Best Dimensions for A Gravel Patio

Perhaps my little stories about gardening should be set within proper context, of their owners.  Every garden designed demands honoring its site, architecture of the home, and lives of the owners.  More than the mundane of plants liked, features wanted or where the main views from inside the house are, well designed gardens must travel with the owner's hopes & dreams, salve arrows & defeats, enrich beyond expectation.  And more.
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Last week, I went to an unexpected new client.  Friend of a client's garden I was at, she phoned & laughingly told my client she should bring me to her house when done, if I had time.  We did.
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Miss Unexpected owns an unexpected home.  Divorced/working, children, she rented a home as a base while looking for the 'perfect' new home.  Her landlord called, the rental house was being sold.  One child was very ill, she had zero time/energy to move again.  She bought the rental.
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Interiors mostly renovated, the landscape ripe for its turn.  A modest home, a covered/screened porch had been added at some point.  Not cheaply made, alas, poorly designed.  If a group of psychiatrists needs a setting to guarantee depression for all who enter, for purposes of testing new methods of healing, this is the space.
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Trying hard to salvage, at minimum, the roof, I could not.  Best plan for the existing screened porch, dumpster in the driveway, & hauled off.
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Once children are thru high-school Miss Unexpected will be moving to acreage she was raised on, and build a home.  Providing me a timeline & budget.  No matter the budget, one must live beautifully each day, life is not the end point, it's all the days leading there.    
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Gravel.  Beautiful, easy labor, cost effective.
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A kitchen door, solely, opens onto the new gravel terrace.  I added another door in her family room, now, a window.  Better flow, more use.  Game changer for how they live in the house, and entertain.



Pic from here.

Miss Unexpected has a slight slope in her backyard, stones, as below, must be used to edge the gravel, and ease of leveling the space.
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Pic from here.
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Minimum size for a patio terrace, 12' x 18'.  Less than this, don't bother, it will hardly be used, too cramped.
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We measured & set flags for her new gravel terrace, and I added a metal shed roof over 1/2 of the new space.  Ceiling fans/chandeliers, of course.
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Cost.  Amazingly, with stones/gravel delivered, she can do the labor herself.  She plans to, not to save money, she grew up on a farm and thrives upon the activity.
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Further away from the house, I put in a gravel terrace with a stone fire ring, and Adirondack chairs. Mom, her kids, dogs, friends who come over and that hunk of a man she's dating, have a new playground.
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Garden design with life story included, Mary Poppins completed her mission, off to another home/garden.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

Designing an Enclosed Fruit Orchard

Working in the orchard, below, at a client's last week, edging fruit trees, their guilds, and a few vegetable patches.

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A young orchard it has finally grown into some maintenance issues.  Client mentioned earlier this year she sees her man mowing in the orchard so fast she's sure he's going to sling himself off the riding mower.  Aside from asking her to youtube it, I was thinking it might be fun to mow the orchard fast too, once.

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Parked my little work van just outside the gate, below. First time noticing this framed view.

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She hadn't put in the pasture fence or sheep barn when the orchard was built.

Wrote a note on my drawing board for the Orchard, Listen to the Genius of the Place.  

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Working at my desk, below, I heard a stadium full of people shouting bad ideas.  Sadly, they were all my own.  

Disgusted with rotten ideas, I said to the orchard, "What would David Hicks do?"  

(Hicks' gate, below, had already inspired the gate, top.)

Pic, above, from here.

Immediately, David Hicks answered, I was out of my chair placing flags/tape. taking his dictation.

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Hicks said to put flags/tape at the walls first, below.

David Hicks then said to place flags/tape at the fruit trees, below.

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  Spooky, below, just googled pics for David Hicks garden.

Pic, above, from here.  

Another surprise, above, from David Hicks garden.  Flying buttress.  I designed flying buttress into my client's Orchard after seeing them at an antebellum cotton warehouse in Atlanta, now a restaurant.

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Pic above, from, News From Nowhere, in David Hicks garden.

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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

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My pics taken last week.  Still abiding in our new garden.   Patiently waiting for layers of work to be completed, in proper order, before we can gravel the parking court, drives & lanes, finally shaping the pleasure garden, orchard, potager.  

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Orchards, historically, were enclosed for several reasons.  They allowed earlier & later harvests, extending growing seasons, and kept predators out.  Including people.

