Flowers vs Structure

Thinking backwards, creates my career.  Supporting backwards thinking are the big box, many independent garden centers, websites, newspapers, magazines, flower shows, and etc.
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In amusement, at myself, former queen of backwards thinking, you will discover zero rapprochement here.
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Flowers.  Sex machines.  I've taught college botany, but that was much later in the game.
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You want flowers in your landscape.
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Your landscape wants structure.
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A decade of learning across continents & another college degree separates the previous 2 sentences.
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Structure?  Trees, shrubs, groundcovers.  Game on.  Choose for zone, sun/shade, across all bloom/berry seasons, hardiness against drought/flood/disease/insect, no need for chemicals/fertilizers/irrigation once established, little maintenance, siting to shade/sun the house, and attractiveness to pollinators, and destinations for dining, and pure redolence in the sublime, in atonement or a gathering.
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Structured landscape, below.




Flowers, give me flowers, below.  Have this garden if you want, below, but do not start with this garden.  Start with structure, above.



Adore this pair of pictures.
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I began, after college, gardening for amusement, above, after decades trying to get it right, top picture, I've learned a garden is about stewardship.  Better, stewardship is reciprocal.  Settle for mere lilies?  Place lilies in context, structure, they will take care of themselves/soil/air/insects/wildlife/beneficial bacteria-fungi.  Plant lilies first, and you've planted your garden backwards.
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This isn't an admonishment about not having flowers, it's a path to having them more richly, and easily.  Not only for yourself, but myriad layers you've yet to arrive upon.
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Garden & Be Well,        XO Tara
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Top pic from here.    Bottom pic via Pinterest.  Which garden is gone by morning, eaten by deer !   Truly, this pair of pictures makes me smile, and know I'm blessed to be living a life that kicked me out of the first layer.  Did I like every layer Providence gave?  No.  Check out my Quotes board on Pinterest.   Pure grace, and thanks, Providence decided to site the theatrics of my life in a garden & career much adored.

Wallpaper Choices Designed for Winter

Drapes closed, below, Garden Design.

Was this my intention?  Design my garden to interior design my home with the drapes closed?

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No.

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Another garden invention is born.

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Another proclamation from Providence, "You're doing it right."

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Later today, the sun will move upstairs, and fill the guest room walls with wallpaper, 'crape myrtle trees'.

Of course I want more.  A bird to fly across the drapes, land on a branch, and sing.

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Atonement is the unbidden word arriving as innate necessity.  Begun in my garden, enlarged by Nature, filling my home.  Nurturing, in ways unknown to be needed, when this began 3 decades ago.

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Vanishing threshold, home & garden in atonement, enlarged to a trinity, home-garden-spirit.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pics taken a few minutes ago.

Free Garden Design

Modern 2,000+ years ago.  Modern today.
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No need to be an expert, to understand why garden centers are not 'on board'.



Calm.  Facade, bench, pots, gravel, fade their colors into each other.  I see the silhouette of branches in winter striking the house, and gravel.  I hear the leaves, wind rustled, see their fall colors.  Gravel crunching underfoot.
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This house doesn't make the Garden Design special, instead, the choice to have this Garden Design is special.
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Free Garden Design.  Equally at home with a brick ranchburger ca. 1963, pioneer cabin, starter home, $2 million home in a gated community.
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Myriad choices made with this Garden Design.  Especially adore all of the 'no' choices.
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Why is this Garden Design harder to choose than keeping foundation plantings, installed by the builder, and a pocked lawn needing mow/blow/go, fertilizers poisoning groundwater, zero aesthetics to increase property value, no choices for plantings to reduce hvac expenses, no thought for color, or pulling the foot outside to enjoy Nature?
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Picture from here.

Grand View with a Simple Staging Maneuver

French doors, below, overlook mountain views into Georgia & North Carolina.

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Before staging, the French doors overlooked patio furniture.

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Not in my realm.

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Staging, often, is this simple.

Mission statement for staging this cabin for-sale-by-owner, and vacation rentals was easy.  Maximize mountain views from every window & comfort & ease.  Make every picture, in every listing, say, "Rent me, BUY me."
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This pic made neither listing.  With that furniture?   However, 'Outdoor dining, seats 6', was in the ads.  Linen napkins/placemats and a tray were put in the kitchen.  And used.  Detective Dillard noted sweet remnants of a child's birthday party held on the deck, after one rental.    
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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More about staging this property, here.
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Staging is about making money, making a sale.  This client, a friend, quite pleased with the results of staging/listing.  At the front end, he was not on board with staging in-the-least.  After a year?  Results out-of-the-ball-park compared to his professional rental agency, and realtors.
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How I wished Jenny, my mother-in-law were still alive, sourcing kitchen linens for this project.  Thrift store & under $5.  Rough hewn linen, denim chambray color, and already loved/laundered to perfection, set of 10.  Brought one of my own trays for the kitchen.  Seriously, cabin kitchen had no tray?  Jenny,  gave me this, linens for meals, picnics, baskets & trays for carrying.  Her sister-in-law aimed a snide remark, after Jenny's funeral, to the wrong person, me, she said, Jenny ate with linen napkins but the rest of her house was chaos.  No, her home was lived in and loved, always filled with her grown children, their spouses & grandchildren.  Is there another measure?  Breast cancer age 57, Jenny gone.  For a few more weeks my sister/me are book ends to the age Jenny was diagnosed with breast cancer, and the age she died.  Another arrow of grief, unexpected, adding more depth, as if it were needed, to a loss.

Best Question for Work Success: Is it FUN ?

She called recently, "....help I'm in a new home.  A decade +/- has passed, since I was at her river front home, with tennis court, terraces, gardens, a place her husband loved to whip up 50 close friends for a Saturday dinner, often.  Perhaps the occasional movie star was feted at luncheon.  Not uncommon were the fundraising events, significant funds, successfully secured for their various beloved non-profits.

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Do you know what happens to women like this?  With age, their powers grow.  Do you know the key component of these women?  Aside from being matriarchs in every historic fiber, they are fun.

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(Bunny Mellon, below, is one of these women.)

Yesterday, we met at her new home, and began with a house tour, then lunch.

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Much to talk about, before the garden.  Of course the garden threaded thru all.

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She's in a chapter not of her choosing, her husband died 3 years ago.  Hope he heard her talking about him yesterday !

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Real estate could have been bought anywhere, and she chose the best.  Near children/grandchildren.  Plenty of mousetraps.  (Don't know what a mousetrap is?  Allurements, enticements, enjoy my homemade soups/cookies/grilling, play in the entertainment center stuffed with pool table/pingpong/tv/xbox/card table/stereo/sofas a veritable college fraternity house ca. 1980 at SMU but better...)

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The new arts center was mentioned for her city.  Asked who was doing it, she said, "The city."  Not that naive, I asked again.  The group was mentioned, and I said, "They are all women aren't they?", "Yes."

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Told her what I knew of a similar effort, created decade+ ago, she wanted the woman's name who started it, and details about how the $$$ came in.

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Done.  Then to the topic of romance & love.  Books, movies, careers of others, cooking, decorating, gardening.....

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Pets.  

We were in the sun room, 3 long walls of windows overlooking the garden.  Her desk, in the living room, faces the garden, exactly as Noel Coward would have placed it.

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Before the appointment she invited me to an upcoming lecture given by, Andrea Wulf,   The brilliant woman connecting the agrarian life of America's founding fathers to the content of their new form of government.

