Working With Contractors

Dealing with contractors for 30 years, as a woman, never ceases to amaze.  Everything in my Garden Designs has been done for CENTURIES.  I've plucked no ideas solely from books without having seen them in real gardens across continents.
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Had to smirk seeing this stone wall, below.  How many times have I designed a dry stack stone wall, 3' or even 5', and been told, "You can't do that."  You know which sex provided that quote.  Perhaps I should be clearer, not wanting to implicate LGBT.  "You can't do that", said the heterosexual man.
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Sure I've had the male contractor say, "Let me figure that out", of course gay.  Excepting, David. A country boy, straight, and willing to scare himself.  Whatever I threw at him, "Ok", and with a tiny smile and squinching up of his shoulders I knew he was challenged, and would sort it out, he did.  Plucked David from one of the college classes I taught.  He had the right attitude.  Sadly, my David died, age 50, almost a decade ago, I'm still p#ssed at him for doing that.  I know exactly the smiling look I'll see on his face, once I see him again.  It will say, "Ha, you had to sort it out without me !!"  Huge surprise, interviewing, and using other contractors?  Dishonesty.  Who knew?  Rife.  
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Discovered Beloved at a jobsite.  Client hired me for the design, but had her own contractor.  The day I met Beloved, the client had given me clear orders, "Your job is to keep him in line, I want the garden you drew, no changes."  Of course, after knowing his work at her job, I asked him to bid some of my work.  I knew his honesty with clients, designer, employees, vendors.
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Back to this stone wall, below.  Built ca. 1500.  Some guy, now, is going to tell me, "You can't do that." ?  Beyond happy to have found a team of knowledgeable, and honest men.  Ironically, all straight.  You want this wall, below?  Our mason can do it.



Found our mason at a jobsite almost 5 years ago.  He was working for another contractor.  His boss decided he needed cussing out in front of everyone, including the homeowner.  The homeowner, our client, told that contractor to never speak to anyone on her property in that manner again.  He responded by firing the mason, immediately.  In return, immediately, our client fired that contractor.  Following that, immediately, we hired the mason.  If it had been a Hollywood movie, every player deserved an Oscar.  What a span of 60 seconds !
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Cannot imagine 'my work' without our mason's work.  He's magic.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic, above, here.

Bad Things in the Apple Orchard

"   Bad things have been happening in parts of the garden too, below, where a beautiful ancient apple orchard has made way to a rather strange and curiously alien "Tudor" garden. Someone is trying too hard here.",  Ben Pentreath.



Context, for quote, above, and pics, here.



Came across a good quote recently, "If stupid could fly, you'd be a jet plane."  Of course it's funny.  Trouble is, as I'm flying, I'm like Toad of Toad Hall, Wind in the Willows, zero clue it's AC/DC's Highway to Hell.
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Scene from Victor/Victoria, writ large in the garden, above.  You know the scene, in the restaurant, the cockroach scene, the waiter finally says to Toddy & Victoria, "....It's better to be a moron than a horses ass."  What's the difference between the two?  A moron thinks it up, a horses ass plants it.  Which is Toad all over again.   And me, in my early 20's, 1st planting a landscape, the era between having an engineering degree, the horticulture degree & studying across Europe for decades still on the horizon.
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I remember asking my grandma, "What is this flower?", holding it in my hand, I had picked it from the backyard of her new home, "A hydrangea.", she said.  I was in college, when I asked her that question, not knowing, much later, I would be president of the American Hydrangea Society.
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That feeling of knowing I could still be Toad, or hearing the Waiter, in Victor/Victoria, never goes away, designing any garden.  Ever.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO T

Designed Garden vs. Plantswoman Garden

Several correct labels can be attached for the garden, below.  But that isn't the focus here.  Events have conspired recently magnifying differences in a Designed Garden vs. a Plantsman's Garden.
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This garden, below,  is both, a Designed Garden & a Plantsman's Garden.
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Decades ago, and for several years, my Cottage Garden was a Designed Garden & a Plantswoman's Garden.  I changed.  Time changed.  Abandoning gardening due to lack of time, not an option.  'Away-away', went the Plantswoman's Garden.  Welcome, Designed Garden.
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Is it all gibberish, above?  It won't be, for many seconds more.
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How to change the garden, below, into a purely Designed Garden?  Remove/replace the perennial borders with flowering shrubs or espalier evergreens or evergreen hedges or a mix of them.





Lovely, above, but not for me, personally, anymore.  Adore this mix of Designed Garden/Plantswoman's Garden elsewhere.  Accepting the down-time of perennials, their dividing, cutting back, herbaceousness, mulching, manurering, weeding, edging, deadheading, no, not for me.  I hunger for a garden with everyday Designed Garden AND flowering beauty.  Solution?  In place of perennials I use flowering shrubs, bulbs, or evergreen hedges, or evergreen espalier flowering shrubs, sometimes espalier hydrangea too.
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With 2 pics, and their captions, now, you know, the difference between a Designed Garden & a Plantswoman's Garden.
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Which are you?  Perhaps a Hybrid?
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Thank you Ben Pentreath for today's pics.