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Studying Sir Walter Scott's historic garden in England, was amazed to discover his orchard walls were double built.  Boilers placed at the corners distributed steam into the walls, adding length to growing seasons.  

How to Design a Landscape: Collect Moments Not Plants

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble.  It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."  Mark Twain.
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What is the greatest thing you need to know about gardening?  Unlearn the loud majority.  Listen to your inner knowledge.  Not brain knowledge.  Unfortunately, knowledge from your soul has little language.  No worries, the garden you want speaks easily in pictures.  Pictures you already know.  They've attracted your heart for years, probably decades.      
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Perhaps your partner won't like it, your neighbors, or it's illegal to your HOA.  Maybe someone will complain, and a man with a gun & badge will knock on your door.  Yes, all of these have happened to me.  Except the second gun/badge arriving into my garden were worn by a woman.  Police thoughts?  Both were pi$$ed.  At the complainer.  And, apologized for having to bother me.
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Really, those are the negatives about creating the garden your soul wants?  Few & paltry.  My garden has been in magazines/books, on tv, and several tours.  Again, paltry.  Daily, for decades, my garden gives me moments.  Moments that release the bonds of time, mere human reality, hunger, tiredness, sorrows, questions I'm unable to answer receive answers and more.
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I garden for these moments.  Richness without price.  Tasha Tudor signed off often with words from a poem, "Take joy."  I got the memo immediately.  Joy is present, always.



Photographer, Clive Nichols, got the memo.  He's been shooting garden moments for decades.
How did he know my predilections, above, for fall's senescence?



Small drops of dew, above, tiny diamonds of light, lasting mere seconds.



Don't have the budget for, above/below?  Ironic, use your brain, 'No grit, no pearl.'



"People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it's simply necessary to love."  Claude Monet.
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Enough.  Go garden.  Take joy.  Quotes, above, a tiny sliver of joys learned in my garden.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO T
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Clive Nichols pics from his website, here.

Beauty Secured: Taking Cuttings

Moving into our new home, late June, to today, I've enjoyed this 'bush'.

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Full of blooms in June, and every day afterward.

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By late August curiosity was too strong, I walked over to inspect.  It resides on my neighbor's property.

I knew what it was at 1st inspection, never seen in a book, in person, or heard it spoken of.

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Sun lover, drought proof, insect/disease proof, deer proof.  New flower buds still drip fat along the stems, enough to last until first frost.

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BEAUTIFUL.

 Before designing gardens full time, I was a professional grower for 2.5 years.  Of course I know how to propagate this beauty.
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Do you know it by sight, already?
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Permission.  I had to get permission to take cuttings.  Will take enough to give to owner, neighbors, and friends.
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Double flowering, white weeping Rose of Sharon.  Hibiscus syriacus, Althea.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics taken yesterday.
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At the property line, above, is neighbor's view of their plant with our garden & home in the backdrop.  Our homes, both over a century old, are each near the road, and close to the right side property line.  This gave space for orchard & potager to the left of the house, and acreage at the back for barn, livestock, and pond.  

Bill Blass: How to Edit a Landscape

Bill Blass said, "A woman with a closet full of clothes, but nothing to wear does not know herself very well."
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That sailed a ship.  If you have a lot of plants but not a pretty garden, you do not know yourself very well.
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Editing landscapes is inherent to every good garden you see.
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Arne Maynard's work, below, at an old estate.  Of course it's gorgeous.  And edited.  HARD.




Pic from Arne Maynard.
Hard to edit our closets, it's harder to edit a garden.  Garden editing may require heavy equipment.



Pic from Arne Maynard.

 In our new garden, above/below, yesterday.  Editing.  Chinese holly were not emotionally tough to remove.  The 2 oak trees were emotionally difficult to remove but had to go, they were growing into the magnolia, that will remain.  Boxwood hedge will remain, would not have designed it into its place, but zero heart to remove it.  Told you editing was hard.

Pic, Arne Maynard.

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All the pretty neo-new gardens you see?  Edited.  Hard editing.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Small recompense, the editing will be composted.

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Will find it amusing, in the future, when someone says, "I adore this boxwood hedge here."  You know it will happen, and more than once.  

Using the Sky as a Design Element

Framing the sky, below.  Often, never mentioned as an element of Garden Design.

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The sky has several uses.  Oddly, it's the element making small landscapes look/feel BIG.

