Garden Design: Flying Buttress

About 3 weeks ago we installed a pair of flying buttresses in a potager I designed.
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Choosing an evergreen shrub, then sourcing it in 3 different sizes proved impossible locally, state wide, region wide, and flyover country wide.  Finally, sourced on the west coast.  It's the new normal sourcing plants for real gardens.
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Flying buttresses were not part of the college curriculum for horticulture, in USA.  Of course I discovered them studying across Europe for decades.  1st garden in 1st country toured, literally.  No one seemed to have a name for them, nor did any of my peers seem as excited about them as I was/am.
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Their use, below, quite apparent.  These, below, are the high end of fancy.



Pic, above, here.
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Evergreens, above, pay the rent (for me), the herbaceous perennials do not.  Peaking for a mere 2 weeks/year, deadheading, dividing, weeding, staking, blank in winter.  Nope.  Instead, I would fill their space with flowering shrubs, a succession throughout the year, and bulbs.  Perhaps a lone flamboyant Clematis roguchi clambering a single buttress, as it dances with sunlight.  Yes, now I'm pleased, and amused.  With no down time & significantly less labor.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T  

Starting Point: Petersham Nursery

A commercial project, currently, has multiple narratives.  Sited in a historic building, the master plan includes antiques vendors, pop-up shops (my suggestion), restaurants, garden shop, entertainment, private event weddings/parties, a resident gardener for livestock & potager for supplying the kitchen (my suggestion).  Goats are needed for this job.  Tethered in a new spot daily, Jamaican style, to control kudzu & mimosa seedlings, you know this one is my suggestion, later they can be on the menu, pasture fed goat curry.
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At the front of the site is a section of 1-story granite with several entries boarded up, soon, opened with glass doors, and a nursery bursting with at least a plant or gardenesque antique you must have.  For the nursery I've suggested box lunches for sale, the restaurant is in another section of the building, close by, and quite stunning, even now, ahead of renovation.
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For the nursery, there is only 1 template, (in my mind) Petersham Nursery.  Perusing online materials for Vision Questing the myriad layers of my section of the project, exterior cohesiveness, grading, parking lots, are not 'romantic' lets take a photo yet, Petersham was a greater delight than expected.  Owners of my project have decades of success in the hospitality industry, among other credentials.   I know they'll pull from Petersham's success, and stamp their own country/continent success onto it.      



The ubiquitous Welcome Table, above.  Well done, their ubiquity never tires.



In the greenhouse, above.  Part of a team, it will be interesting to see our finished product.  Of course my Vision Questing letter to the team included choosing a color trinity for the exterior, and fonts for signage outside.  Going 'blind' into this at the moment, I have not seen the marketing expert's choices.  I know their work, and know I'll adore their choices.



Have used this pic, above, before on my blog.  Unaware it belonged to Petersham.  At the front end of my garden design career, 3 decades ago, I did not like the garden style, above.  Then the decades of traipsing Europe studying historic gardens.  Learned, after studying at Great Dixter, the garden design style, above, is well trod for centuries.  Of course I've used this template !  Not merely because it is delightful, more, it is low maintenance with visual beauty 24/7 year in/out.  Simple.
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Aside from the landscaping, above, the architecture we are working with has sections of amazing similarity.  A long blank wall, in our project, red brick- 1 story- flat roof, with a strip of soil 2' wide and a sidewalk 3.5' wide, by the street, I've designed espalier pear trees underplanted with herbs/bulbs/self-seeding annuals.




Pic, above, Petersham Nurseries.

Hope chickens can be apart of this project.  4 years, now, having my first chickens, and they've been marvelous everyday.  Dowager Duchess of Devonshire has nothing on me when it comes to loving my chickens.  Excepting, she had them decades & decades longer.  Ironically, it's the client hiring me for this job, I did their residence, whose chickens first educated me about chicken keeping.



