The Business of Nurturing Creativity

Most days I'm designing a landscape.  On site, in my head or in the office.

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Foundation plantings, lawn, annuals, a weekly mow-blow-go-testosterone-on-wheels-commodify-all-I-touch ?  No, hire someone else for that travesty.

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 Providence provided the template for gardens, le jardin rustique, for sure.  

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My gardens are like joy.  Always there for the taking.  

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Take joy.

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There is an action step before the joy.  Take.

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Knowing the Providential template for creating a garden, there is still the job of 'taking'.

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Creativity.

Creativity is honored, deeply, everyday of my life.  It is a tool to use.  I do not own the tool, merely allowed to partake of its precious gift.  Daily.  Honored.  This tool is kept working, with having pets, books, music, walking in Nature most days, having my own garden, colors/furnishings/art/comfort of my home, meals with the pleasure of choosing plates/silver/tray/linen napkin eating in the bay window or conservatory or potager, deep friendships with girlfriends, knowing to get out of my comfort zone every few months, travel/seeing new things, gratitude in Providence, and Beloved.
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Creativity.
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I lost it once, decades ago, not knowing it needed nurturing.  Remember, well, feeling its loss.  Not the loss of Providence, exactly, but the loss of a great gift from Providence I had not honored.  Never want to go there again.  It's not uncommon for issues to arise, needing attentions subtracting from honoring my creativity.  I don't go there, the answer will be, 'no'.

Seeing, deeply, the creativity of others delights my soul and feeds the muse.  In Jamaica, a few days ago, investigating the restaurant while our meal was cooking, above, I was given a gift.  Looking up from our table, below.

Better, below, walking on the beach were these 'chairs' and table.  The table was obvious, but I had to investigate the 'chairs'.

At waters edge, and going nowhere, these chairs are perfect, and they were free.  For the creativity.

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Are you faster than I was?  My brain was molasses for a few seconds, figuring out the 'chairs'.

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Bird bath pedestals buried in sand, with a ring of concrete added to the tops.

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Perfect joy, feeding my creativity, in Thanks at the gift of someone else's creativity.

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Hope their chairs have done the same for you.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pics taken in Discovery Bay, Jamaica, WI, this month.

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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.

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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.

What You Must Know About Creating Entry

Visiting a garden, below, in Jamaica last week I knew I had met a kindred spirit speaking Gardenese.

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Without words, saying, "Come this way." 

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Gardens are architecture.  Rooms, halls, foyers, parlors, mudrooms, and entry ways.

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Entry ways are potent in gardens.  Without this entry, above, do you really know you're invited in?  From a distance, would you know there is a path?

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Upon further inquiry, with entry ways in gardens, decades ago, while studying abroad and in books/magazines, I had the epiphany about the world's best gardens.  It's easy & obvious, but too often ignored, or worse, not realized.

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The more entry ways a garden has, the better a garden is.

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And, with richness you'll discover, gardens have entry ways, no exits.

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Not matter the direction, see above, you are entering.

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Lovely Gardenese.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Often, when hired to work an established garden, entry ways are the solution.  Plenty of plants but no entry ways, hence no, foyers, living rooms, parlors & etc.

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Another way to think of entry ways.  They are focal points with maximum subtlety.  Ironically, the rule about focal points, 'one focal point per area', is annihilated by the rule for entry ways, 'you cannot have too many entry ways.'  Love Gardenese quirks of language.  They will keep me in work, always!  Gardenese, easy yet counterintuitive, seemingly simple yet complex, straightforward yet leaving you doubting your perception of how to create what you see.

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Had to let go of my ego to learn Gardenese.  And that took years.

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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.

Wattle & Daub Jamaica Style: Your Free Garden House

Heart, hand & intellect, below, trump money.

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Wattle & daub in Jamaica.

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New construction.

More than sticks & dirt, windows- doors- wood, were rescued in anticipation of construction.

