How To Use The Best Garden Design Template

Every garden is the same, below.  Literally, identical.  Spanning centuries these gardens survive, thrive, go invisible, revive.
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Trees + Focal Points + Shrubs + Meadow = A Good Garden
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They're the only type of Garden Design I want to do.  Why?  Each is unique, each is regenerative, each absorbs the personality of its location, architecture, and Gardener.  Though each garden is identical, looking at the map, each garden is green, looking at the terrain each garden is unique in Nature's lush decadences with rooms for you, your family, your friends, and dogs, and cats, and chickens, and.....
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"...combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought --- before there is any connection with logical connection.....in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others." Farnum Street.


Pic, above, here.
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Describe the garden, above, to yourself, in this moment.  How I'd like to know the words you're using.  How quickly you pull your words forth, the pauses you give to certain features.
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Trees, shrubs, meadow, above.  Canopy/Ceiling + Walls + Floor + Art (Furnishings), above.
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At its core this single Garden Design, above/below/below, is pulled from thousands of years of agriculture.  Nothing to spare in farming, a system of collapse without templated sequential attentions, to each layer, seen and unseen. 
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You are one of those layers.  Whether you think so or not.  This Garden Design is the framework to what has given beauty and fed the globe, well before humans arrived.
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"If humility were imagined as a visible thing, it would be soil: quiet, brown soft, maintaining networks underground and feeding the whole of the living world."  Jay Griffiths.  And the air we breath.














Pic, above, here.
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Simpler, above.  What do you see?  Trees, Shrubs, Meadow, Focal Point, above.  Canopy/Ceiling + Walls + Floor + Art (your home), above.
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"Many of us have been wonderstruck at the discovery of mindedness within the Earth and between trees, sensitive, ephoratory, and communicative."  Jay Griffiths
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Definitely, the tree, above, has me.  And you know which one.  


Pic, above, here. 
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A garden to be viewed from birds-eye, above.
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Trees + Shrubs + Meadow + Focal Point, above.  Yet, more-more-more of each.  
Parts of this garden, above, do not please me, "Don't fence me in." Cole Porter.  Pop open the pair of parterres in the foreground, I'm happy again.
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Often, Cole Porter, Frank Sinatra, AC/DC, Crash Test Dummies, Elaine Stritch, Julie Andrews and a few movie soundtracks pop up while I'm in a garden. Always unbidden.  Sometimes lines from books read decades ago.  Amusing. 
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 Pic, above, here.
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Same Garden Design, above, as all of the above, with age to it.
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Little maintenance needed, above, in this area.  Snip, snip, done for the year.
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This Garden Design style, all pics above, adapts to mid-century modern, farmhouse, Monet, Frank Lloyd Wright and etc.
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At the front end my gardening included everything above, and perennials, and and and and.
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"For who hath despised the day of small things?"  Zech. 4: 8-10  Makes me laugh every time I read it.
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So.
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At The End of The Day.
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Why this Garden Design style?
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Smallest input, greatest output.
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Forgot to mention, this style Garden Design, is greatest pollinator habitat, and non-toxic to Earth.
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Most important thing to know about this style Garden Design?  A third dimension is brought in.  The Garden, You, and a source of epiphany amongst the air, trees, meadow, birds, nurturing, caressing, loving.  Loving.
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In these gardens you will live wider, and know it, in addition to the arc of living long.
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These gardens give answers to questions you've found impossible to put words to.
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These gardens are your revival.  Go ahead, laugh.  Yet, put in this style Garden Design, revival will arrive.  "A sense of the numinous."  C.S. Lewis.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Each of you has been touched by 2020.  Cannot imagine the myriad layers.  Hope you have a garden, a botanical garden, a park, nature reserve, a neighborhood walk, somewhere to think, and hear, and be strong.
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Beloved's health has been caught up with hospitals shutting down for patients with cancer etc.  Testing was finally done a month ago, they found 2 new, serious issues.  Surgery for one went well last week, he's back at work.  Scheduling for the 2nd issue is in September.  His doctor said, "Immediately."  .   
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2020 has us, we have God.
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"If we are to live and have something to live for, let us remember, all of us, that we are the servants as well as the masters of our fields."  Henry Beston
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Because of the Garden Design template, above, I know fully, to this moment, what being masters-of-our-fields gives, harbors, teaches.

