stunner, it's a stunnah.

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Still life, gallery wall, assemblage, collage, Matisse, Picasso, Kadinsky, Berlin Dadaists, Merz, Schwitters.

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Mary Kistner, mentor/client/friend, refined my knowledge of all the, above, and she's been gone forever-and-a-day-too-long.

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Without her to spend hours talking about this pic, below, I have you.

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Choose a wall, choose your scale, choose the axis it is seen from,interiors/exteriors, choose your 'merz'.  High, low, no matter.

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Voila, Blank Wall Landscape Design.

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Tara Dillard's, newest, Landscape Design Invention, BLANK WALL, more inventions, here.

Blank Wall Landscape Design, above, should become a standard at Home/Garden Shows, Botanical Gardens, Big Box garden displays, your home.

Time to rethink your walls, above.  Much love swathed upon the walls here.

 Vignettes easy to maintain, fun to create, zero drudgery.

Well loved Blank Wall Landscape Design, above.  Would love to see their choices during a big event garden soiree, above.

What is common to each?  Simplicity.  And the thought, "I can do that."

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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All pics, Pinterest.

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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.

.

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.

Sideways Learners Will Understand

If you are a sideways learner you will understand.

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I have college degrees, international studies for decades, landscape seminars attended for more decades, a garden that followed the complete template disaster-passable-magazines-tv.  Client gardens with the same trajectory.

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All of the above merely taught me amusements in/from a landscape/garden.

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Not considering learning anything, in the least, about landscaping/gardening, I got some chickens.

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Chickens were my front door to truly learning about gardening/landscaping.  Who knew?

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What was the big take away?

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Stewardship.

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Literal & metaphor.

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Decades of striving, and the hens taught by merely being themselves.

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Humbling.

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With great pride, I want you to see where I keep my egg basket, above.  At the back door.

Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

What Your Home Should Say, from the Curb

Your garden must tell me who you are from the curb.

'Overdose on your theme', is the best way to get there.

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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara

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Pic, 5th and State, take the link, Debra's done an excellent treatise on matching pots to houses.

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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.

.

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.

Landscapes Need the Poverty Cycle & So Do YOU

There has never been a time these boats, below, have not been in my DNA.

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Why not take them for granted?  And, the men who kept them going.

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From age 3 reveling in their elegance & decrepitude.

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Sounds of water, lapping the sides in their slips.  the smell of their engines, mixed with salt water.

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Their beauty an act of Providence, the hand of man required to maintain.

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Constant battle.

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Money, sweat, blood, beauty, JOY.

None are left, though a tiny portion of this boat, below, maintains a hint of what I've hunted all my life.

 By the time I learned to ride a bike, I road to the marina, below, most days until I left for college at 17.

 In the NASA Roundup, Dad found one of these old boats for sale.  Age 7, life was finally turning a corner.  One of these boats would be ours.  Mom would have none of it.
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Many friend's families had 1 of these boats.  Every invitation to go onto the big waters of Galveston Bay refused.   Mom would have none of it.
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Never, to this day, have I been on one of these boats.  Virginia Woolf foretold my story, Too The Lighthouse.  And, to this day, when I visit my parents, I speed walk to the little marina, remembering different times and different boats, and the men who kept them running.   These newer engines don't smell as strong but the salt water is the same.
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Still yearning to go in that door, below.  However, now, life thrives on my side of this door.   Julien Fellowes, Gosford Park, portrayed it perfectly, here.

Where does this rabbit hole go?  This month I've told 3 clients I want them to do the blowing in certain areas in their garden.  Not because I want them to do maintenance.  It's for the relationship, for thriving, for Providence.  To receive exponentially more than they give.
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I know the depths of what the Poverty Cycle enriches us with.
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None of them have liked the idea.  Each had about the same expression on their face!  However, each has agreed, for awhile, to do as I ask.  Trusting from where my request has come from.
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If you can thrive on the outside of the doors you seek, you're rich beyond measure.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Top pic, here, rest of the pics I took last month.  How many of you caught the faint echo of Enchanted April with, "...different times and different boats."  Studying historic gardens across Europe it didn't take long to realize it was the Poverty Cycles producing the greatest beauty.  Of course, The Poverty Cycle in Landscape Design, is one of my inventions.  And, more proof it's quite a delight living outside the doors I thought I would be living within.  Providence knew where I should be.  Accepting that gift has been the making of my life.
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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.

.

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.

Formal vs. Rustique: Spotting the Difference

I delight in this perfect, imperceptible, detail.  See the difference between Formal vs. Rustique ?

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Of course it made my Pinterest Board, Outdoor Living & Exterior Design.  

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Spot the 'le jardin rustique' element?

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Though a formal landscape design, above, a skilled gardener contrasted with much needed le jardin rustique in this tiny space.

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Contrast is a top Landscape Design 'rule'.

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 In this garden, lapping gravel to the tree trunks is a major landscape design choice.

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And, the right choice.

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What was the 'formal' choice?  Boxing the tree trunks with cobblestones.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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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.

.

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.

A.S. Byatt: Le Jardin Rustique

 "You must learn now, that the important lesson – as long as you have your health – is that the divide is not between the servants and the served, between the leisured and the workers, but between those who are interested in the world and its multiplicity of forms and forces, and those who merely subsist,  ......."  A.S. Byatt

Before computers & cell phones, handouts at my lectures had the quote, above, at their top or bottom.   USA landscaping is broken, knew this decades ago.  My big discovery, above, Le Jardin Rustique.  Blessedly discovered, in Europe, decades ago.  Created from thousands of years of refinements.  Le jardin rustique's have created, & refined me.
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Never tire of experiencing another's awakening to le jardin rustique.
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High, medium & low meadows, above.  Came home with Tara Turf at first siting.  A well known blogger, saw similar and said, "they even have daisies in the grass."  He saw, without comprehension.  And, he's a degreed residential architect, USA of course.
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What is this enfilade, above, to le jardin rustique?  Survival of mind-body-spirit.  Literally, and metaphorically.  
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Aside from beauty, unskilled labor to maintain, no chemicals or n-p-k poisoning groundwater/killing pollinators, no irrigation system, canopy-understory-walls-groundcover plantings to increase pollinator habitat & shade/sun the house as needed thru the years/seasons, increased property value/decreased HVAC, increase of crop yields by 80%, scientifically proven need of our bodies to harbor beneficial bacteria given to us from these habitats reducing auto-immune diseases, ADD, depression & more, there is a simplicity of relationship with Earth, as we intellectually engage, Earth provides & sustains beyond what we know we need.  
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We all need a-room-of-our-own, Virginia Woolf, “When a subject is highly controversial, one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold.” 
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If you have read this far, and have a mow-blow-go-testosterone-on-wheels-commodify-all-I-touch-landscape, why?  Rejection with those landscapes was upfront with me, without knowledge of their replacement.  Decades have been spent finding the answer.  More than resonate, hope your inner core, from your gut, feels the words, above.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Jung knew, "Our lives are about getting the outside to match the inside."  The time this takes & riches to be found are, indeed, our life.
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Links to scientific studies meander in previous posts, no time to look them up today.
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Pic via Pinterest. 
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" ‘Like life,’ said the painter. ‘We eat and are eaten, and we are very lucky if we reach our three score years and ten, which is less than a flash in the eyes of an angel. The understanding persists, for a time. In your craft and mine.'” – from “Christ in the House of Martha and Mary”, by A.S. Byatt
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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.

.

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.