Mad Boy: A Little Madness in the Garden

 No detail for your garden is too small.  Apologies, for decades, overlooking the obvious, below.

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Notice the pigeons?

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They're dyed.

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The owner's grandfather began the tradition, she, his granddaughter, Sofka, continues it.  There's even a fan club, aka Trust, "Pink Pigeons Trust (named after the Mad Boy's habit of dyeing birds in jewelled hues)."

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He dyed his pigeons jewel tones, was nicknamed, Mad Boy, and had a stunning garden.  Hope there is a heaven, and Mad Boy is busy in his celestial garden, awaiting all of us to visit.  What types of ideas and mischief's will Mad Boy create during his infinity?  He's on my list, Gardens to Visit.   

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This reminds me, must finally, faithfully, turn off the wireless at night.  A dear friend, an RN, said she began turning hers off, her dream world began again.  Didn't realize till mentioned, my dreaming has been turned 'off'.  Worth it to visit Mad Boy's garden.  Hope you've been gifted with travel dreams too.

 

  

Garden Design: Classic color combination, above, it will never fail you: Green, White, Brown.

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How Mad Boy's granddaughter is living in the house & garden:

    "Her day usually begins with writing in her study and she takes pleasure in arranging flowers for the house, mixing the more formal ones with wildflowers, wood anemones, hyacinths, tulips and fritillaries that grow in profusion in the long grass that borders the driveway. It is a short meander down the drive into the charming market town of Faringdon, where the excellent Hare in the Woods delicatessen provides Sofka and Vassilis with delicious salads for a working kitchen lunch and something for a relaxed supper with Leo and Annabelle, who live nearby."

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Owner of the house/garden, Sofka Zinovieff, above.

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Had the good fortune, last summer, to find her chair, above, in a small Southern town with no red lights or fast food.  Plate on the bottom reads, By Special Appointment to His Majesty The King, Warings, Oxford Street - London.....

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Placed the chair in the library, and it moves often to kitchen or office....Like Sofka, above, the chair 'fits' my body.  Knew from first sit, it was a chair for office and pleasure reading.  A surprise, I like it for meals too.  Under-priced, it was  on sale.  I did not negotiate lower.  One must keep integrity.    

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Sofka and her husband, preparing for a meal, below.

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All pics/quotes, House & Garden: Faringdon House, "The extraordinary story of Faringdon House: the Palladian gem immortalised in Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love. The eccentric Lord Berners, the inspiration for the character Lord Merlin, unexpectedly left the house to the 25 year old writer Sofka Zinovieff. Here we revisit our April 2016 piece on the extraordinary story of this home as the BBC adaptation hits screens."

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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

The Zen of Choosing The Right Fence Color

 See the epiphany, about Christopher Spitzmiller's fence, below? 

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Seriously, I want you to verbalize, aloud, why his fence, below, is divine.  Not using 'divine' flippantly here.  It's in earnest. 

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Hint, Christopher didn't want you to see any epiphany about his fence.  None.  He almost had me too.  Realized hours later, BRAVO Christopher, you did the classic, the centuries old. 

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Why do we assign our Garden Design choices to 'Socially Acceptable' ?

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Majority of people are unhappy with their landscape.  Gardens are here for us, to enrich our soul.  And each other. 

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Popular Culture is enriched, filthy lucre, with you being unsatisfied with your landscape.  Money to be had in fertilizer/chemicals/mowing/pruning/conformity.     

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"Trace your unhappiness to the place that is causing it and ask, "where am I not myself, my whole self, and nothing but myself?"  Martha Beck.  Ask this same question about your own Garden Design.  What is your integrity toward your garden, Earth, yourself?

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Beck, adds a simple definition for integrity. 

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INTEGRITY = INTACT

  

Spitzmiller's fence, above, disappears, it recedes, as it should.  Placing focus to the garden's proper focal point: open meadow, and table.  Time passes, people arrive, a gathering of souls, in joy of companionship, breaking bread, the focal point changes again.  

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You, your life, your friends, your family, your pets, are the Focal Point of your garden.  From your home, looking out upon your table, low meadow, fence, the Focal Point changed again.  If you've gotten this far, you've created your own world.  The world enriching you, Earth, family, friends.  A world wrapped around you physically & mentally, a world you carry within you. 

 

"You may not believe the joy that comes from complete integrity is possible.  It is.  ....to conform, we often end up ignoring or overruling our genuine feelings ---even intense ones, like longing or anguish.  At that point we are divided against ourselves.  We aren't in integrity (one thing) but in duplicity (2 things).  Or we may try to fill many roles, living in multiplicity (many things).  We abandon our true nature & become pawns of our culture."  Martha Beck.

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If you've read this far, you have longings for your garden.  Honor them in integrity.

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And you thought it was a simple choice, "....what color should I paint my fence?".  Go big.  For your life in the Garden.  Your Garden.  Which is nothing less than your life on Earth.

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Pics, above, here, with more pics of Christopher's garden, and a well-written article.

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Martha Beck's quotes from article at Maria Shriver, here. 

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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When is a fence color, just a fence color?  Never, in my realm.

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Hope the Spitzmiller shoot was able to have a sit down lunch or dinner at this table after their work complete.  Would love to know the menu, and prayer said.

How to Take Charge of Your Garden: Foundation Hedges

 At first glance, below, 'in love'.  Those hedges !  The dining room.  The furniture.  The Color choices: historic, Green-Brown-White.

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Imagine, in your mind's eye, removing the hedges, below.  What do you see?  You see a mess.  Next, keep the hedges, and remove all the perennials planted behind them.  What do you see?  You see a tidy, more open version: neater.

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You start gardening with your own  stamp and heroics, a decided idea of what will be new & best.  Best ever.  A season passes, and you see every effort, every dollar, your divine master piece, is all a sham.  Worse, it's the most heroic sham ever.  Did you out perform me in this arena?  I adore you.

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Worse, you go back to those 'ridiculous' Garden Design Rules, realizing they aren't there to constrict you.  They liberate you.  Interesting.  What you thought shackles, you learn is freedom.

  

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Keeping the hedges, above, remove the perennials, and add a few cone shaped evergreens and pleached trees.  Pleached trees and shaped evergreens, below.

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Pic, above, here.

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Having perennials for decades, then dispensing with them, planting flowering shrubs, having them for decades, now they're mostly being dispensed with too.  Didn't see this coming.   Why the newest change?

Deer proofing, and ease-of-care, Aging in Place.  Importantly, choose for pollinators in each incarnation.  You realize, this is not a 'less than' choice.  It's the richest choice you can make.

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I'm stripping my garden to its barest form, yet not reducing its benefit to pollinators, property value, reducing HVAC costs, nor the love my heart partakes, having found the universal-in-the-particular.

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 Pic, above, here. 

Simplicity, above, pure stage craft.  The stage is yours.  Pieces sited to leverage your life in joy & beauty.

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Reading, early morning, recently, came across this, "It has been said that once a woman reaches a certain age, life provides only two consolations -- gardening or God."  Ambra Edwards.  

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Blessedly, didn't have to wait to reach a 'certain age'.  Gardening and God have given decades of joy, challenge, vocation/avocation, epiphanies, friends, a life in full.

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"I gardened all the time: it was physically, emotionally and intellectually satisfying -- all of it." Penelope Hobhouse.

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Garden & Be Well,  XO  Tara

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How did I ever dislike hedges !  True.

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Yes, used bottom 2 pics before.  They're that good in simplicity, the garden design can be inserted myriad places.  

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Hedges, 2+ centuries ago were not purely for aesthetics.  Hedges had to pay their rent, keeping chickens out of the potager plantings.   Best to get rid of your mentally 'ideal' hedge plants, unless they are size appropriate & native (or provide like a native) & deer proof & to your zone.  

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Without the hedge, top pic, the Garden Design falls apart, worse, in winter, it's a ravaged off season view.  This is Part I: Hedges Around the House