French Toile: Anna Belle Hydrangeas, Tool Bouquets, Garden Shed

A good French toile, below, come to life.

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Shot this week, I'm greedy and would like daily access.

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Shoot when the rose is cascading blossoms.

Shoot on a snowy day in the dead of winter.

 Shoot on a bleached out hot humid Southern afternoon.

Shoot from inside the kitchen, two big windows view this French toile.
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Fall shots, with rain, a refined camera allowing you to smell the petrichor from foliage, and rusty tools, or corrugated metal.  Divining the distinctions of each.
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A great year for Anna Belle hydrangeas.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics from Susanne Hudson's garden this week.  Come see her garden, it's on tour this Sat/Sun, Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival.

Elements of a Famous Garden: Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival

Shade encroached lawn, below, so it was removed & a gravel path was added with a row of boxwoods.

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Then, unexpectedly, a gift of huge pots with boxwoods, and an entryway was created, below.

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This is a new portion of Susanne Hudson's famous Douglasville, GA garden.  Her garden is on the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival tour this Saturday/Sunday.

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Aside from being in magazines, on TV and tours, Susanne's garden should also be famous for how easy it is to maintain.

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And, deer proof.

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Susanne's garden reads like a Garden Design Manual.

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Garden Design Elements:

  Complete architecture above, ceiling, walls, floors, doorways, rooms.

Hallway (gravel path)
Foyer (zone between arbor/boxwood in pots/end of gravel path)
Walls ( fence, side of house, hedges)
Color  (house/fence white theme)
Color ( layers of green, dark green, light green)
Color (granite gravel chosen to flow with white theme vs. brown river pebbles)
Ceiling (sky is designed by framing with canopy & understory trees)
Entryways (the more entryways a garden has the better a garden is)
Ballroom (invitation to the ballroom via the arbor, implied mystery, the garden beckons you)
Parlor (invitation to the parlor thru the large boxwood pots)
Art on the Wall (house is backdrop to the garden)
Art on the Wall (one focal point/area is the macro rule, here it's the arbor)
Flooring (gravel, low meadow)

Garden Design is Interior Design with different arrows in the quiver.  When you see a garden you like, there is a language to describe every element.  Learn the language, in this lone pic, above, and your quiver will be full for any garden you see moving forward.

When I give this lecture, I move to a new pic, use the laser pointer, and let the audience shout out what it is.  By the 3rd picture all are fluent.  Even those that were skeptical.  Name it to claim it is true for garden design.  Once you can name it, you can put it in your own garden.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic taken by Susanne Hudson.  Spent the night with Susanne earlier this week, preparing for my lecture at the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival this Saturday, 2pm, in the new courthouse.

When it's Simple, You're Dancing

For years I've known the best question to ask after 'completing' a Garden Design, "What can I take out, and it still holds together?"
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For decades I've had the privilege of being hired by women in their 70's-80's.  Most widowed, or divorced.  Why privilege?  Aside from demanding beauty with ease of maintenance, that's easy, the known quantity, yet unspoken, is staying in the house, till the end.  We're playing at winning the end game, without stress.  The end game is not for sissies.  Roofs with major winds, plumbing issues within a slab, a toilet leaking from upstairs while away on a trip flooding the entire home, a cancer diagnosis, perhaps a stroke, living for months with a grown child needing grandma's help with their little ones during a job transition.
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When I'm hired by these women, I understand unspoken reasons.
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Now, moving into a new home, I'm designing my new garden for my 80 year old self.



Looks 'modern', above, yet follows every classic Garden Design rule since before Christ's era.



Without awareness, or training, I know something, in metaphor, about Garden Design, Herbert Muschamp wrote in describing Venice, "The function of the City was to translate the religion into a visual & spacial code."



Beloved has asked me, more than once, always in exasperation, "Are you always a Garden?"  Yes, thank you.  More than believe, active choices are made throughout the day, every day, to 'Take Joy' as Tasha Tudor did, by knowing into my DNA, "Our energy flows where our attention goes."



"How can we know the dancer from the dance?", W.B. Yeats.  If you have a landscape, your answer is public, every picture in this post, the owner knows the dance, and dances.  



Above, plain?  Hardly.  You're seeing the dance.
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Why aren't more gardens, above, like this one?  Aside from easy to maintain, interiors flowing outside, do you notice the major force?  This garden reeks of invitation, alone or a pair, and quickly available to expand for a group enjoying dinner/wine.



This garden, above, combines the previous 2 pics.  Scroll upward and look again.  This is the dance.
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Haven't moved into my new home/garden yet, but I'm already dancing its dance.
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Isn't it time you dance yours?
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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All pics Pinterest: Vanishing Threshold.