Childless, I had no playmates my own age since marriage.  Oh my, the gift of infertility.  Age 22, my friends were in their 70's.  My grandmother's era.  Tail end of that era, now passing.  Matriarchal, philanthropic, cooks, decorators, readers, gardeners, spiritual, humorous, self-esteem, modest, stewardship, and every undefinable good thing.
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Asked if she saw, Selma.  "No."  Told her she should, it's another tale of agrarian lifestyle helping to form America.  Martin Luther King created more than a non-violent protest, he used stewardship of livestock to protect his flock, literally.  Pastor-guiding-a-flock was not cliche for March'in Luther, blessedly it was real,  Selma was poorly done, hope someone truly does MLK properly soon.
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Then, her team.  Girlfriend, has 'Thomas'.  He gardens, cooks, decorates, irons, does laundry, opens boxes from moving & puts them away.  In addition, she has Mr. Construction, Mr. Architect, and me.  Noticed, years ago, smart chicks, age 50+, all have a team.  Yes, I have a team.  And their names are only passed along in the manner of stewardship of their time/talents.
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Ok, we finally made it into the garden.
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More fun.  When I go back to draw en plein air, I will get pics for you.  Yesterday was too full with work/laughter.
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One thing I know for sure, if it's not fun with a client, it is not a good match or we are doing something wrong.  Truly, that is my barometer for work.  Is it Fun?
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Poorly describing sublime attitudes, above, someone with 'credentials' describes them worse than poorly, below, he is wrong on a logarithmic scale.  More terribly, it's in description of Bunny Mellon.

The NYT article quotes John Wilmerding, an American art scholar and trustee of the National Gallery of Art in Washington:

Bunny was part of a generation that no longer exists today: an amateur collector with a sure eye, great taste and upper-class refinement, who bought across the board, from expensive jewelry and paintings to trinkets.

Upper-class refinement?  Not only a small lens, cracked.  Bunny's generation is still here, at the tail, but still here.  Performing their magic with all Providence has passed to them.  Bunny was Bunny in spite of her 'upper-class refinement'.  I know several of these women, money is not in great sums for most, but their attitudes/actions trump money.  
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Bottom pics, La Contessa .  Top pic, via Lunch & Lattte.
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Dear John Wilmerding, Bless your heart.  Most don't 'see' the template of personality in women similar to Bunny.  When you see these women, without a cracked lens, you will see them many places.  Ironically, I'm sure at least one of them, if not more, have you in their flock.

Clive Nichols: Shooting Gardens at the Edge

Clive Nichols, below.  He shoots a garden, and it is his garden, yet given away as shutter snaps.

Of course you want your feet to crunch on the gravel, above, and walk thru that door. I have walked thru dozens of these graveled doorways across continents & countries, Clive Nichols shoots them exactly as they are in the memory of sparking brain cells.  His shots capture the owner's fantasy & caretakers hands, and my moments being there.



Repeatedly, Clive Nichols shows the beauty of the present, above, yet greater enticements soon to arrive, in the bud.  Perhaps this is his talent, capturing the frisson of life's potent edge, the margins of change.  Providence.  Atonement in the cusp of change, abiding in the moment caught.
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Clive does not bring his equipment into any garden for amusement.  His skills are used in stewardship.



These are not olive trees, above, with breeze blown lavender.  No.  You are walking thru lavender and touching olive branches as you pass.



More than 'how' to shoot, Clive Nichols, knows 'what' to shoot.  He owns the rose, above, yet gives it away, both, in the same moment.  A truth about  gardens.  No matter the 'owner', a garden is given to all who see.




Clive, you unmask me, in a quick snap, above.  The snows of early summer have begun, above, with petals falling to the ground.  Tara Turf, winding past temporary focal points with the roses in bloom, and the subsidiary focal point with a watering can on the chair, Tara's Garden Design Rule: Just Let It Touch, a chair leg just-brushing the taller Tara Turf, rose foliage caressing a chair's shoulder, a petal fallen on the watering can, color theme chosen, scent of a mown path's new growth, scent of the taller Tara Turf, musky, redolent of native bees honey still being skewered into their pollen basket with nectar, and the gift of letting us have hints of roses on the wind, as you do.  (Wowza, that turned into a free, Garden Design Class - All About Subsidiary Focal Points.)