Another style of wattle & daub, below, in the same garden as, above.

 Every element of each picture is free.

The bottom of my chinoiserie chicken coop is 'open'.  Summer of 2015 I plan to wattle & daub Jamaica style.

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Me.

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No man help.

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Me.

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Feeling the wet Georgia red clay in my hands.

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Chickens watching.

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My heart, hands & pleasure.

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Until then, the glories of anticipation.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pics taken this week, Discovery Bay, Jamaica.  

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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.

Chickens Designed the Classic Potager

Originally designed without the low hedges, below, merely four corners accented with boxwood & a gravel path.

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A small patch to grow cut flowers.

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What went wrong?

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Chickens.

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Centuries of gardens with low evergreen hedges, especially in the potager.

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Not a design conceit, a design function, to keep the chickens out.

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Decades spent thinking the little hedges were there to be 'cute'.

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No.  And there arrived another lesson in humility with Garden Design.

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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

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Pic taken in client garden.  We learned this lesson together.

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Providence was well pleased with us to teach a lesson in humility so humbly.

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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.

.

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.

Microbiomes: Doctor Designed Landscapes

Contrast.  A potent Landscape Design tool.

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Green foliage next to chartreuse foliage, spikey flowers with round flowers, etc.

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This wall of the orchard, below, faces the house & formal lawn.  Its gates, I knew, had to be formal to the point of being jewels.

Another wall of the orchard, below, faces a gravel drive and several barns.  This had to be a rustic gate for saving steps & time.  Both gates are custom, and each received detailed vision questing.

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Beautiful easy landscapes created from my Landscape Design formula are based upon decades of study across Europe of centuries old gardens.

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My heart is on my sleeve about these gardens, every ounce of brain-spirit-effort in trinity as a moth to flame.

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These gardens, le jardin rustique, I realized decades after discovery are profoundly greater than their beauty.

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Science is catching up to their performance.  Beyond the obvious of less maintenance, no chemicals/fertilizers to poison soil/water, beauty increasing property values, shade/sun to reduce HVAC, and the less obvious of greater pollinator habitat, they are home to the microbiome our bodies evolved with.

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"We humans have more than 20,000 different genes. Recently, we've learned that the bacteria that live on and in us have 5 to 8 million genes. Do the math: The microbes on and in us have nearly 400 times more genes than we do! The genes of all those bacteria and other microbes are collectively called the "microbiome." Genes of the microbiome make proteins that enter our bodies and affect our body chemistry." Dr. Anthony Komaroff

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Those homeowner association rules about landscapes?  Killing us, literally, and the microbiomes we need to thrive.

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As a native American Indian said more than a century ago, once the white man has strung his phone lines across this land he will cease to live and merely exist.  Perhaps he inherently knew, that existence would be shorter and more sickly in body as well as mind.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pics taken at jobsite last week.

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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.

.

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.

Sir Roy Strong: Temper Tantrum + Bon Mot

An odd thing has happened with my favorite living garden designer, Sir Roy Strong.

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His garden has been turned down by the National Trust.

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He's having a public temper tantrum.  Which I thought he would have been too smart to contemplate.

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Worse, a more recent picture of his garden, The Laskett, was incredibly Hodge-Podge-Lodge.

Sir Roy Strong is on my Google words list, and this morning proved delicious.

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Lavender's Blue wrote about,  The Irish Georgian society + Island Hall Godmanchester, including this bon mot, " At least we didn't have to resort to flowers!", from Sir Roy Strong.

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Exactly.

Pics, above, from the article, prove, No-Flowers-Needed.

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Until reading the article, and seeing the bridge, above, I was unaware my life was bereft of a rococo Chinese Bridge.

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However, saying, "I need a rococo Chinese Bridge", aloud, feeds the soul as a poem.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Of course gardens need flowers, however, if a garden design must include masses of showy annual flowers & sweeping perennial borders to lift it above the mundane, it is a failure.

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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.

.

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.