Walkabout in a Garden

The bit of lawn, below, harmful to my spirit.  Gone for decades.  Hydrangeas, a stone path, etc.  Where I park my car, I demand a beautiful view.  And from every window in my home, looking into the garden too.

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This year the Anna Belle Hydrangea are flowing into bloom according to how much morning sun is filtering across their drift.  When they were planted sunlight was uniform across their breadth, times change.  I delight in the nuance of change.

Taller hydrangea, the native Oakleaf hydrangea are planted at back, below.  Why see the neighbor's home?  In the foreground, below, another Oakleaf hydrangea, a seedling.  Trusting this serendipity is G*d's classroom for Garden Design.  Allowing for Nature.

Walking past the drift, below, looking back at the Anna Belle's from the opposite direction.  Use this feature of Garden Design.  Double axis in walkabout.  Both axis are unique, though it's the same spot.  A dual reality.
 

 A couple of dandelion, above, at Anna Belle's feet.  Will pull them and take to the Chicken Coop this morning.  Makes me happy, the past few days, watching the dandelions grow, knowing my girls will like the treat.  In addition to savoring the daily nuance in change as the Anna Belle's open.
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It has not been lost upon Beloved, my care/thought, feeding my girls, and with him it's, "For a good meal take me out to eat."

 Further walkabout, above, the Oakleaf hydrangea you saw at the back of the first picture, above, I've walked another flagstone path, into the potager, and the backside of the Anna Belle hydrangea drift has another front, there is truly no backside.
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In a perfect world, Walkabout: Thru the Seasons, is my first E-book.  Pics of the garden, interspersed with watercolor birds eye views for your map.  When these hydrangea are not blooming, or bare brown sticks in winter, camellias are in peak bloom, crape myrtle bloom above these hydrangeas all summer, Chinese snowball begin before the hydrangea, daffodils before the snowballs....
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That is Garden Design.  And this is just a teeny patch of Nature, it's the entire garden behaving in this manner.  Because I must have it to breath.
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Walkabout book, after 3 decades in my sweet garden, will never be written here.  Less than 3 weeks, I won't live here anymore.
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No I'm not strong enough for this.  Merely know to trust in faith, and grace, my new home & garden, are a gift too.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics taken yesterday.
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Chose my new house colors with Susanne Hudson last weekend.  She's wild busy again with Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival, June 6 - 7, Sat/Sun.  They've honored me this year, I'm the keynote speaker, Saturday at 2pm.  Cannot wait !

Micro & Macro Mission Statements

What's the mission statement for your garden?

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Mine?

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I want to look out every window of my home, and unprompted, exclaim, 'OH WOW'.  Everyday, many times each day, and night.  

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Of course that is too small, micro.  Macro, I must have something coming into bloom every 2 weeks, all year.  Little maintenance, no irrigation, fragrance, pollinators, and views I choose, the sky framed to my amusement, etc...

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Before the internet, cell phone, digital camera, I demanded of my garden a roll of 36 slides, taken any day of the year, each slide worthy of a magazine/catalogue/book cover.  The brain wave, for taking any garden picture.

Yesterday, above.  Shooting my front garden, in the Bay Terrace, Laura.  Days of sorrow & tears, in moving, I refuse to allow to take away a single moment of the many joys, grace, & life victories pouring forth, in moving.  

Tears were not dry on my cheeks, from shooting the pics top/bottom, before time to celebrate, above, milestones for the move.

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Beloved/I had quite the day, zooming in 2 cars follow the leader, sometimes 1, against 'major' deadlines, downtowns/parking meters/back roads/storms/lawyers/judges/morons/saints/banks etc, like a Doris Day/Rock Hudson film.  

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After my vinegar/water spilled in his car, already frustrated he was beyond perturbed, then I discovered his huge commercial project blue prints were more than wet with 'my' vinegar/water, holes were eaten thru his blueprints.  The more perturbed Beloved got the harder I laughed.

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(Really 'my' vinegar/water only spilled because of his driving.), Beloved had to head out-of-state to that huge commercial job, now full of vinegar/water holes, good to give a man something to remember you by.  Called him on the phone to stay.  No.  Then came the weather.  No.  Weather came bigger.  No.  Roads closed, and it was already rush hour in Atlanta.  

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Guess who was toasting with champagne?

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Of course he was.

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Need to let you know about the vinegar/water, you'll probably be drinking it soon.

In my new garden, I know, epiphanies/metaphors will arrive, specifically, to place my loved garden properly.  

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Faith.  Trust.  Grace.