Nothing 'modern' in a garden is new.  Nothing.  New gardeners think there is a difference amongst styles of gardens across centuries, including our own moment.  Clive keeps shooting his own way, knowing the newest of gardens is as old as the earliest recorded.




Designer, owner, caretaker, time as it takes that trinity across occupants, above, Clive captures the earnestness of heart-on-your-sleeve gardening.



My garden study tours across the globe have been the most thrilling/exhausting work I've ever done.  Up at 4am for breakfast, riding the bus to another garden for a day's allotment of 2-3, rain/shine.  Clive Nichols captures exactly, above, the moment 4am-toil-expense-inconvenience, gone.  And, I can smell the freshly mown low Tara Turf, above, hear the water, feel the morning rays, understand dimensions, feel the proportions, intuit the age of focal points-trees-shrubs...turn toward axis, understand why they are there, showing off, or hinting at seduction.
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It isn't my interest to shoot like Clive Nichols.  My interest is designing gardens Clive wants to shoot.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Clive Nichols teaches photography classes, here.  Perhaps, in the fullness of time, I will take my own photography from the edge of being a Clive Nichols, to being a Clive Nichols.  Hunger still too strong to create those gardens Clive wants to shoot.  However, would love to attend a Clive Nichols seminar.  Perhaps one of my clients, with frequent flier miles, a barn with accommodations, a garden on site to shoot, and several nearby could sponsor something like this?  Acquiring Clive Nichols in their garden, shooting, as reward.

When Aesthetics Save Us

Garden design begins inside your home.

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Pretty views into the garden.

Science is catching up to the microbes swirling in gardens and their necessity to our beneficial gut bacteria, and skin.

You thought it was nice outside, open the door?

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Instead, DNA, pushing for survival.

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A nice day?  Hardly, Providence smiles.

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 Providence smirks.  Your agenda is a pretty garden.  Instead, done to historical template  (aka  Garden Design formula), property value increases, HVAC decreases, maintenance reduced, pollinators fed not killed, no fertilizers/chemicals poisoning groundwater/killing soil microbes, physical health is better, mental health is stronger.

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Science Daily, a garden/farm bacteria/health information resource.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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More, 

Take Two Hikes and Call me in the Morning: Nature Deficit Disorder

Pics early last summer with Laura, conceived & born in my garden.  Of course she moved inside.

When a Client Doesn't Like Your BEST Work

Lunch at jobsite, below, yesterday.

Met with clients, on site, initially to walk/talk their new garden.

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Drew the plan, and mailed it.
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Then, the phone call, "He doesn't like anything about the plan."
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It did not bother me, in the least.  She liked the plan, I listened to her descriptions of what he disliked about the plan, aside from everything.

3+ decades drawing gardens, I knew, deep within my bones, this is the best plan I've ever done.  Top of my game.  The prime of miss jean brodie, before she was aware it had passed.

Every garden has a lot of right answers, and wrong.

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His dislikes were within the realm of expectations.  He wanted meat & potatoes.  Instead, he was served the most incredible bottle of red wine Earth has produced, the tastiest asparagus, upon elegantly simple ironstone, antique subtle silver utensils, candles burning, and the meat/potatoes became so obscured by the fineness of the 'other', he lost site.  He did get what he wanted.

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How did he 'see' ?

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Confidence.  My work/skills are based upon history, decades studying historic landscapes across Europe.  Zero I create is 'new', zero.  My work is that of the best, done by others long dead, across continents & cultures.

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How could I be upset, he did not 'see' my work?  It was new to him.  I listened intently for her descriptions of his concerns.  Poof, voila.  Let's tweak here, and tweak this, and tweak that.

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The original plan was a 'concept' plan.  Changes were made to the final plan.

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He approved the final plan.  He was 'on board'.

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The new question, from him, and her, 'Did I like the new plan?"

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Seemingly changed, it still retained all the best of every bit I've learned over decades.

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I'm just as happy with the final plan as the concept plan.  However, this is THEIR garden.

