Design: Creating Flow

How will you get from point A to point B ?

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Flow.

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Flow is at the front end of my Garden Design Equation.

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When I was in college, SMU, someone mentioned the sidewalks in front of Dallas Hall were poured, AFTER, they saw where students tread dirt paths thru low meadow.

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(Privately, off topic, in person, you may wish to ask me about the tunnels under those sidewalks.  That was a crazy fun date.)

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Architecture, interior design, color, materials, scale, below, are sublime.  In addition, flow is the unseen subliminal element.  So good it's taken for granted.

At our ca. 1900 American Farmhouse architecture home, below.  We haven't lived here a week, how can we possibly know where to put paths, parking courts, drives, terraces, pole barn, and links throughout all?

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Overflow parking, below, from my office view.  My little van, Tess, is in front of the house, and another truck with long open bed trailer are in the drive along the opposite side of the house.

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The golf cart has yet to be brought from the house we sold, nor 2 tractors and 2 more work trucks.

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None of the above traffic/parking issues includes guest vehicles.

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I adore this.

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Creating flow/parking in our own garden.

Foot traffic, below.  Tractor Supply had a single boot choice for my new home, below.  Work shoes from my former cottage garden, not sufficient in the least.
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Drive, front parking court, overflow parking, a path, hugging the house are speaking.  Good news.
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Further from the house, the flow has no voice.

At the back of the house, 2 out buildings, at left & at right, must be moved, due to flow.
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Building at left is impeding vehicles, and building at right is blocking the deck we're building around the back of the house.

Both buildings a century old, clad in metal more recently.  We'll reuse the wood in our new shed I want built in the orchard, to be planted.
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Hope you sense the best element in creating flow.  Anticipation.
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Every layer of a garden is exciting.  Never tiresome.
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More than anything I want several dump trucks arriving with our gravel.  Too soon, don't know exactly where to place it.  Patience.  This is where G*d taught me patience, in a garden.  We all get life lessons, yet they arrive in their own time and have different teachers.  If we don't 'get' the bigger life lessons, they keep arriving until we do.
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Patience.  Your impatience is why I have a career.  Every client, just like I was at the front end of gardening, thinking they can put in a garden, do, and it's horrendous.  After my first garden making, vile of course, it was off to years of Extension Service courses, symposiums, then another college degree, in horticulture, finally touring historic gardens across Europe for 2+ decades.  Now, I know a few things about gardening, and thrill at the new lessons still arriving, every day.
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Moving into this new home/garden it is clear, I am an experienced gardener but a new farmer.  Adoring a new learning curve.  And living Thomas Jefferson's, " but tho' an old man, I am but a young gardener.   ", backwards.  G*d has a sense of humor in this new lesson, which feels like a gift, not a lesson.  Great segue into Joseph Campbell's, "

When you follow your bliss... doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors; and where there wouldn't be a door for anyone else.

When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.

You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don't know what was in the newspapers that morning... a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be."

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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Top pic, Wendy Posard, bottom pics taken yesterday in our new home/garden.

Designing to Solve Problems: Maintenance & Snakes

From the 1st visit with the realtor to our new home, I KNEW the garden around the house would be gravel with meandering paths & terraces of gravel further from the house.  And, siting of large pots with HYDRANGEA, drip irrigation of course, were paramount.



Leaving a cottage garden of 3 decades, our new garden is American Farmhouse, ca. 1900.  More importantly, its design will be for our 80 year old selves.  I must be 80 years old, have a gorgeous garden with zero worries about maintaining it.  A garden must leverage life, not the reverse.
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This garden, above/below, I shot late last summer.  Limelight hydrangeas in the same situation as my new garden.  Loving, to the center of my DNA, this garden, I had zero clue I would soon be owning similar.  Alas, it's owned by a man, greatly talented, and strong.  My garden must be smarter, my strength not as great.  Game on.



Fearless, gravel will go to the house, similarly, below.



Not wanting formality, gravel will lap at our century old pecan trees, Tara Turf will lap at some pecan trees too.



As time passes, stone will be added to the gravel as needed.  Stone, below, added for rain issues.  And, I will site wisteria 'Amethyst Falls' at my front porch.  Vines or espaliered trees/shrubs add lush without space.



Knowing gravel terraces will be included, below, great anticipation in wondering 'exactly' where.


Transitioning to meadow, I will add checkerboard squares, below.



Furlow Gatewood has smashed a bottle of champagne upon thousands of ships, below, with his allee of hydrangeas in pots.  Copy, it's the 1st rule of garden design.



Wildly, without knowing the deeper truths of our new garden, my initial thoughts for design are more than suitable at age 80.  Even life saving, for any age.  Snakes, the indigenous timber rattler.  Luckily have already interrupted a long king snake under the house.  Lucky, yet totally scared when I saw him.
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Gravel is the best solution, trying to be safe, in defense of snakes near the house.  I got the memo, go me.
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Sourcing pots now, I think I've found them !
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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Top 2 pics mine, the rest from my Pinterest Board, Stone.

Design: Use What You Have

In our office/guest cottage, Yellow Belle, below.  She had cast offs from my home/garden and Beloved's.
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Ca. 1945, on an acre, she is an elegant simple home, the type to leverage a life better.  Wise architecture seeps into a soul.
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In the front parlor, below, capturing light, yet total privacy.  Sourced the shutters, perched not attached, at a favorite junking haunt.  A light blue, and dirty from being stored in a garage for decades, I always meant to clean/paint, never did.  But you knew that.



In our new home, ca. 1900 American Farmhouse, below, for less than a week, boxes/chaos reign.  Had to create a pocket of calm, somewhere.  Guest bath, below.  Grab & place design.  The bathroom retains its Skyland Camp for Girls-shower-ca. 1944, and window looking onto the second kitchen. (Wicked humor having 2 kitchens, I can't operate one.)

Good to see my old friends, supporting our new lives.

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Cannot believe I'm still needing the shutters, and they're still dirty years later.  I should clear coat them, say they are faux and call it a day.

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Soon the window, above, will become a door, creating a Jack/Jill bathroom.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Keeping the 2nd kitchen at the back of the house, turning another window into a door, creating a garden entry with our filthy clothes/boots.  The 'kitchen' will have the laundry, household supplies, and flower arranging island.  A dream to strip by the laundry and walk into the shower.  For the price of 2 windows into doors.  

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2nd kitchen?  Added decades ago for a grown son/his wife to live in the house & caretake his mother.

Creating Flow: Garden Design Equation

With an engineering degree, and horticulture, you know I've invented a Garden Design Equation, moons ago.  Yes, good gardens are math.
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Will do a long post about the Garden Design Equation, but not today.  Promise, you will love the Garden Design Equation, and totally 'get' it.  Have taught it in my college classes and seminars losing no one yet.
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Living in our new American Farmhouse Architecture home, ca. 1900, for a total of 3 nites, the Garden Design Equation beckons.
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Blessedly no gardening has been done here for decades, Poverty is a Great Preserver, indeed.  Why is this good?  Not a lot to 'undo'.
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Focal point on axis, below.  Vanishing Threshold.



Focal points must be sited as focal points from more than a single direction.  This type of focal point, urn above, is one of the best.  Do you know why?  Needs no planting.  Low maintenance.  Let your garden leverage your life.  Your garden works for you, not the reverse.
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From the outside, below, first impression, your garden must tell me who you are, this garden does.
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But my narrative, above, has skipped some of the 1st elements of the Garden Design Formula.
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Focal point siting is often 'obvious' but must wait until 'flow' around the property is managed.  Flow for cars, and walking, maintenance, and larger spaces, a gator/golf cart.
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Do you see what else is obvious when creating flow?  Turf is included in 'flow' equal to a gravel path-drive-terrace.
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This garden, below, is designed for low maintenance too.  Did you already spot that?  The tractor can easily do its job, and the evergreens need once/year attention, no irrigation needed, no chemicals, no fertilizers.
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Had to laugh when I saw this pic, it's exactly where my Garden Design Equation is percolating at our new home.  Flow.
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Drive & Parking Court, below.
 


Had already told Beloved I will design a gravel drive, gravel parking court, gravel paths, with boxwoods and Tara Turf.
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The Garden Design Equation formula at work.  Historic too.  In the greatest of ironies, I studied historic gardens across Europe for 2+ decades learning how to design a garden with 'plants'.   What was truly learned is flow, repetition, rooms, axis, max pollinator habitat......etc.