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Trinity of strength. 

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Top/bottom pics are separate photos, I doubt I'll ever get over the luxury of taking as many pics as desired.  During the days of slides, sometimes, I had to wait for developing because I had no money.  Importance of each slide being fabulous was imperative.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO T

Howard Slatkin: Tete-a-tete

My new house, 115 year old American farmhouse architecture, has a large formal dining room with a corner of windows.  Not a large arena within the room, but I knew from the 1st walk thru the corner would be a favorite spot.  Less than 24 hours later I made an offer on the house.
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Howard Slatkin, below, nailed it for my dining room corner, below.
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The daily 'look', below.



And, arranged, below, for my favorite, a tete-a-tete.



Though I haven't moved in I know where my guest will sit.  1 window has a fabulous view, the other 'needs work'.  Alone, it's obvious where I will sit.  Ok, both views 'need work', at least one is completely vernacular.


Solitary luncheon is the most common, but I had excellent mentoring in dining alone.  Miss Louise, my beloved grandmother-in-law, long a widow, always chose a beautiful setting for herself, alone, and for our many dinners together, tete-a-tete, of course.



Another mentor, Mary Kistner, along with her beautiful table settings, taught me her favorite tea recipe, Earl Gray mixed with fresh mint from the potager.  She always had a 2nd teapot too, filled solely with a mix of her many types of mint, with just finished boiling water poured over.  Discussing the merits of the 2nd teapot was a delight, everytime.
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My corner will have mostly vintage wicker.  An excuse has arrived to allow, yet another, dropleaf gateleg antique table into my stable.  The hunt has begun.
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More Pins from Howard Slatkin on my Edwardian pin board created for my new house.  Howard has a focus with his interior design, too many decorators do not have.  People.  Howard Slatkin focuses his interiors and gardens for people to have conversations, laughter, share stories, gossip, create lives well lived, beyond material goods.  His gardens are fascinating, they put a tete-a-tete above all, always.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pics Howard Slatkin.  Closing on the new house soon, choosing interior colors next week.  Movers are hired but many trips with antique ironstone/china, lamps, art, a few chairs for 'scope of the imagination' to be had, 3 dropleaf tables to site front-middle-back of the house, will be toted in my little van, alone.  Put together a box for the kitchen, enough to get me thru this 'camping' phase of 3 weeks before movers arrive.  My favorite vintage ivory linen tea towels, 3 types of tea, oversized Spode 'gardeners' tea cup, and oversized Spode mug, coffee, you get the idea, enough for a tete-a-tete right away in that dining room corner.
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Of course I'm bringing 3 wicker waste baskets, a bucket with brush/comet, garbage bags, paper towels, cleaning rags, broom/dust pan, a little radio to listen to classical music on NPR, things for the charwoman.  Me.

What the French Gave: Monocoloring

Credentials I have, yet my true Garden Design education spanned 2+ decades and several continents.

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Smiled when I saw this, below.

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France gave me 2 huge arenas of learning, 1 is below.  

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MonoColoring.

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Language is no barrier to studying the best historic gardens across the globe.  Gardens speak Gardenese.

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Applying a French Garden Design lesson, below.

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If you field gather garden chairs, no worries about style, beyond comfort of course, paint them all the same color. 

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This lesson holds true at every price point home, castle, gated community, farm, villa, pied a terre, section 8 apartment balcony, townhome, even in my little working class cluster home neighborhood.

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Chairs, below, have a choice of colors for monocoloring.  Use trim color from the house, or an interior color that is prominent in the best artwork owned or from the carpet, perhaps a wall color.

Of course more needs to be done, above, in this sweet garden room.

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Vine maintenance, above, is about a month overdue.  Bring a ladder to the French doors landing, with jackhammer drill, mortar screws, galvanized wire, install, finally, threading vine across top of French doors.

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Stay there, and hang the lantern, from the second step, centered above the French doors with the bottom of the lantern hanging 3 courses of bricks above the top of the French doors.

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Done with the ladder, put a level on the pot at the right of the French doors and get it level.

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Finally, use some spare bricks from home construction and raise the serving table, next to the house, 4 bricks high.

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All of these changes, are what my brain does, all of the time, driving or looking at Pinterest.  My brain 'fixes' gardens.  A well-honed skill.

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My brain can rest from this particular form of Garden Design OCD when camping at beach/mountains, and joyfully in my friends gardens.

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When a client garden is headed for Garden Tour it is amazing the to-do list we create for an already fabulous garden.  Pages long.

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If your garden is ready for a garden tour, but you've not done one yet, I strongly encourage you to do it.  Your garden will go to another level.