Overdose A Theme

“Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers.” Cecil Beaton.
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Younger, perhaps prior to age 6, I would have agreed with Cecil Beaton.  Everything he says about yourself, is for yourself.  Zero thoughts 'against the play-it-safers.'  They shouldn't enter your realm, they matter why?  Who has time?  Isn't the battle between lizard brain & heart enough?
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Because I didn't like garden design rules, at the front end, I've created quite a few.  After intense study, in historic gardens across the globe, in addition to books/magazines/tv/movies/degree in horticulture.
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What a knocker, below.  Broken, it's still marvelous.
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Garden Design Rule: Overdose on a Theme.
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Thrilling rule, you choose the theme.  Following it through, to the max, from macro to micro.  Seems obvious, and simple, but, trust me, you'll scare yourself at times.  Many nights, in bed, thinking, "Should I really do ______ , .........."
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Wise advice I was given after sharing some night thoughts with a friend, "Never make a decision after sunset & before sunrise."  Quite liberating to be released from those chattering monkeys of the dark.

Pic, above, here.

Garden & Be Well,  XO T
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In college for my engineering degree, test days in the classroom were hot.  Literally.  Summer/winter, both, hot.  Will never forget walking out of a thermodynamics exam, and the professor remarking how many more BTU's a working brain puts out than brains at rest.  Hence, the hot rooms.
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I'd rather put my brain BTU's to good use, not waste a single precious unit proscribed to me during my short time upon this Earth.  Give a unit toward the play-it-safers?

Pot Cluster

Pot Cluster, below.
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Quite the thing to do, across Europe for centuries.



Pic, above, here.

Of course there are 2 personalities about the Pot Cluster, "Not in a billion years.", and, "Oh goody, I get to buy more plants."
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Want a Pot Cluster but life is woe-unto-me at present?  A single pot can be your Pot Cluster.  More than a potted plant, it's your spirit saying, "I choose beauty, I choose to smile."
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During the few short days it took to sell 2 houses & buy a house, about this time last year, I bought a lone tomato plant from wallyworld.  Potted into classic terra cotta, sited on axis from every window at the back of the house, leaving my 30 year precious sweet garden, this little tomato plant carried my heart.  Beloved was out-of-state working during the 'festivities' of moving.   He did come home for a weekend, teased me terribly about my Charlie Brown tomato plant.  Of course that tomato plant made the move, Beloved could not believe discovering it had made the move.  That I would "waste" my time upon that lone tomato plant, "You won't get any tomatoes, cheaper to buy them at the store, waste of time to keep it watered."  After the 1st frost, Beloved & I were walking in our new garden and we discovered, at the same moment, my Charlie Brown tomato plant near death, leaves brown/crisp, yet it had a silver dollar sized tomato, pristine, ripe, beautiful orange-red.  That lone tomato worth more than a grocery store full of tomatoes, to me.  With a piquant bonus, Beloved vanquished by a tomato.  How didn't he see at the front end I wasn't planting a tomato, I was planting a metaphor?

Color. Color ? Color !

Remember, designing your landscape, I must know you from the street.
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Parse the words.  To know you from the street, you must design your garden from interior views, and the same brain waves of style, color, flow, texture, individuality from inside to outside.
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A trinity of pics, below, you should all be able to shoot, of your home.  This trinity, below, is a Garden Design, of the ages, quiz question.  
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Today, now, your home/garden, mentally shoot these 3 pics.  Can you produce?
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Every garden needs a color trinity, green-brown-white, is the classic for centuries.  No worries if it's not your flavor, choose your own color trinity.  Produce these 3 pics.  Quiz question remains the same.  Shoot & produce.
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Color.  Color?  Color!  Which will it be?  This is your singular precious life.  Stretch your intelligence, comfort zone, think without your wallet.  Perhaps you need my personal question, epiphanized after too many decades people pleasing, "What would I do tomorrow if I were not afraid?"  When it comes to doing your garden, your best garden, I'm not the person you want to start a sentence, "I can't do that."  Those are 4 failure words.  Best 4 words I was ever told, "Be who you are."
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Studying historic gardens across Europe for 2 decades, this lesson about color, above, and within the pics, below, was intuitively learned.  This stuff, above/below, is not in garden design books.  It's merely in the best historic gardens across history.  Want to recreate the wheel?  Knock yourself out.  Everyone loves the outliers who do, with success.
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Since the start of designing gardens, color was easy to choose, I pull from interiors, what will work with the exteriors.
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Furlow Gatewood's home/garden is over the top with the color trinity.  He makes me see it fresh, as if he invented it.  Better, he owns it.
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Pic, above, here.