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Confidence.  Sound of Music, I have confidence in confidence itself, type of confidence.

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This is still my best work.  And, now, he likes his meat/potatoes.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pics taken at jobsite.  The story got a bit wilder.  They were only going to install the minimum for covering the red clay, and a few paths.  Instead, he said to install the entire plan.  Will post this garden when it's complete, and both the drawings.

Bunny Mellon: Garden & Gun

Topiaries & terra cotta.  All sizes.  25 a good start.

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Enough to set about, and, trade out.  Trade weekly, prevent spider mites.  The off-exhibit, outside.

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Bunny Mellon, Garden & Gun, below.

Enough topiary & terra cotta to pass forward with Lunch Ministry.

In Vanity Fair, below, ca. August, 2010. Bunny Mellon hit my radar.  Rare, the person intentionally gardening just-like-me.  Oh my, yes.  This, below, stopped me.  A kindred spirit.  Who exactly is Bunny Mellon?  In the fullness of time, may she keep returning to your radar, as she does mine.

“Nothing should stand out. It all should give the feeling of calm. When you go away, you should remember only the peace.”  Bunny Mellon, of her beloved, Oak Spring  Farm.



Delightful YouTube about Bunny Mellon, here.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

Design that isn't Designed

Using what you have Garden Design, below.

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With delectable additions.

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Without fail, after a designed garden has aged, the best pictures are never the intended best pictures.

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I study these.  Ponder them.  Time passes.

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Most often, without answer.

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Yet.  No matter the scenario, I create a garden.
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Garden whisperer.
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At a jobsite, working in the mode of what exists, what is available, permutations in rivulets top-down in the brain, nothing else exists, nothing.  Moments of eternity.  No time, no hunger, no sense of breathing or heart beat, at one with, atonement.
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Then the general contractor, yelling across a meadow, hurry up these guys can't stand here all day.
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Ripped from atonement.
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Rivulets gone.  Into the present, only a distant memory of eternity.
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Guys coming in, plantings placed, me adjusting, adjusting, adjusting, what I can.  Just damn the aging body, plants heavier than me, must be moved a foot.  The men 'know', I am desperate.  Intuitive.  Their boss, the general contractor who they must satisfy, yet all of them, like a waltz, dipping in to my panic, helping, one human to another.
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Was on a panel judging garden entries for our state's largest trade group yesterday.  A particular home, a vacation home, magnificent in setting/architecture/landscape, we gave it the top award.  Rare the individual in any era acquiring a gettaway home like this one.  Yet, my heart doesn't want to own/enjoy that home.   Rather, dozens of those homes, I want to design/install the gardens.  The wealth of my soul.  Atonement.
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 " He who is born with a silver spoon in his mouth is generally considered a fortunate person, but his good fortune is small compared to that of the happy mortal who enters the world with a passion for flowers in his soul."  Celia Thaxter, An Island Garden, page 4.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic Nest Pretty Things

Was given, An Island Garden, by my mother-in-law, Jenny, decades ago.  Have read it several times, and will read it many times more.

Community Activists Who WANT to Stay off the Radar

When my father ran for city council, 1970's, he had Coffee's in friends houses.  He lost.  Ran again, won.

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When I go home I still walk the park at the marsh along Clear Creek, where fresh water meets salt water, created/saved/maintained with my dad on the zoning team.  Further along my walk, towards the end, saved as I did during bike rides as a child, Galveston Bay on Upper Bay Road,  Deep salt water, boats, my little island, the land of G*d.  Too bad land views beyond the water were not in the jurisdiction of my dad's zoning team back-in-the-day.  Now, it's all construction.   

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Toward the end of dad's tenure in city government a parcel of land, salt water frontage, was considered for a new nursing home.  Dad went ballistic.  Zoning team worked hard, had many scares, yet prevailed.  Nursing home never built, and the land preserved as a public park.  Before reaching the boardwalk on Upper Bay Road, my feet are on the gravel trails of that park.  Grace given from one generation to another.  Dad & his team with zero concern for recognition.  

