The Banquet

We completed her extensive garden & house renovation in 2011, she called us back for another layer recently.

Chatting inside, getting a little tour of our earlier work, I said, "You must have a banquet here."  Laughing, she said it was exactly what an earlier interior decorator told her.
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What are the chances of that?
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Garden & Be Well,            XO Tara
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Pic House of Turquoise.
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
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Details about online design services.
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Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
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Details about lecture titles here.
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I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Don't Wear This on a Garden Tour

Never wear orange on a garden tour.  You will be seen thru hedges, & everywhere, making a serious gardener, trying to take pics, rabid as an angry bull.

This happened to me in Ireland visiting Helen Dillon's garden.

At dinner that evening, at which point everyone in the group knew I was a rabid bull, excepting Miss Orange,

who commenced to order & drink an entire bottle of wine without sharing with the group as if she was the one thwarted in her picture taking.
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I was treated with great dignity by the group, condolences (for my photography being interrupted)  & respect for discovering Miss Orange needed to be totally knocked off our socially acceptable list.

After all, there is a protocol for sharing wine with the group (hello Miss Orange we all shared with you) .
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But this isn't where I was going with the pics.
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Puppet Barbuda, garden critic extraordinaire, needs clothes, hair, and apparently a ruff for her neck.  She already has a pair of leather lace-up work boot stilettos.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Top pic via Castles, Crowns, and Cottages.  Remaining paintings Diego Rivera via   It's About Time.
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
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Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Vanishing Threshold

Vanishing threshold's 2 questions: 1) Is the garden so fabulous I MUST see inside the home.

2) Is the interior so fabulous I Must see the garden?
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Casement windows, library thick with sconces, terra cotta pots looking 'as if' they were just carried in from the conservatory, I'm wanting to be in the garden looking in at dusk with all the lites on......this room & garden have me.
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Want to read every book, see all the ironstone, types of silver.   What types of pots does she cook with?
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More than narrative, this bit of vanishing threshold is mentoring.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Thank you Cote de Texas for another great pic on your blog.  Look at those library sconces again, notice the multiple layers?  No need to ask, I KNOW they are on a dimmer switch.
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Do you want to be in your garden at dusk looking into your home?  I do.  And adore what I see.
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pic via Bumble at Home.  In a small garden, for above, I would use #89 granite gravel instead of lawn less maintenance.
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Tree Arbor

Have never understood the concept, "I can't afford a nice garden."

Can't afford an arbor?  You can afford a few trees.  Contact your Extension Service and discover myriad trees available for pennies on the dollar.
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Site the trees along the western exposure of your home and save money each warm month on a/c.
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Trees raise property value.
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Choose native trees as butterfly hosts in addition to bird habitat.
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Mary Sarton is wrong, gardens aren't silent.  Who can live without the sound of wind thru leaves?
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Trees teach me every fall, trust Providence, let go & be enriched.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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pic via Bumble at Home.  In a small garden, for above, I would use #89 granite gravel instead of lawn less maintenance.
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Checkerboard: Inside & Outside

Do you lock eyes on every interior statue or urn on plinth in an interior window?  I do.  Must be a fetish.  Driving my car to appointments I think about which window for my lovely French statue, how to redo its room and what type of plinth to use.  

Client's new checkerboard, above.

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Needs statue on plinth, yes?  Silly Landscape Design pun.  Speaks volumes to intuitives.

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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

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Top pic Habitually Chic.  Bottom pic, client garden.  Several years ago a client had home office with a wall of windows & black/white checkerboard floor.  You know exactly what I designed in her garden out that view, a checkerboard.

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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Exterior Wallpaper

No room for a fruit tree?

If you have the right wall with sun you do.
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Fruit trees can be bought already espaliered.
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Isn't it about time you gifted yourself exterior wallpaper?
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic Bumble at Home.
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Edith Wharton: Garden Designer

Interiors sweetly mimic gardens in detail: repetition, contrast, color theme, textures, ceiling-wall-floor, lighting, use, form, scale, flow, & unfortunately, expense.

Sconces, paintings & ceiling 'pop'.  Hmm, how to mimic this in the right garden?

A good bon mot from garden designer & author Edith Wharton, " "Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope."   Taken from today's,  The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor.  Adore receiving it by email daily.  
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Garden & Be Well,         XO Tara
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Pic via Habitually Chic.
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Hemingway: Running From Crazy

Plenty of reasons not to like Hemingway: womanizer, booze, gambling.  Especially being a little girl growing up during the feminist era of the 60's.  His Key West, FL, bedroom, below.

After beloved Miss Louise & Aunt Tillie died I somehow ended up, in my 40's, with a copy of Hemingway's, A Moveable Feast.

It's repulsive how much I like Hemingway's writing.  Hemingway's, Pilar, above.

Running From Crazy, Barbara Kopple's new documentary about Hemingway's 'mental illness' doesn't mention 'addiction' in promotional materials.  Odd, yes?  (Hemingway's pool, above, "“ . . .The swimming pool is wonderful -it is very large and the water, from away under the reef, is fairly salt. Also it lights up at night -I find that each underwater bulb is five times the voltage of the one bulb in the light house across the street, so the pool must be visible to Mars -it is wonderful to swim around in a sort of green fire, one’s friends look like luminous frogs . . .”, Elizabeth Bishop.)