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You will never have been so driven in your life, promise.  Aside from weeks of exhaustion and hunting/gathering, your checkbook will provide, in a manner that feels like Zen but prior to the tour felt like fear.  It gets worse, you will begin new garden layers, to be finished prior to the tour, you never anticipated.  Providence, supplying epiphanies and inspirations, and you will be Peasant in Chief, happy to oblige. 

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Did you just smirk at this?

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Then YOU are the one that will do all described.  Promise.

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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

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Pic from HERE.  

Dots Connected: Agriculture, Water, Government, Gut Biome & Banking

Vintage ironstone, below, what do you see in the scene?  Decades, I saw, 'boring'.

Now, I see prayers of thanks, honoring the gift of Nature from Providence, its methods of provision, and more than simple survival, spiritual.  We are included in the cycle, as surely as the daffodil in spring.
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Spring's platter, honoring flowers of the guild, attracting widest variety of pollinators to the fruit trees, increasing yields by 80%.  Survival of man, pollinators, livestock, communities, nations.
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Commercial agriculture & livestock steps outside the circle of stewardship.  Water is poisoned, soil is killed, communities die, a nation's congress is bought.  ( Is 'sold' more correct?  Thank you to my dear readers sending missives elucidating where I am wildly wrong.  Why be a little bit wrong?)
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Fascinating science arriving about our gut bacteria, its role in our health.  From The Daily Mail, May 11, 2015, "

Everything you think you know about diets is WRONG: Counting calories is a total waste of time, it’s bacteria in your gut that make you fat and finally, cheese, alcohol and chocolate can all help"

"Professor Spector believes it’s down to the bacteria in our gut. He has found that the type and variety of our gut bugs have an astonishing influence on many aspects of our health.

‘Microbes are not only essential to how we digest food,’ he says. 

‘They also control the calories we absorb and provide vital enzymes and vitamins, as well as keeping our immune system healthy.’, full article.

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Following the money, a group of small farmers gathered almost a decade ago, brainstorming ways to keep money from leaving their county, discovering as time passed the idea had to grow from county to state to region.  This is hilarious, you already know where this is going, I'm sure of it.  
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The Atlantic,

Planning for Rural America's Economic Future

In Pottawattamie County, the agricultural sector is proving that innovative regional strategies can start anywhere.

"It has worked to train the next generation of farmers and to help existing farms with small-business coaching. Now, the county even collaborates with nearby Omaha, Nebraska, to help attract and keep corporations in the region instead of engaging in an economic border war across state lines, a development that too often plagues regional economic development.".

Continuing, "Part of the strategy to keep money in-state was to shift the type of farming that southwest Iowans engaged in from large industrialized farms to smaller operations that grew food that local people could eat. From this initial series of meetings was born the Southwest Iowa Food and Farm Initiative. The group has grown to a roster of more than 50 farmers, O'Brien says, with a smattering of local food-policy councils."  Full article.  

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From the 1960's Wendell Berry has written about the decimation of family farms, their way of life supporting more than a family, entire towns, conglomerated into states, and for most of USA's history, an entire country, agricultural.  More about USA's agricultural founders & its influence upon our form of government, read, Founding Gardeners, by Andrea Wulf.

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Back to the platter, 

Until post WWII people, world wide, knew Nature, its workings literally & metaphorically,  as survival to health of the body, spirit, and financial security.  

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Losing the connection, less than a century ago, science is proving Nature of more importance to our good health than our good actions with diet & anti-bacterial soap, working sedentary office lives, not in tandem with the seasons of the soil.

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Further, trying to financially stabilize & grow a dying rural USA, improves health for people, agriculture, livestock, water, soil.  A banking system as beneficial as local farming must be chosen.  

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Ellen Brown, takes banking the way I take agriculture, for the people, organic, honest, public banks.  She's a money farmer.  Without good banking matching good agriculture/livestock, the system is weak, money flowing away from communities.

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Ellen Brown, "Connecting the Dots – 05.06.15

At what point are you willing to challenge your own notions of what’s really going on? Can you even imagine that the mavens of the Money Power would threaten human survival to serve themselves for even bigger personal profits? Ellen’s guest, researcher Dane Wigington, has a trove of data to suggest that they would. And they do so in the form of geoengineering, a covert tool allegedly being used to control natural systems for private profit. We also hear commentary from Matt Stannard about the economics of the Baltimore uprising and from Marc Armstrong about America’s only publicly-owned depository bank, the Bank of North Dakota, which just issued its latest annual report — it’s another record-setting winner!

Listen here."

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California is currently turning water into a government resource/commodity, soon, your state will too.  A relief to discover there is new science, & engineering, about water.

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Ellen Brown, 

California Water Wars: Another Form of Asset Stripping?

"Tapping Underground Seas

Another untapped resource is California’s own “primary” water — water newly produced by chemical processes within the earth that has never been part of the surface hydrological cycle. Created when conditions are right to allow oxygen to combine with hydrogen, this water is continually being pushed up under great pressure from deep within the earth and finds its way toward the surface where there are fissures or faults. This water can be located everywhere on the planet. It is the water flowing in wells in oases in the desert, where there is neither rainfall nor mountain run-off to feed them.

A study reported in Scientific American in March 2014 documented the presence of vast quantities of water locked far beneath the earth’s surface, generated not by surface rainfall but from pressures deep within. The study confirmed “that there is a very, very large amount of water that’s trapped in a really distinct layer in the deep Earth… approaching the sort of mass of water that’s present in all the world’s oceans.”

In December 2014, BBC News reported the results of a study presented at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, in which researchers estimate there is more water locked deep in the earth’s crust than in all its rivers, swamps and lakes together. Japanese researchers reported in Science in March 2002 that the earth’s lower mantle may store about five times more water than its surface oceans."  Full article here. 

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Back to the platter.

  

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A lot of writing in this post, more eloquently drawn, above, in my vintage ironstone platter.  Yet, I did not go into the realm of Providence, sure, all my words inadequate, the platter says it all.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Don't know what a guild is for fruit trees?  More, here.  

We Want What We Say We Don't Want

Few have a language to convey what they want for/from/within their landscape.  Doctors must think the same when a patient has symptoms, and no vocabulary to describe them.  My stomach hurts.

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I want those white flowers.

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I don't want to spend a lot of money, and don't want anything high maintenance, nothing formal.

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Nothing formal.

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Perhaps the most abused request, "Nothing formal."

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Followed by pictures of gardens they like, 100% with formal lines, and high maintenance filler plantings, aka expensive.

All of this I thought of seeing the sweet garden, above.

Every element of good garden design for the last several centuries is in this garden. (Copied, repetition, contrasting foliage textures, evergreen structure all year, movement of eye/pollinators/foot, axis, cross axis, change thru the seasons, framing the sky, framing the home, hi density/low density attracting widest variety of pollinators.)
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This garden, above, could have a lovely 'modernist' overlay by removing all perennials/flowering shrubs and replacing solely with low evergreen groundcover.  Expense goes down, fun choices arrive.  Site hardscape focal points, or a line of pots, to be planted, or not.
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Another direction to take this garden, above, take away all perennials and replace with a variety of hydrangea, mophead/oakleaf/paniculata.
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Oddly, I know I've entered a new chapter.  Instead of wanting hydrangeas, for 2 decades, groundcovers have become the delight.  Perhaps 6 large pots of hydrangeas.  Line them up in 2 rows?  Perhaps anchor an enfilade with 3 pairs?  Where would a pair of benches go?  Where to place a double axis of vintage urns/plinths?   A proscenium is born.
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Delighting in this simplicity, a fun challenge, and exercise in continual refinements.  Hodge podge lodge was fun too, the years simplified into a new game.
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When a client has full time job, kids in elementary school, pets, and no means for maintenance beyond basic mow/blow/go, and asks for this garden, above, I sell it minus the perennials, adding groundcovers & focal points.  Describing the maintenance, and skilled labor/expense, sells the simplicity.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic by © Nicola Stocken Tomkins. Countryside April 2012, here.

Monet's Fruit Tree with Climbing Rose

After touring Monet's garden, hours, we went to the shops behind his home, at bottom of pic below, and bought sandwiches.  The day was too fine, experiencing his home/garden too intense,  we sat under an ancient fruit tree, it's in the watercolor below, in a stupor.
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More, the fruit tree was ancient, with an equally ancient climbing rose threading thru it, in peak bloom.