Oddly, too, I've had this idea, below, in mind for the area with my above ground propane tank.  Cannot wait for the before/after shots of my propane tank.  Who knew such delights could be had?  Adore taking the worst a garden offers and turning it into use and beauty.



Big effect, below, little input.  Been done thousands of times across the centuries, and will be done again at our new home.  Copy.  NEVER worry about copying.  Each site is unique, making each iteration new/fresh.  Again, the Garden Design Equation, and why it works.  Your garden is unique, and the brain cells you apply enhance every effect.



Gratuitous, below, if you know anything about Historic Garden Design.
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And, of course, I will copy it too.  Daffodils
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Notice something else about all these pics?  Deer proof.



Luckily my new bathroom needs a 'tweak'.  And, there is a window overlooking the new orchard/rose arbor.  This is exactly how my tub will site, at its window.





Single story, our American Farmhouse, is quite long.  3 days here, I know for sure, both front/back doors will have their own set of work shoes/shovels/pruners/wheelbarrow/hats.
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A garden must leverage your time.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics via Cote De Texas, from Elle Decor. 

Framing a Kitchen View into the Landscape

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Framing a Kitchen View into the Landscape

Framing the view, below.  Literally, upside down.  Beautiful vista & sky, hidden with valence.
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Showing off the art, a storage shed.  Perfect example of why I must go inside a home or ask for pictures from inside to outside, when doing online design.
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Have you guessed already?  This is the kitchen in my new home, ca. 1900, 11' ceilings.  Moving, with men, next week.  
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Named my company, A Garden View, in the mid-80's.  A take on E.M.Forster's recent film, A Room With A View.  Little knowing its propitiousness, or what was already set within my DNA as non-negotiable.  Went with Jenny, my mother-in-law, to the movie and it was my introduction to Forster.  Don't know him yet?  Go to Amazon and order his books.  Jenny long gone of breast cancer, age 57, theater gone too.  E.M.Forster remains.
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Now, my house.

Valence gone, below.

 A pecan grove, below, is around my house, some of the trees seem ca. 1900 too.

No worries about the storage shed, will add a fence, below.

To the animal mesh, above, 'X' will be added, below.

Don't want to use ivy, below, but probably will.  Few worries about a mature green cover, and freeze death.  And starting over, ugh.

Will add lighting, below,  on some of the posts, with dimmer switches.

Cannot imagine, not having a beautiful view from inside to outside.

A view I've had the joy of creating.

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(Off topic, I think I've found a spot on the property for a pair of tall columns, below.)

Cannot wait till I'm in the garden and considering how to design the interiors for incredible views as backdrop to the garden.

A garden view, again.

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Beauty travels 2 directions in a garden.  

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Anticipation, designing a garden, as enriching as the doing, then the having.

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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

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Top 3 pics mine, bottom pics Pinterest.  Hard leaving my home of 30 years.  My kitchen is walls of windows, new kitchen, 1 window, but it has an incredible walk-in pantry with window too.

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Tom Jones, Tower of Song, streaming thru my head with this new garden.

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He sings he's crazy for love, I'm crazy for views, a garden, orchard, gravel paths/drive, potager.....crazy for it NOW.   "I was born like this, I had no choice."

Removing Foundation Plantings

A few times across the decades I've designed a garden with existing foundation plantings so wrong from inception, by the builder of course, they had to be removed.  Hollies were the culprit, and damaging to foundation, sidewalk, driveway, and monetary damage to the home's value.
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Each time all foundation plantings were removed there was a husband squawking.
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Each time I said, "Trust me."
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Each time, once the plantings were gone, the husbands said, "Why didn't I do this sooner?"  They liked seeing how pretty their home was, finally, after living in it for years.
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Huge lesson in this.  Removing ugly improves a garden.  Ironic, human intuition says, "I'll keep the ugly, better than nothing."
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This, below, is sublime.  A delightful narrative in all sorts of directions via the pic.



What the home looked like, below, before foundation plantings were removed.  Narrative is rather narrow.



More about this home, the Enos Kellogg Homestead, ca. 1784, here.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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 !