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Use the sky, as an element in your Garden Design, to make your garden  feel 'calm'.

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If you have an eyesore in your garden, bottom pic, put a focal point nearby to draw the eye away.  For a year, at minimum, the only arrow in my quiver against the eyesore of shed/Kubota/golf cart, is this patch of sky.

And, Royal Gaze.

Until renovations are complete I'm using the Royal Gaze.  Eyes & heart do not see the necessities, above, they gaze into beautifully framed infinite sky.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics taken this month.  Shot of Kubota is estimate of exact spot to take 'after' pic.  A wrap around porch is being added to the back of the house, steps into the garden landing where Kubota/golf cart are now.  #87 Granite gravel added for landing and path into The Orchard.  First time seeing our new home with the realtor, I saw the new back porch, shed moved, orchard etc.....  More amazing, Beloved said he saw the same thing.

Vanishing Threshold: Looking into Roger Hazard's Windows

Junior high through high school I was on my bike after doing dinner dishes.  Stay at the house with both parents home?  On my bike, gone.  We lived in a beautiful neighborhood surrounded by Galveston Bay, marsh, a salt water lake, Clear Creek, and plenty of palm trees.
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Instead of getting out of my parent's house the rides became a choice for their joy of solitude, learning I do my best thinking exercising & sweating.  College was 4 more years of biking, those years in Dallas, TX, a several mile radius from campus, SMU.  Had my own car in college but it was most common I would turn down social invites, saying I had plans, and head off on my bike, alone.
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Now, I design views into homes from gardens.  This zone I have no name for but call, Vanishing Threshold.
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It's rare to come across Vanishing Threshold in any article, much less 3 Oscar worthy shots.  Roger Hazard is the winner, and it seems his dog, & partner too.
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Enjoy, but enjoy with a purpose.  What can you do to create beautiful, warm, inviting views into your home, from the garden?




 




Garden photographers, too often, overlook this zone, Vanishing Threshold.
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More about this house/garden, HERE.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics via Hooked on Houses from Roger's website.

In the Landscape: What Type of Backdrop is Your Home?

Ca. 1986, I gave myself, English Cottage Gardens, by Ethne Clarke & Clay Perry, below, for my birthday.  Hungry to learn 'everything' about designing gardens, I didn't learn 'more' about designing a garden.  Instead I learned what had the most impact in a garden.  Your house.
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Your home is the backdrop to your garden, and its main focal point.
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Until this epiphany, I gave house exteriors little to no consideration.
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Compare a common USA home to homes in English Cottage Gardens?  Not happening.
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Use a clear eye, aka honesty/integrity, not an easy lipstick-on-a-pig thought process.  Love your home into being a beautiful backdrop to your garden.  Because it is more, it is the backdrop to your life.
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Living in my starter home, ca. 1986, for less than a year, it was an incredible interior, to me, yet depressing exterior.  It gets worse.  Coming home after a weekend away, sometimes I would cry before walking inside my home.  Real tears.  Frustration at living in such an ugly house with a stupid landscape.  No money to change anything.  Poor me.  This is the exact situation teaching me there was much I could change.  As a little girl it was rather common to hear, Tara-the-Terror.  Delicious, she woke up.  My garden, and house, knew, 'game on'.
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Elements of the house, as backdrop to your garden, you must consider.  Views into your home, types of window treatments, interior lighting, no exposed views of the backside of a tv-sofa-pictures-etc, paint color, make the patio/deck a destination of comfort/beauty, need shutters, light fixtures outside, types of hardware on the front door, door mats, cable box/airconditioners, underside of a deck, views into the neighbors garage/RV, paths from the house into the garden, scale of plantings to scale of house, flow around the house, how does the house look from the curb, what do I see walking to your front door, what do I see walking out your front door, and any other tidbit, no matter how minute, fluff it up, regardless of your bank account.  You have a brain.  Use your IQ, figure it out.      
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I sourced exterior furniture, focal points, stone/brick, at garage sales, vacant lots (with permission), trash day gleanings, thrift stores, paint was from the returned paint section of the hardware store.  Plants came from sources in the Extension Service Market Bulletin, or the local nursery's plant-of-the-week, 97 cents, sometimes, $1.99. Mostly it was my own labor, and inner vision of what I had to have in my garden to breath to survive.  Patience, ick, had to be an element too.
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Years later, reading Karl Jung, "Our lives are about getting the outside to match the inside."  I did understand.
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Decades later this passion for a beautiful garden, and home, has not lessened, instead, increased, and still learning.  When garden epiphanies arrive now, they make me laugh.  Nothing is hard about creating a garden, instead it is the pealing away of ego.  Realizing the brain is obtuse to all a beautiful garden freely gives.
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Read, English Cottage Gardens, with your 'eye' analyzing house-as-backdrop.



Good backdrop, below, Sharon Santoni's home in France.



Copy, is a huge tool in garden design.  Sharon's garden is a good example of be-careful-what-you-copy.  If you live in a 60's ranch, or 80's cluster home, as I did, this is not a garden for you to copy.  Why?  You don't have her backdrop to carry the weight of down time in her potager.  Come winter, what will you have?  Bleak.
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This situation, winter's bleak garden, creates another garden design tool.  Design your garden for winter, not only the ease of spring.  A garden beautiful in winter, will be beautiful in spring.
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Still want to have Sharon's garden in your 80's cluster home?  I did.  I addressed all of the 'house' issues listed above, and added evergreens to structure my garden throughout winter's bleak.  Done.
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Simple fix to have this potager, below, in front of your 60's brick ranch.  Add evergreen structure within the potager


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In comes that robber/foe/obtuseness of your labors/money/brain waves, you see the answers, you read the answers, yet don't execute.
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No worries, it's human nature, I did it at the front end too.
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In my new home/garden 2 months, it's the phase of patience.  Paying attention to sun/shade, drainage, flow, privacy, views, parking, destinations & etc.  Knowing, and letting, house renovations have their pace.  The urge to garden here is fierce, a foe at present, especially in the micro details.  Instead, Tara the Terror is vanquishing the foe with patience.  Stinks being mature about this.
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TtT is attacking another foe, having-too-much, and planning for a historic American farmhouse garden, deer proof, drought tolerant, little maintenance, productive in beauty/repose, and agriculturally with 'just-enough' fruit, berries, herbs, vegetables.  This doesn't mean, in the least, I don't want to work in my garden.  Working in a garden is a privilege of being on Earth.  Metaphor of washing-the-servants-feet, and with a free/happy heart.  The best parts of my life have come from this relationship.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO T
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Top pic from Amazon, order if you don't have it, bottom pics Sharon Santoni.

2 Odd Facts About Designing Your Landscape

Two odd facts about designing your garden, begin with an odder fact.  At the start of your garden design, plants do not matter, don't think about plants.
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Studying the best historic gardens you'll discover pics like this, below, its Garden Design rule self evident.  Exterior walls of your home must have 3-D interest.  Don't live in a grand estate similar to below?  Lacking casement windows, stone & brick, equatorial sundial, bespoke clothing?
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Live in a starter home with vinyl siding, no shutters, & hundreds of exact replicas surrounding you?  The imperative for 3-D'ing your exterior walls, greater.  Begin with shutters, moving on to espalier woody shrubs.  They need no support on the house, no trellis, no wires.





Yesterday I had a consultation with a new client.  About 2 acres, mostly wooded, strong slope scattered through out, home neofarmhouse ca. 1980.  Four young children plus mom/dad.  Soon, 6 cars, not counting friends/family visiting.

She hired another designer before me.  Their ideas all began with removing loads of plant materials.  Not where I started, in the least.  Turning into their long winding sloped drive, 1st time, I knew before crossing that threshold they needed a golf cart or Gator.  Four garbage cans were wheeled to the top of the drive for pick up day.

Stopping in the drive, after a few hundred feet, to gain scope for the imagination, pure Anne of Green Gables, seeing, their front porch must be extended to wrap the corner.

Then, after more such gleanings, I met my client.  She loves boxwoods, and any plant with hydrangea in its name.  Deer love her hydrangeas more.

But I've gone ahead of myself, just as my client has.

Her landscape, now, is zero about plants.  Zero.  Her landscape has no FLOW.  No manner of getting from point A to B.  Before designing the first planting, FLOW must be designed into the garden.  Flow for cars, family, pets, guests, Gator, delivery trucks, and most importantly for the eye to flow upon views of beauty to focal points on axis & cross axis.
   


Once FLOW is designed, deer issue addressed, her beloved boxwoods & hydrangeas can be designed into their perfect locations.

Before I left I gave her an assignment, "Do not think about plants."

Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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pics via Half Pudding Half Sauce.