How to Arrange Furniture in Large Garden Spaces

How to section a large terrace or deck into cozy areas? 
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Learn from the best, below.  Why are they the best?  Their livelihood depends upon layers of good design, ease of maintenance, simplicity for staff to serve, and, enriching comfort for guests.
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Pic, above, here.
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Large pots, multiple seating areas, repetitious furniture, color theme flowing throughout & accouterments. 
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Beautiful pots, furnishings not in the budget?  Field gather, junking/garbage day curb side/thrift stores/garage sales, paint all the furnishing the same color.  Paint all the pots the same color.
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Become a fan of square and rectangular shaped tables.  Square/rectangular tables can be pulled together or set against walls, multi-use. 
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How easy this terrace is to blow.  Few obstructions.  Simple pot plantings.  No major replanting needed at change of seasons.
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At the end of an Open Garden a lone woman remained, sitting on my 6' Teak bench.  Tired, I went straight to her and sat down.  She began to cry.  Heaving breaths, big round tears.
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Divorce finalizing, she was losing her large sacred landscape.  How could she live without it?  Looking around that garden room of mine, she said she had to, ".....HAVE THIS."  The beauty of a garden in its full context.  More tears.
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So, we held hands, she cried a bit more, and I waited, knowing exactly what to say to her.
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"You can have this, my garden is less than 1/4 acre, 8500 SF, and that includes house & driveway."
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Not the first time bearing witness to a woman's life change.
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Never think beautiful garden photographs merely represent what can be done in a garden with $$$, pic above.  Beautiful gardens are about beautiful relationships.  Gardener to Nature. 
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Never saw that woman again.  Yet, I know she's thriving.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T 

18 Garden Design Rules You Need to Use: All in This Seemingly Simple Garden

Get 'the' Garden Design memo, below?  Aside from 'the' memo, what are the bullet points for the memo in macro, not merely micro?
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Garden Design course in a single photo, below.  Not the entire curriculum, but enough for major memo about Garden Design.
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Seriously, if you were teaching this Garden Design course today, what bullet points are in this photo, below?
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Wish I had you in a real classroom, no more than 20 of you.
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I was a fully fledged adult arriving to Garden Design, the engineering degree not-so-much help.  Aside from intuitively knowing Garden Design was a process, its machinations were so magic in effect, layers remained indecipherable.  No words, no language to process a good Garden Design.
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Worse, went to get another degree, this time horticulture, and the same thing happened, zero language or understanding of historic Garden Design principles were taught.  But , baby I had 'credentials'.  Junk in the trunk.  Monster junk, harmful to Earth, body, spirit.  That's another book/article/lecture/post.
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Off to Europe, late 80's, studying historic Garden Design 20+ years.
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This garden, below, made me smile at first site.
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Why do you think it made me smile?


Pic, above, here.
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Pair of stone animals, (are they cows or horses?), at the entry, above.  At a distance, even, performing their duties.  Sentinels announcing, "Yes, come this way, enter, you're welcome, we want you to walk this way."  In their wordlessness of welcome, and direction, a benediction, grace.  Remember, if you need words in your garden, it's a fail.
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Already, you're getting a Garden Design bullet point from the garden, above.
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Imagine the same pic, above, yet a small sign placed at the front of the steps, Entry.  Oh dear, that would be banal, gauche, worse, lacking in grace.
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Walking a garden with a kindred spirit, seeing such a sign, 'entry', in an otherwise beautiful setting, we'd merely make eye contact, make a face, move on.  Pure understanding.  However, walking in this garden with a kindred spirit, our feet would not be touching the ground.  Looks between us, total joy & grace, move on, hungry to see more, time & reality have ceased to exist, life is only the garden at hand, and perhaps a good cup of tea with a scone, or such, when we alight on a chair.  Perhaps a glass of wine, cheese/crackers, freshly quartered blood oranges?  Exactly what happened with friends while visiting a private garden in Alabama last week.  Another post, promise.
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Notice the world's most historic Garden Design Color Trinity?  Green-Brown-White.
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Contrasting foliage, above, large leaves next to small leaves.
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Foliage at the far right column following the Garden Design Rule: Just Let It Touch.  Especially love that rule, made it up myself, one of many, noticed across Europe yet never put into words anywhere I've read, or heard in conversation, lectures.
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Garden Design Layers: Canopy, Walls, Floors, each designed & executed.  Better, purest simplicity.
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Crunch of gravel underfoot, Sound in the garden, in addition to wind thru foliage, and hopefully the sound of water is in this garden, above, too.
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Subsidiary color to the main Color Trinity?  Noticed already?  Lead color for pots, bench, windows/doors, railing.
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Pruning shape, rounded, for plants in pots, contrasting formal with the informal of canopy tree foliage at far right.  Furthermore, choosing to prune potted plants rounded, in contrast to the square columns.
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White chosen is creamy.  Bright white would jump forward, making the space feel smaller, especially the terrace.
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Repetition of pots and their plantings.  Repetition of Green.  All Green gardens are the fastest to achieve their goal, and the most serene.  A simple plant selection, not too much diversity, calm, and tough plants too, less maintenance/disease/watering/bugs.
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What did I miss for this Garden Design course in a single photo?  What shouts to you?  What makes you smile?
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Garden Design Rules Executed in the Garden Above:

1.  Pair of focal points announcing an entryway.
2.  Color Trinity chosen: green-brown-white.
3.  Canopy-Walls-Floor designed, executed.
4.  Contrasting foliage sizes, large leaves next to small leaves.
5.  Contrasting foliage pruning, formal & informal.
6.  Sound designed, wind thru foliage, crunch of gravel underfoot.
7.  Subsidiary Color chosen, lead, for pots, furniture, windows/doors, rails.
8.  Creamy white chosen instead of bright white, creating a large space for a smallish front porch.
9.  Small variety of plants chosen, simplicity, greater visual impact.
10. Tough plantings chosen for ease of maintenance, no bugs/fungus/watering.
11.  Repetition of pots chosen, and their scale, color, shape.
12. Repetition of green.  All green gardens are the fastest to achieve their goal, and serene.
13. Last column, foliage barely touching, Just Let It Touch.
14. Needing words in your garden a 'fail'.
15. Hospitality a layer of expectation good Garden Design provides.
16. Using grace as a design layer.
17. Big impact Garden Design visually, yet simple ingredients, few ingredients, easy to maintain.
18. Keep it simple sweetie.  This garden's simplicity is its super power.  Intellect oozes from this
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Up front, I bristled at Garden Design Rules.  What would I tell that girl now?  Get over it, waste of time, you won't reinvent the wheel, better, your originality lies within every Garden Design rule.  Promise.  Most importantly, learn how to break any Garden Design rule, that's a bit tougher, yet necessary.  Pay attention.  Pay more attention.  Pay closer attention.  See all.  See what's not there.

16 Shortcuts for Creating a Fabulous Landscape in Record Time

Carl Jung overlooked a common archetype.  How?  This particular archetype appears before parties on the home front.  I get the call.  At least a week ahead of their long planned, months, gathering.  "Tara, you've got to get the garden ready."
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What to do?  Not what you think.  With a party and little time, two necessities.  Fresh mulch, and clean lines.
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Clean Lines.  Huge Garden Design tool, party or no. 
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Brick edging, below, clean lines.  Garden, below, could easily go more formal with the edging.  Do you know how?  Soldiers.  What are soldiers in the garden?  Bricks as garden edging are called 'soldiers'.  Further, the higher the soldiers, the more formal the garden.
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Before the soldiers, below.  Shot the pics merely thinking job process, instead, another affirmation of clean lines.
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A lot of Garden Design here, beyond Clean Lines.  Focal points on axis, in enfilade.  So.  Everyone is a garden designer, label the focal points on axis in enfilade.  No?  It's one of the most common Garden Design tricks, used ad infinitum, on Garden book/magazine covers.
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Another Garden Design rule followed, above, flow.  Moving thru the space easily.
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Another Garden Design rule followed, above, Color Trinity.  Green-Brown-White is the historic favorite, and chosen, above.  Did your eyes/brain lock on that when you first saw the top pic?  Granite gravel, #89, and the livestock tank are the white prong of the Green-Brown-White here.  Table and trees, obviously, the brown.
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Another Garden Design rule followed, above, Color on Field Gathered Furniture all Painted the Same Color.
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Another Garden Design rule followed, Overdose Your Theme.  Small iron conservatory at middle of table, above, painted same green as chairs.
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Another Garden Design rule followed, Every Garden Needs a Water Feature.  More, I wanted the sound.  My chickens arrived, aged 6 days cracked, in this livestock trough with a heat lamp, now, it's another gift.
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Grading ahead of gravel, below.