Pic, above, here.
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I worked at a propagation nursery-garden center-florist for several years in the 80's.  Love the carts we had at both garden center & florist.  This commercial project must have a cart at the nursery !  Painted 1 of the trinity colors, in my proposal.  Touring dozens of historic gardens across Europe, the garden cart was at several.  Another garden design idea to copy, commercial/residential, manor house/gardener's cottage.



Pic, above, here.

2 garden carts, above.  Reminds me of Susanne Hudson's maxim, Dinky is Stinky.  Overdose on a theme is mine.
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More about this project soon, The Potager.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Susanne called recently, she's flying to Connecticut & driving straight to Bunny Williams house for  a garden sale & tour.....    Told Susanne she must take zillions of pics, and call me everynite once she got into bed.
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Another recommendation for our project, it must have lodging.  B&B is fine.  A destination food/shopping venue in USA different than England, distances much greater.

Last Question of Garden Design, "What Plant Goes Here?"

Often, it's not the garden needing a new design, it's the house.
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"How many French doors are they getting?", is the common joke question from my team when I get a new client.
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Two bays & a French door added, below.  How could they not be there?
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Pic, above, Ben Bentreath, who captioned it, "I designed the stone bay window which we built five years ago - turning an otherwise dark room into a much lighter space that connects into the garden with a huge south facing bay (and making a tiny upstairs bedroom a lot larger at the same time)... a simple but effective extension. It's mellowing in nicely now."

Vision Questing a commercial site with a new client, (actually new project - old client), it is obvious the long-long-long cluster of buildings built in different eras will need several pairs of urns atop several pairs of corners.  Cannot wait to source the urns to their proper era for the buildings.



"What plant goes here?", is the expectation.  Plants are the last to be Vision Quested in garden design.
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Having a 'real' life means I'm sometimes stuck in social situations with prototypical Earthling's, you know, zero care for Nature.  If they discover what I do for a living the 'landscape' around their home pops from their mouth, with the ubiquitous finale, "What plant should I put there?"
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Their question, I have no answer for.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

A Country Life

Studying historic gardens across Europe, this was a constant presence, below.  Especially in Scotland, Ireland, England.
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Perhaps the most aching view.  A walk in the country.  How lucky those people are, I'd think, with a bit of the flared nostril, and the pity party voice, "I'll never have that."  Move on, buck up, life is good, you're designing gardens girlie.  It's enough.
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On mission to learn about garden design, these views, below, were something extra life threw in, a porthole.  Other people's lives.  Our bus loaded with 25 like minded souls, studying gardens, many hundreds of kilometers across farm land we rode, excited to get to the next village, always staying in tiny historic hotels.  Our group filling every room, 2/room.
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Without a plan, without awareness, without a mission, my garden design path, led me here, into the picture, below.  Who knew?  I moved into my beliefs.  Literally.  I now live in the country in a historic farmhouse.
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Recently, walking between 2 fenced pastures, I knew the cattle had been taken to the abattoir and I was intent on the farm scenery, large pastures leading to native woodlands.  Miss-enjoying-herself, Miss-does-her-best-thinking-while-sweating, walked herself 10' from a 1 ton bull.  Have you ever been that close to a fully functional 1 ton bull who's alone and waiting for his new ladies? Me either.  How insignificant the wire pasture fencing became.  My DNA scanned for anything to run behind, if the need arose, nothing, no trees, trough, nothing.  Me, and the bull.  Kept my walking pace steady, no direct eye contact, thankful I had not worn the red t-shirt, knew it would be OK once I hit a stand of trees.  Realizing, both ways home, were either side of 'his' pasture.  What a lot of energy, bucking up for the walk home.  I did it.



Pic, above, here.











Don't really know how I got here.  All I wanted to do was learn everything about historic garden design, and design gardens.
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I didn't force this move, it was meant to be.  I was the last to know.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO T
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Pics from my Pinterest Quotes Board.

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.