Boring enough tale, yet to anyone speaking the language of gardenese, tale of a lifetime.
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We travel the globe for these moments.  And plant them at home, the luckiest among us have hundreds of gardens to plant them in.  Client gardens.  My wealth lies not in the bank, but in my career.
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Walking my sweet garden, 30 years here, has me in tears daily now.  Especially the moments ahead of peak gloaming.  There is no word in English, probably in another language for this, pulling in with the eyes, nose, and skin trying to imprint more than they can take in onto my DNA.
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Selfishness, of a peculiar sort, fear, hunger for more, and the feeling of never being able to return, must learn, educate, retain, sort, deduce, elucidate, sense all of the ephemeral that has passed, translate, know that it will be the soul understanding the language, not my head, the muse, erudite, able to create what the gardenese clearly speaks.
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Yesterday, above, in my garden.  Climbing rose into the Crape Myrtle.
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Best part of this pic?  I'm standing in the street with a dozen working class houses intruding.  Yet for this ephemeral fragment, gardenese owns the space.  My house is behind this tapestry hedge.  In this moment you don't know the location, acreage, era or reality.  I am fluent in gardenese.  Looks a bit wild, yet totally designed, rustic.  And you see the role Monet played.  Hint of another story, in Italy, in the pic too.
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My soul would have withered, living here, without my garden.   Yet with my garden, though I've traveled the globe on the hunt for historic gardens, there is a bedrock epiphany, I travel farthest in my garden.
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Like the story from Dr. Zhivago, this talent for extravagant travel within my garden, 'It is a gift.'
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Soon, I'll be living an hour east of my garden.  Like Karen Blixen, after leaving, I will never return.  In my new garden, I know I can return any time.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Top pic via Trip Advisor.

Scenting the Trail of a Good Garden: Ena de Silva

Occasionally, still, a garden stops me.  The gardener is of extreme interest, this time merely from a pic of their garden.
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Saw this yesterday, and analyzed.  Went back to it this morning.
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Why are the stones brown, not white?  Every element particular to views from inside, why the mud splashed onto the white walls, and obvious long duration?  Why the dirt path from sidewalk to the pond?  Fish in the pond to be fed?  Why not cover the bare Earth with stone again?  This garden does not look like it's in USA.
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The gardener is dead, moved, elderly?  This garden is too good to be in its current state without a major life event from its owner.
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Christopher Lloyd, "The garden dies when the gardener dies."
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How alive the wallpaper of shadows.  Though the garden is in senescence.




Needing to know more, found it, and was not disappointed.  My skillset finding good gardens & the fascinating women who created them, more than intact, evolved !
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This garden belongs to, Ina de Silva, "Ena de Silva’s contribution to the arts and crafts of Sri Lanka is immense. While creating contemporary designs using traditional skills and techniques, she also worked tirelessly to empower women and make better the living standards of villagers.

Yesterday the Geoffrey Bawa Trust presented her with a special Lifetime Achievement award for her contribution to the Arts and Architecture of Sri Lanka, (the other recipient being Barbra Sansoni). “One thing is I am myself and it’s great to be appreciated for being me. Everyone likes a bit of appreciation and I am happy that I too am appreciated. It makes me very happy,” she smiles. The smile never seems to leave her lips."

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Full article, from, Sunday Times,

Ena’s kaleidoscope of colour

Honoured with a lifetime achievement award by the Geoffrey Bawa Trust yesterday, Ena de Silva speaks to Yashasvi Kannangara about her world in Matale