Pic, above, here.
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Fern, viewed from the garden, pulls me in.  Then the brilliant audacity of double axis to the mirror with the fern.  Swoon.

 

Pic, above, here.
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Nothing more to be said about your color trinity excepting, shoot it.  Picture worth 1,000 words.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Exterior Trim: Navajo White

I'm working at a project, craftsman bungalo, with good timing, exterior  paint was showing its last gasps.  Much better than paint with fresh new confidence, and the color is wrong.
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They like the soft blue lapboard siding, it will be used again.  Their white trim was so bright it owned the neighborhood.
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Of course they wanted white trim again.  Thankfully, they agreed, the existing white trim-columns-rails-step risers, much too white.
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Which white to choose?
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Navajo White, Benjamin Moore, below.
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Calm, receding, means business but doesn't shout new kid on the block.
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If Navajo White can 'sit back' with this much coverage, below, my client is safe, their Navajo White will let their home/garden speak, not the trim.



Pic, above, here.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Major careers for this couple, 2 small children,  she loves to cook, and hired me because she wants the focus of her entire landscape, it's not large, to be potager, chicken coop, pollinators.  They're doing painting/repairs & tree work this spring, landscape this fall.  She had all the right cookbooks, several shelves, in her kitchen.  Quirky, but that's a realm of assessment, kitchens.  And, you know I don't mean the make/model of equipment.

Tara Turf & Guilds

Visual pun, below.  Formal hedges with Tara Turf.  Tara Turf?  Tall meadow mix of grasses, herbs, flowers, what the wind blows in, singular to each locale.  Mown, as below, creating formal with informal.
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Look closely, below.  This Tara Turf is under fruit trees, an orchard.  Heightening the visual pun, but I'm easily amused (enriched?) by such.
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Under an orchard Tara Turf is also a guild.  Quickly, a guild is a mix of plantings attractive to pollinators which will increase crop yield by 80%, more here, and here.




Pic, above, here.
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Cecil Beaton, below, on his Tara Turf.



Pic, above, here.

Barefoot.  Smart man.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO T
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Beloved is a brave man.  Mowing our Tara Turf too l-o-w.  Walking from the chicken coup, across a meadow of blooming Tara Turf, early this month, I thought to myself, "Cannot believe this is my life."  Within 24 hours Beloved mowed it all away.  All.

Formal into the Wild Wood

"And, I don't want anything formal."
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Gets me every time.  In the early years I would explain how 'formal' is your friend.  Now, I just let it rip, playing with formal elements, don't mention the word, and enjoy, "I love this."
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Because I know what is most important in life, I checked Pinterest late last nite, hoping something new popped up for Furlow Gatewood.  This pic, below, may not be new but I had never seen his allee of mophead hydrangea from this angle.
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Gatewood's allee has sailed a fleet of ships since its debut in Veranda in July of 2013.
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Adore how he smashed formal into wild wood.
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His wild wood of canopy-understory-walls-floors, a total home run.
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Another home run?  No dinky-is-stinky here.
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Further south than my garden, I look at Gatewood's hydrangea, nostrils flared, right eyebrow cocked/loaded, in a momentary whiff of envy.  No near decade of leisurely late freezes, in March/April, taking out hydrangea buds.
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No, there is not next year to get this decadence, below, back.  It is several good 'next years' in a row, to get the decadence back.
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Before you think this is a problem to maintain, notice front/left, a clearly exposed drip irrigation tube.
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Pic, above, here.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

Mind Wandering by Choice

Pairs of words have thrilled me for decades.  Wildly instructive, good pairs have the power to enlighten, or change habit.  Now, this moment, what pair of words pop as having done this for you?
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Example you ask?  Amusement vs. stewardship.
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Recently, oddly, this pair, want vs. need.
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Culture rewards going after what  we want, what we need, not so much.  In the want vs. need, yesterday, all I could think is the majority of residential landscapes.  Something affordable, easy to take care of, mostly just keep the status quo from the builder or previous owner, enough to keep the HOA from sending nasty grams.  The thinking is not contrived, it is, indeed a no brainer.  Excepting what we need is in the landscape.  Wanting to meet our landscape with a minimum threshold pleases others, seemingly ourselves, while oceans of life we need, flow silently from grasp.
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Miss Katherine Kirkwood Scott's maxim, heard & understood from the source herself, in childhood, "I can live without the necessities but I must have the luxuries."    Oh my, a soup, want vs. need.  Excepting I knew her recipe, intuitively, as a little girl.  The adults laughed, I didn't.  I was 'on it'.  Miss Katherine had opened new realms for me.  Something undiminished decades later

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Pic, above, Martha Stewart.
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From New York Magazine, In Praise of Spacing Out, ", by Melissa Dahl,