(Had to include Hemingway's treasure box, above.  A past client had one & it was loaded with heirloom silver pieces, more than Jack Sparrow could imagine.)

Hemingway's home now, above.

Ca. 1933, above, Hemingway's garden as he knew it, Jane Austen 'rustic'.  Much better than the 'neat' garden tourists demand.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Pics via Hemingway Home.
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Boot Seat

I need this & know of dozens more who need it too.

The cliche, name it to claim it.
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A new thing for my eyes to scour for while junking/thrifting.
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I'm already anticipating colors to paint it.
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And how to redo the back door to place it.
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An old wood feed trough houses my garden boots now.  Charming but too small.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic saved to show a client, alas did not save provenance.

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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Elements of Design

Pairs work in Landscape Design too.  Landscape designs need a color theme & contrasting textures.  Include comfortable seating areas in your Landscape Design.  All heights in a Landscape Design are your canvas.  Every view from your garden into your home must be designed.

Every view from your home into the garden should be designed.  

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Would love to look into this room, in the evening, from the garden.  This was the rare room to attract my eyes then I later noticed its garden.  A perfect vanishing threshold.

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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

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Pic via The Relished Roost.  

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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Trinity of Color Themes

Backdrop rustic hedge, with contrasting foliage, balances formality of furnishings & Chinoiserie.

Trinity of color themes: plantings, accessories, furnishings.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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pic via Slim Paley.  It works for interiors/exteriors and will work for you.  After repetition & contrasts, 'copy' is the most potent Garden Design tool.
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Front Door Narrative

Contrasts are a potent tool in the garden.

This mirror & curving lines of the light fixture balance the squares of the front door.  Exactly what I would have chosen.  And the scale of the frontdoor handle is pure sweetness.
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This frontdoor starts the narrative of the interior.
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Every front door has a narrative.  Whether the owner thinks so or not.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic via Cote de Texas.  If the door were palladian then a square/rectangular mirror would be best.  Do not forget to use 'contrast' in your quiver of tools.
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Bring Garden Light Further Inside

Every window is a garden view in my home. Not serendipity, once the epiphany was made the plodding began.  And the garden transformed.

Newest epiphany? Bring garden light further into my rooms.  Where should mirrors be hung?  Been sourcing junk/thrift mirrors, months of plodding have produced a nice selection, in my garage, awaiting placement.
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One mirror, similar to the above, a joy at $10 from the local thrift.  None of the mirrors, all antiques, top $30.  This is the result of plodding.  Plodding pays.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic Brooke Astor's New York library.
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Moving Home

A few gifted souls create Pixie Dust, and this note from a client yesterday was a jolt.

"Tara,

  Are you up to a serious challenge? We have moved back to Valdosta, where our law practice is because of changes in the firm and how much travel we had been doing every day. We need a simpler, less complicated life and more time to enjoy it.

  We have purchased a Craftsman bungalow from the twenties that had serious issues. We have now taken care of most of the serious infrastructure issues and taken it back to the beginning from an unfortunate 60s remodel.

  I refer to it as Boo Radley’s house, from To Kill a Mockingbird. An elderly gentleman, Tom Dean, went to GA Tech in the 30s, had a breakdown and never left the house again. He was much loved by his family who looked after him until he passed away several years ago. When we bought the house his mama’s fur coat was still across the chair, his daddy was a General in WW1 & 2 and his uniform was still upstairs.

His family was very reluctant to sell it but since I am a distant cousin they finally relented rather than have it fall in which would have probably happened within a year or two.

  Outside also has serious issues. Tom swept the yard every day so there is not a grain of top soil, the last known particle was sighted in the 50’s. He was also obsessed with water encroaching on the house and dug major ditches everywhere. We have an acre, but our backyard is a 25 acre pecan orchard. Our neighbor is a funeral home. We have a fence between us and I have planted Confederate Jasmine to separate us from the grieving families.

  There was a garage behind which we have taken the sides off of for a back porch. We have a wonderful front porch and now having become charter members of the Dull Dogs Society, one of our favorite activities is watching the neighbor’s 20 something cats cross the street for meal times.

  We are having to pay a bucket of money to sell the Milledgeville house, but I would rather do that than lose Charles because of the stress we have been under. This means we have a very limited budget to work with but I believe a good plan is the most important thing and we can do it in stages with us doing most of the work. I know we are going to have to plow in tons of compost for anything to grow.

My 1^st priority would be the front. I see a cottage garden with picket fence to  give it enclosure and garden rooms. Our daughter, Anna, may be getting married in the next year and I would love to have a garden reception in front yard, Anna may have other ideas. Our house is in town and in walking distance to church and square. Next would be a Koi pond near the back outdoor living space and possibly a potager. I am afraid we are probably looking at serious grading issues.  "

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In 'Valdosta', I know we will have a good cry at the start, knowing the depth of what they left.  Because these are people that create Pixie Dust I also know we will quickly be in their new chapter of life.  New ideas, laughter, a filling of the spiritual well.  Their previous home is scheduled to be in Southern Living this summer, it was shot last year.  All names & places were changed.

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Are you living in the realm of Pixie Dust?

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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara

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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.
.
Pic via Paris Through My Lens