A Personal Business Choice

Garden & Conservatory I designed for a client, below, in Macon, GA.

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This pic, I discovered in Southern Living magazine.

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Another shot from the same shoot made the cover of a different magazine.

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Both, discovered via social media.

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Uncredited magazine work, greater in quantity than my credited work.

Another example of my uncredited work, below, in Better Homes & Gardens magazine.

Nature of the beast.  Surprised at the lopsided figures of credited/uncredited accumulated.

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Being in business, and getting credit for my work is important.  However, another factor to my business success, is in force.  This factor brings in the most work.

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Counterintuitive, and oddly, ridiculed by some who are quite close to me.

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Yet, I do it anyway.  I will not be thrown off mission.

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WE MUST ENRICH AND PREPARE THE SOIL, PLANT AND TEND THE SEEDS, WEED OUT WHATEVER STIFLES GROWTH, AND GIVE OURSELVES FULLY TO THE PROCESS AND THE HARVEST. OUR LIVES ARE NOT FOR US ALONE. WE ARE HERE TO GROW SOMETHING THAT FEEDS OTHERS.

- Parker Palmer, from “Scars Born of Love”

quote, above, found, here, On Being. 

From my Pinterest quotes board, above.

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What about you?  Do you feel the winds of judgement at times?

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Blessedly, rougher winds came earlier, and I learned to navigate my course.

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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

The 'In Italy' Method of Garden Design

This is for anyone wanting a pretty garden yet abhors any hint of a Garden Design 'rule'.  Why would you?  You're smart, you're going to recreate the wheel, your Garden Design will be marvelous, anything done by anyone in any era will pale in comparison.  With sincerity, and your wallet, off you go to Home Depot, on mission.

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Beyond this, while typing 97 words/minute, twirling a bit of hair just above the right shoulder with my right hand at the same time, and glancing out the window into meadows with dairy cattle framed with century old pecan trees, I need go no further.  

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Aside from describing myself, it describes my favorite clients to work for.    

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One client, for sure, knows what's coming next.  Any sentence beginning, "In Italy....."  She smiles & freezes, knowing what is next.  The most fabulous bit of Garden Design EVER.

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  Italy was probably my 3rd/4th historic Garden Design study tour pilgrimage among a dozen plus.

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Have you already intuited the Garden Design formula, above?  In Italy, it is a formula to have a formally clipped low/medium evergreen hedge, fronting,  blowzy shrubs behind, and the serendipitously sited tall cone shapes.  Done.

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Contents of no importance aside from drought tolerant, cold/heat tolerant, no bugs/fungus, not invasive or too fast growing, etc.

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Now, look at the top photo again, as you have just read it scientifically pontificated.  No worries, I know who the doubting Thomas is, the spouse.

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Ok, moving on.

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In Italy, they place a pair of focal points, below, telling the eye & feet where to go.

  In Italy, contrasted shapes-textures-colors, this trinity, below, never fails.

In Italy, it is common to pair disparate objects as a focal point.  Below, obelisk on plinth.



In Italy, common, below, to stay all green.  Do you see the beginning of the French style Garden Design, below?  In Italy, they will tell you French food is merely the French take on Italian.



In Italy, just line it up, below.  You have know idea how many times this Italian Garden Design RULE has saved my a**.  Let it save yours !  I should do a coffee table book on this Garden Design rule alone.  In Oxford, Mississippi I took this Italian Garden Design Rule a step further.  A client had a few acres, and a major collection of old farming equipment, huge major pieces.  What to do?  Designed an evergreen backdrop tapestry hedge, read above again if you don't know what this is, and lined the equipment in front, Museum Style.
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Still so proud of myself for that bit of 'genius'.  Stealing not merely Italian, but from museums too.



In Italy, whatever they serve & however they serve it, below, it is the Julia Child rule for food.
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Don't know the Julia Child rule for food?  If she said it, wrote it, did it, it's for you too.  Julia's best, "Asparagus is to be eaten with your fingers."  Seriously, she said this on one of her shows.  Occasionally I'll make a faux pas at a meal, the quick recovery, "Julia Child said to do it this way."



More ammunition/proof for the In Italy method of creating marvelous?  How many gorgeous gardens will you see driving about USA today?
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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All pics, Ben Pentreath.  Don't know Ben, or Charlie?  Discovered their blog recently & am enchanted, you will be too.