Todd Kashdan said. “When we’re zoning out, really what this is, is the incubation period of creativity.” This is where ideas you never would’ve consciously connected seem to come together on their own — suddenly, it becomes clear why your best friend seemed distant at dinner last night, or what you should buy your dad for his birthday, for example. “With mindfulness, on the other hand, you are so in the present moment with your consciousness that there’s no room for ideas to collide,” Kashdan said.   
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In the garden, I know, are answers to life questions/challenges/quirks.  In the garden, I can fully zone out, with intention.  Nature, humble, bold, patient, kind; even when the awareness is outside a comfort zone.  Haven't been outside your comfort zone in 6 months?  Hmm.  That's when I know I'm stagnating.
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 Scott Barry Kaufman and Rebecca McMillian, wrote about zoning out in, Frontiers in Psychology:
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"We mind wander, by choice or by accident, because it produces tangible reward when measured against goals and aspirations that are personally meaningful. Having to reread a line of text three times because our attention has drifted away matters very little if that attention shift has allowed us to access a key insight, a precious memory or make sense of a troubling event. Pausing to reflect in the middle of telling a story is inconsequential if that pause allows us to retrieve a distant memory that makes the story more evocative and compelling. Losing a couple of minutes because we drove past our off ramp is a minor inconvenience if the attention lapse allowed us to finally understand why the boss was so upset by something we said in last week’s meeting. Arriving home from the store without the eggs that necessitated the trip is a mere annoyance when weighed against coming to a decision to ask for a raise, leave a job, or go back to school." 
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Every tangible benefit, above, in my garden.  I wanted a garden, it gave me what I needed.
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With spacing out, and epiphanies, Nature provides another delightful factor, losing all concept of time, what a drug, 'moments of eternity', Joseph Campbell names this.
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Who knew the serpent in the garden, now, is the cell phone?  A killer to zoning out.  Occasionally, my phone is forgotten, going into the garden.  What riches those times are.  On the weekend, by choice, I put my phone intentionally in the garden, away from hearing.
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I'm beyond thankful my gardening life began before cell phones.  How would I know there could be more in a garden?  Of course if the cell phone does this in a garden, the question becomes, what else is it doing?
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Wants vs needs in the garden, pic, above.  Front porch with rails is the ubiquitous, 'everyone wants rails on their front porch', but the narrative, above, is wildly heavy on needs.  Needs so rich it was worth adding 3' to accommodate family, friends, Nature.    
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

Another 1st Rule of Garden Design

Design your garden, 1st, from inside your home.  Design your garden, 1st, for the depths of winter.
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If your garden is gorgeous in winter, it is gorgeous all year.
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The Garden In Winter, by Rosemary Verey is perhaps the best Garden Design book.



Pic, above, from my previous garden.  30 years, creating a cottage garden.  Moved no plants/field stone/bricks when I left last May, only brought focal points & potted plantings & 7 large quartz stones.  Weeks later, seeing the pile of cottage garden 'stuff' at our ca. 1900 American farmhouse I knew it was inappropriate.  Beloved had his large work truck and 5 of his men on site, I let them gather 2 truckloads for the thrift store.  I stood and pointed and watched the bits/pieces making up a garden seen on TV, in magazines/books, tours, drift away.  Bits/pieces that made up my life.  Nothing to be done but take swift action.  Impossible to live a new life chapter, dragging past chapters.
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The view, above, is now all lawn.
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Christopher Lloyd said, The garden dies when the gardener dies.    
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Because money was nonexistent during early decades at my cottage garden I volunteered at garden symposiums, to get inside free.  Wildly, it was Providence placing me where I should be.  How else to have had lunch & traipse gardens with Christopher Lloyd when he came to lecture, how else to have had lunch & traipse gardens with Rosemary Verey when she came to lecture?
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Use the Wonk Factor

Charming.  No element appears new-construction.  Yet much must be either repaired or new.  What a lot of WONK !  As in, this-is-perfect.  Each layer a feast of intellectual intent.  A home & garden with narrative.
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Of course they used ogee curves for the illusion of greater height to the front porch.  Of course they chose a historic lattice, creating a sense of greater space, single shutters down, double shutters up.  Oh my, the front door panels lending greater height, and interest, versus using a ubiquitous 6 panel door.  Color makes the house larger too.  All white, this house would shrink.  Scale & flow maximized, inviting you in.  Photographer capturing fleeting shadows, a story line.



Pic, above, Southern Living.
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There is WONK here.  Every garden & home needs some WONK.
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WONK takes your heart & head.  Often WONK arrives unbidden.  "Oh no, we're keeping that, it's WONKY."  I delight in keeping the WONK factor, it makes a better design.
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WONK is official, it's in the dictionary, here.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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From the 50's, as building to code has become ever more tiresome to the eye, a little WONK gives outrageously good results.