Ralph Lauren Garden ca. 1988

Do you like this garden?

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For many years I could not abide these types of gardens.

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Clipped, formal, severe.

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Already laughing, because you know what is coming?

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I love adore honor & am humbled by this garden.

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Design them for clients.

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Evergreen, simple, easy to maintain, inexpensive, functional for games-parties-tents.

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Of course there is a garden room next to it with 'flowers', maybe a fruit tree orchard, or a 'shrubbery', perhaps a 'wild wood', a meadow with mown paths. 

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For many years I was clueless about the narrative of these gardens.

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Thought gardening was all about ME, what I liked, wanted, narrated.

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Garden Design, in USA, is too young, too righteous in proving, Tocqueville, without effort, correct.

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Slow down, did you smirk at the dry humor, above?

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It was ME, in the early years, "..too righteous in proving, Tocqueville, without effort, correct."

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What happened?

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Hungry to learn, I went back to college and got another degree, horticulture.  Knew at the conclusion, it was rotten.  Off to Europe to study historic gardens.

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A rule for Garden Design, pictures of your garden must not place its era or continent.

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 Don't think your garden has a narrative?  Wrong, every garden has a narrative.  Best to make sure it's a narrative enriching to your soul.

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That's enough to keep anyone happily occupied for life.

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Photo, above, 1988 Ralph Lauren.

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Saw the pic on Pinterest this week.  Had to know more about it.  Once I saw, Ralph Lauren ca 1988, I smelled the garden. 

Freshmen year of college, ca 1977, this was the fragrance.  Dorm rooms, dorm halls, dorm lobbies, dorm elevators, dorm cafeterias, freshman mixers, classrooms, campus sidewalks, ALL, smelled of this.  Memory !

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Like the fragrance, it was just on too many girls.

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Perhaps, I should seek the fragrance, now.  Let it tell me more about myself.  Just as Ralph Lauren's garden, above, tells me, in great narrative, about a my life trajectory in  gardens.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara