Thursday, April 21, 2011

Bunny Mellon Style

A garden, below, needing tending or a garden tended to perfection?
Is this garden, below, your idea of heaven or a mess? (Have this garden, below, in any post 1985 deed restricted subdivision & you'll get 'nastygrams' from the HOA demanding it be 'weeded'.)
A fairy tale, below, or needs pruning?
Bunny Mellon likes it SCRUFFY !!
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A woman to love.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Oddly, I've always been repelled by deeply manicured landscapes. Repelled & disgusted by tidy landscapes omitting an intellectual component entirely. Is Puppet Barbuda being too vague in her dislikes? Puppet Barbuda abhors subdivision tidy landscapes installed by the 'builder' and maintained ad nauseum thru the decades; as if tidiness is an excuse for a 'decent' landscape or an intellect.
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Vanity Fair has a lovely article, where the pics came from, about Bunny Mellon here.
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12 comments:

  1. the gardener's cottageApril 21, 2011 at 9:47 AM

    i am so with you tara. i adore the relaxed, sloppy look of gardens. they seem so real to me. i cannot relate to the tidy. i'm tidy indoors but not outside. my husband and i go back and forth over this. i'm teaching him though that it is a lot less 'work' in my way of thinking. he'd love to pull all the little ground cover popping up in the rose garden but i won't let him touch it. ahhaha.

    xo
    janet

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  2. Desert DwellerApril 21, 2011 at 9:49 AM

    Tended to perfection is my vote.

    I like Bunny Mellon's garden as much as Puppet Barbuda's designs. What an incredible quality it has - strong hardscape, relationship to architecture, appropriate and massed plants, and a slightly overgrown quality showing class and wisdom - not no-class comes into money...

    Thanks for inspiring us poppets w/ that!

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  3. DarlaApril 21, 2011 at 10:08 AM

    You should drop by and see my 'tended' gardens..:0

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  4. Lori BuffApril 21, 2011 at 10:18 AM

    I'm with you, I'm never motivated to explore tidy landscaping. I just don't think I'll find anything interesting.

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  5. Maura @ Kisiwa Creek PhotographyApril 21, 2011 at 10:52 AM

    Hello Tara!
    Wow...loved seeing some of the gardens this lovely lady has. I really like the slightly overgrown casual gardens much better than the perfectly manicured. Organized chaos suits me better and I hope my own garden's reflect that one day. Now if I could just find a kind person close by who is dividing her perennials I'd be VERY happy...they're so expensive!
    Thanks for showing us this article..this Bunny Mellow is quite the woman. I hope your week has been a good one so far...have a wonderful weekend!
    Maura :)

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  6. home before darkApril 21, 2011 at 11:11 AM

    Count me in. I prefer organized chaos. Enough hardscape for order. Enough chaos so it looks like nature not a photo shoot.

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  7. mamacitaApril 21, 2011 at 12:00 PM

    I was thinking about Bunny Mellon yesterday when I went to the National Gallery of Art's traveling Impressionist exhibit. Many of the paintings were from her collection. I do imagine that they "informed" her eye and her vision for her garden.

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  8. Bruce BaroneApril 21, 2011 at 2:08 PM

    Looks like Heaven to me!

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  9. SHERRY HARTApril 21, 2011 at 3:14 PM

    I either like a really relaxed garden...or clean and very zen....but do not show me some perfectly landscaped mcmansion without personality! Don't know how I ended up here...but realized you are also a blogger from Atlanta. I am as well.....think I will take a look around here :)

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  10. Nita StacyApril 22, 2011 at 3:34 AM

    I too like my landscape a little wild much to my neighbor's dislike. But when they moved in...they ripped out everything that was great about their yard. I loved the landscaping of that house and when I moved into mine...wished mine had that. Mine had terrible low growing junipers and tall grasses totally inappropriate although low maintenance for my house. Out they came and I added lots of different things here and there. My neighbor asked if I'd like his help removing things from my landscape. Uh...no thank you...I planted those things. I don't say what a mistake I thought it was that you ripped out the old roses!

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  11. Gatsbys GardensApril 22, 2011 at 11:11 AM

    I really enjoyed the Vanity Fair article on Bunny Mellon.

    Eileen

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  12. UnknownApril 2, 2014 at 10:01 PM

    I have to say, at least in her gardens at Oak Spring in Upperville, VA where she lived most of the time, especially in her later years, and when her daughter Eliza was ill and lived there, were anything but as described. Although not formal, they were elegant and orderly within the context of this particular home. Caretakers worked regularly in those gardens. The Rose Garden that she designed (with Perry Wheeler)in the French style, at the White House were and remain beautiful and orderly. Her work has been described over and over as "supreme elegance". She studied the great gardens of Europe and it showed in her impressionistic approach to some of the gardens she designed. I feel honored to have both books, written by Lucia Tomasi-Oak Spring Flora & Oak Spring Pomona, a compendium of Bunny Mellons collection of rare gardening books and manuscripts. She was quite a lady.

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