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Today, the park 'just is' for most who pass it and use it.  Exactly what the zoning team wished.  

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Across USA are dozens of teams doing the same.  However, they are not city government nor legal zoning groups.  Few are recognized, nor want to be.  Easier to work under the radar, these people are not stupid.  Yet they perform major & minor tasks for communities, for you, for me.  

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These groups made my career.  Time has brought success, in gratitude I continue meeting with these groups at rates reflecting the early/hungry years.  

3 decades of lecturing to Garden Clubs across Georgia, and USA.

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Decades of sitting thru their business meetings.  They never cease to interest me.  The Garden Club is the tapestry of a community, and a last bastion of civility.  

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Information.  Often the type you will not find elsewhere.   Crimes occurring, who has died, who is gravely ill, who has moved away/in, arranging for community decor at the entry ways for the holidays.  

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Nor is it uncommon for Garden Clubs to step into local government issues affecting their 'subdivision'.  Yes, Garden Clubs have stopped major big box construction on small rural roads unable to handle the 'services' required.  Most Garden Clubs have charities they raise money for, with long track records.

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A few Garden Clubs host Flower/Garden Shows bringing major convention traffic to their leading American cities.

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Every layer of activity with a Garden Club increases/touches social connection, property values, safety, civility.

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Unpaid public servants.

Garden Clubs have meetings about plants, but they are not plant meetings.

 Holding office in a Garden Club is easy.  There is a mentored path to president, if you wish.  However, this is the realm of matriarchs.  Beware, mean girls.  If you're serious about going to 'president' position, those matriarchs will turn you into one of them, or you'll drop out because you-want-to.  Once your name is off the Garden Club list, bless-your-heart, those matriarchs will still invite you in.  Knowing the power of a Mean Girl turned Matriarch.
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As decades pass, and women retire from amazing careers, they join Garden Club for the first time.  A broad array of skill sets are within Garden Club.  Almost every time amongst them I'm wishing I knew everything every woman in the room knew.  They humble me.  There is so much to learn.

Most amazing fact about Garden Club?  Virtually ignored by their cities & businesses.

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Unless the mayor has decided to become jealous of their successes.  Yes, I know of that true story too.  A delicious tale, but I have to head off to jobsites.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pics from a Garden Club talk I gave earlier this month.

Topiary: Levens Hall & Arne Maynard

Levens Hall, The Lake District, Cumbria, was the first European study garden I visited.  I was on my way to Scotland to study historic gardens.

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Levens Hall is known for many things, especially topiary, below.

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Topiary was not off my radar, entirely, for decades.  I didn't like it. 

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Now, I get topiary.  Better late than 'nevah'.  Proof, my mistakes are never small.

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Large properties, especially, find topiary useful.  Small properties too.

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Accent, focal point, all year effect, easy to maintain, design uses are many.

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Across USA millions of homes retain their PSO's planted by the builder to satisfy mortgage loan requirements with new construction.

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PSO?  Plant Shape Only.

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Plenty of mature USA hollies are ready for topiary.

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From Levens Hall, below, a chart of some of their topiary.  What's not to like?  You get to put your mark on topiary.

Discovered the work of Arne Maynard via the internet.  Have never been to his garden, nor those he has designed.  Soon, soon...

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Knew immediately he was already where I was headed.  Deep simplicity, Nature, house architecture, wit, intelligence, deeper simplicity.  Of course, Levens Hall runs thru the fragrance of Maynard's work.

Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Top pic Levens Hall, bottom pic Arne Maynard.

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The famous topiary garden at Levens Hall was laid out on axis from a bank of windows inside the home, the middle lead.   Not written anywhere, discovered during my tour.  Levens Hall has had a head gardener entering in the garden journal for almost 4 centuries.

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Life is good, have been to Levens Hall 3 times, and Arne Maynard's gardens await.  Oddly, have zero inclination to travel to international gardens at present.  Too important to design gardens and get them in the ground.