“I am really mad,” says Ena de Silva. It is the kind of timeless mad that enchants you. That you obsess over during a four-hour drive back home from Matale to Colombo. At 88, she is one of the youngest people you could ever meet, seeming to have the heart and soul of a twenty- year-old. Adorned with hair ornaments, an ivory coloured comb, gold hoops bunched in red beads, three cocktail rings and a large flowery brooch she looks radiant and full of life. Many words could describe her; flamboyant, cheerful, generous and unpretentious. Joyous spirit: Ena at 88. Pix by M.A. Pushpa Kumara Ena’s home is on the hills of Aluwihare where her ancestors lived for generations, hidden amidst a garden full of flowers and trees. A variety of wild flora grows among splashes of bright pink bougainvilleas, orange anthuriums and bunches of beautiful white flowers. The garden overlooks a spectacular view. “The view I owe to my father, Sir Richard Aluwihare,” says Ena. When she was a child her father told her “You know my mother (Ena’s grandmother) brought me up here all the time and she told me, the sun and the moon rise from right here every day. You must one day build a house on this very spot.” He did. Walking into the house is like walking into a fairytale. In the first instant you are overwhelmed by every little detail; piles of embroidered cushions, layers of carpets, batik draping from the ceiling, old chairs tied with yards of brightly coloured cloth, flower arrangements, origami flowers and every kind of knick knack. Walls embedded with old china, tabletops full of statuettes, copper pots hanging from a roped canopy and a dining table that is a kaleidoscope of colour. This is who Ena de Silva is. Her house captures her spirit entirely and has been her home for the past 30 years. Although crowded with a multitude of items, it holds a sense of calm and tranquillity. “I’m so glad I made the decision to come here. The time spent here has been the best part of my life. You meet real people not just society people. Everyone thought I’ll be bored and alone but people visit me here all the time,” she says. “It is like a sanatorium to my friends in Colombo. Children like coming here. They are delighted. I am very lucky to have young people around me all the time.” Her inspiration for the hand painted walls and ceilings comes from two decorative wood panels hung on the wall. “My husband got me these long long ago. He found them thrown away outside a temple and brought them home. The lotuses I have painted all over the walls and the pillars and the triangular designs you see painted everywhere are inspired by this. ” She trails off at the mention of her husband, Osmund de Silva. “I was lucky enough to marry a man who said ‘If you can handle the madness, then I’m fine with it.’ He was so very supportive and he was always there for me. The first Christmas after our marriage he said ‘darling if you feel lonely to go to church alone I’ll come with you’. We also went to the temple together. We never fought about religion.” True Ena style: Her living room Ena was the daughter of Sir Richard Aluwihare, the first Ceylonese Inspector General of Police and Lucille Moonemalle. “As a child I remember being chased out of Latin classes and then there was a big mix up because I insisted that I wanted to do both botany and art. I was rebellious, but never loud. I remember my mother telling me ‘you can have your own opinions but you shouldn’t be rude.’ My father loved me dearly. But I think for the life of him he couldn’t figure out how I came of two stately, well-bred parents,” a laughing Ena reminisced. The legendary batik artist began her lifelong devotion to art simply through her admiration for colour, “I love colour and vibrancy. People say you can’t match this colour with that colour, this texture with that texture. Fiddlesticks!” Her fiery personality shines through as she says, “I can’t understand why people want other people’s approval. If you don’t hurt them, what does it matter what you do? So people say things. What do I care? There is always talk, and there will always be talk. But you can’t let that get you down.” “Cora Abraham of the Cora Abraham art school once said ‘Ena your strength is with textile’. And Cora Abraham was right.” Ena admits to never having a training in any kind in art. It all began with her children’s doodling, she says. “You see my son and daughter were great scribble maniacs. Anil was strong and Kusum made decorative doodles. So I also joined in and started drawing.” “The house Geoffrey Bawa built for me was our home in Colombo. Geoffrey was my great friend and he said ‘you know what let’s use these [the scribbled drawings] and I said fine. He and I built that house together. He couldn’t have done that without me and I being no architect couldn’t have done it without him. That is why I say we built it together.” And so the young mother discovered her creativity through her children’s scribbles. In the 1960’s Ena together with Laki Senanayake “who is still my wonderful friend”, Professor Reggie Siriwardena and her son, Anil Gamini Jayasuriya started a firm of their own. “We were not frightened of what people said. So we started out on our own. I remember the first time we decided to do batik. We looked it up in the Encyclopedia Britannica and followed the instructions, heated the wax and painted. At the time batik was a studio profession- a small part of the textile industry. Nobody made pictures out of it or used it as art. We resuscitated the craft and made it new. People said it will die in three weeks but it didn’t. Now here we are.” Ena acknowledges that they were no learned artisans, but she recalls how they worked hard at making the project a success. The magnificent tapestries that hung at the Oberoi Hotel’s lobby, the ceiling of Bawa's Bentota Beach Hotel and the banners that hang in front of Sri Lanka's parliament were their work. Empowered : Women at work at the Aluwihare Heritage Centre It was in the 1980’s that Ena returned to her ancestral home in Matale where she has been living ever since. The joint venture continued and the firm opened up 20 heritage centres around the island in rural townships like Seeduwa and Gelioya. Ena founded the Aluwihare Heritage Centre in her own front yard where she trained the villagers in carpentry, wood carving, abstract hand painting, brass foundry, batik, tie and dye and needlework. Her design work was inspired by traditional Sri Lankan art and crafts. Her eyes light up when she talks about Aluwihare. “What I have here at Aluwihare is a work place. I hate the word factory- makes it so commercial. It is a multi-crafts centre. The villagers came in when they were 18 or 19 and are still here in their sixties. I have taught them everything I know and we have all worked together and grown old together. We have cut down a great deal since we started. The women and men who work with me are my children. The loyalty and support they give not only me but each other is wonderful. At the end of the day we have to be human don’t we? Even my staff at home they really look after me. I love them and I am very grateful to them. I always say please and thank you. They know I appreciate what they do. It’s a life we live, we are a family. You can close down a firm but can you close down a family? We are broke most of the time but we are happy and we have such a lot of fun. I make them laugh all the time and sometimes they think I am mad,” she says laughing. Under the shade of the green giants, accompanied by a cool breeze the women work. Some are busy at the dye baths; others paint intricate designs on the fabrics using heated wax. A few younger girls are engrossed in needlework. Their mentor, walking stick in hand, walking shoes on feet walks about and chatters on keeping them company. The carpentry and brass foundry sheds seem to have closed down. Ena explains that the lack of funding has been hard on the centre. Yet she is cheerful and determined. “We manage somehow. We don’t throw away a scrap of cloth. We are a poor country so we reuse. Also I think if you work hard then you will be all right. You must always remember, there is no substitute for hard work.” The drying batik sarongs, held against the sun seem alive. The deep greens turn into a lighter leafy green in splashes where the sun hits them. The old wooden sculptures of lord Ganesh and another of a wheeled elephant head are examples of the carpentry work once mastered at the Aluwihare heritage centre. Somehow they seem different, individual. They hold character. Ena de Silva’s contribution to the arts and crafts of Sri Lanka is immense. While creating contemporary designs using traditional skills and techniques, she also worked tirelessly to empower women and make better the living standards of villagers. Yesterday the Geoffrey Bawa Trust presented her with a special Lifetime Achievement award for her contribution to the Arts and Architecture of Sri Lanka, (the other recipient being Barbra Sansoni). “One thing is I am myself and it’s great to be appreciated for being me. Everyone likes a bit of appreciation and I am happy that I too am appreciated. It makes me very happy,” she smiles. The smile never seems to leave her lips." . Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

Weddings, Graduates, Joy, Rudeness

Greatly anticipated, I went to a bridal shower last weekend.  

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The bride, fresh master's degree, and new career, made a brilliant choice for her new married life.  He will be in law school, in another state, while she is thriving in her new job.   Copying her parents commuter marriage, she will have the same.

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Her thinking never entered my head, graduating college in the 80's.  You go girl !

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Enjoyed meeting her pack of well educated girlfriends.  Another common thread amongst them?  Like the bride, they are a posse of old souls.  Strongly sense, decades of threads between them, sometimes tight, often at a great distance, but never further than the phone.

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I brought the rudeness, with intention.  Arrived early to get pics of the garden, it's a favorite home/garden.  And, knew the husband would still be there for a walk/talk.  He was taking out a bag of trash while I parked.  Indeed, my skills of timing rudeness are well honed.

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He forgot the rest of his chores, and off we went, lost in our little world of gardening.  I knew his wife needed him.  Your point?

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Quite a few things to show off, and a huge dilemma.  We both knew our time was limited, but we fit it all in.

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My ultimate rudeness, at the end of this tale.

Eggs from their chickens, a cooking lesson for her famous banana pudding.

Their home is new construction, to look old.

Seated at several tables, luncheon was served in courses.

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Appetizer was Barefoot Contessa tomato soup, shredded Gruyere cheese on top, served in a white ironstone coffee mug, set on a plate with homemade herbed butter & petite cornbread.

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Lunch was chicken salad, mixed green salad, and a frozen jello fruit/vegetable medallion.

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When the banana pudding arrived, it was in a punch cup, with silver spoon, on a plate with a surprise, homemade fudge brownie & a pair of decadent ripe strawberries foliage still attached.

Buying a ca. 1900 home, I went thru my friend's home with new eyes, a great seminar, without words, only examples.
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Historic accuracy, below, with ceiling, moulding, picture rail, painting arrangement, curtains, her master bedroom.  Amazingly, her corner cabinet, small white table, lamp, painting, I already own close variations of.

 As promised, my ultimate rudeness, below.

Never saw an azalea potted like this, almost a bonsai.  Toad, of Toad Hall, could not have been more expedite in wanton selfishness than I.  Eight year old Tara, on full display.  Here's the thing about serious, into the DNA, gardeners, their 8 year old self will respond to you.  Nothing is rudeness, it's necessity to life/breathing.
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"Where did you get that?"  "A man I know does them."  "Can I have one?"  "Yes, I can get you one next week."  "No, I'm moving, I'll want it in July."
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Haven't moved in, and thoughts are swirling where this new treasure will be placed, immediately, and in the long term.  Perhaps on a step to the new Conservatory that won't be built for at least a year.  Why a year?  How could I possible know sooner?  Must LIVE in the house, the land, discover the axis and so much more.
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Didn't I have a most successful bridal shower?
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Garden & Be Well,     XOTara
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Pics taken at the bridal shower.  Facebook has been a joy the past couple of months.  Friends children graduating college and many becoming engaged.  Exciting times.  And, thank you to the parents, USA needs the children you've produced and educated.  Unable to have children, cannot imagine my cats driving a car, moving away for college, or their own lives.  Nope, kitties stay with me.  How you parents are doing this, I don't know !