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Another table, below, glass topped metal, Overdosing on a Theme, painted same color as chairs.  Metal table used as buffet table, leveraging party time, with harvest table.
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Near the harvest table, below, Overdosing on a Theme, green furniture, galvanized pots/light fixtures, granite, terra cotta pots matching the red clay bricks used as edging, both burnt Earth.  Overdosing on a Theme isn't for spots of your Garden, it's for the entire garden.
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A reminder, below, to use clean lines.
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(Never answered my own question, above, about the focal points in enfilade.  What are they?  Did you label them?)
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Day ahead of our first gathering in our new Garden Room, above, Beloved/I were sitting at the table, above, tired, dirty, happy.  I was about to get happier, as a Cheshire Cat.
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Beloved says to me, eyes big, eyebrows raised, "We don't have enough chairs."  A best moment.  I've been dragging garden chairs home to this garden since we moved in 3 years ago.  Had a lot from my other garden, but I knew where this garden was headed.  Why was this a best moment?  Every chair I brought home, he complained about me junking up the garden, we have enough chairs, don't buy anymore chairs, you're wasting your money.
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Nope, didn't do the told-you-so, merely the Cheshire Cat smile.  His chair panic escalated, Let's move some chairs from the deck to here.  Nope, need those chairs for using the deck too.
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Our gathering arrived, some were spending the nite.  Guess what happened late in the evening?  Gathering for music, talking, laughter, stories, moved to the deck.  Strands of lites, above, were plenty of illumination for the deck too.     
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This gathering quite special, Beloved's friends from before kindergarten, literally.  Know many of their stories, and have requested I never know all their stories, "Don't worry Baby you won't."
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Tire swing, above, hanging when we moved in.  Knew I was going to cut it down.  Then my precious girls came with their dear mom, we had lunch and the girls ran/played, and were tire swinging in crazy ways never imagined.  They've been more, but  those were lunches on the front porch, time to get them back for lunch and tire swinging again, and dining nearby.
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Adore our new Garden Room, though living thru its cliche epoch.  Cliche epoch?  Trees & evergreen groundcover need to grow-grow-grow, own the space, diminish our input.  You know, the proper order of things.  Nature in charge, with merely a hint of us.
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Did you label the focal points in enfilade, from question, above?  Table to livestock trough.  At some point, not too distant, stone steps will lead from livestock trough into garden, extending the enfilade further.  Looking forward to making adjustments to scale/flow with that new layer.
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Hoop greenhouses going in at back of property for growing wholesale plants.  More wholesale plants will be outside under irrigation, coming close to the gravel terrace, above.  No worries, we'll plant a hedge, 5'-6', hiding the nursery, yet keeping trees, sky, and distant garden views in site. Probably tea olive, deer proof, fast grower, dense.
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Where are you on the Garden Design continuum?
Garden Design Rules, followed, above:
Use a Color Trinity
Green-Brown-White is historic classic Color Trinity
Flow
Overdose a Theme
Paint Field Gathered Furniture Same Color
Garden Party Top 2 Garden Preparations: Fresh Mulch, Clean Lines
Enfilade
Soldiers
Formal Soldiers
Informal Soldiers
Leverage Harvest Table with a Buffet Table
Focal Points on Axis
Every Garden Needs a Water Feature
Siting a Hedge: Constraints
Choosing Hedge Plants: Considerations
Keep Calm & Live Thru the Cliche Epoch

How to Take Charge of Your Ugly Landscape

Heads-up, every garden, below, uses the same 'Garden Design'.  Centuries old yet new in each incarnation.
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If you've found your way here, you've at a minimum considered what a real Garden Design is vs. mow-blow-go-commodify-all-I-touch landscapes. 
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More, you've tried Garden Design, your way.  Literally, the famous, Frank Sinatra, My way.  It didn't work. 
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How do I know?  Me too.  Excepting more stubborn, more original, too much more of the full-monty.  Zorba the Greek said it best, The full catastrophe.   


Pic, above, here.
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With Garden Design, intuitive isn't the best path.  Garden Design is counterintuitive.
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After finally getting your Garden Design correct, you've got more layers.  Installing your Garden, plants, hardscape, focal points, just a few layers.  Hope I mentioned, how your Garden Design interacts with your home's architecture, paramount. 
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Garden Design does not begin in the Garden.  Garden Design begins inside your home.
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Look, awhile, at pics above/below.  They are the same Garden Design.
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Draw all these gardens, pencil on paper. 
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List why they are the same garden, in words.
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Most don't have a vocabulary to describe any Garden.
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I certainly didn't, at the front end. 
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Pic, above, here.

 
Pic, above, here.
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I still purchase Garden Design history books.  Adore reading about the same gardens across history via different authors.  Layers of elucidation, daily.  Three decades after beginning my Garden Design Journey.
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Garden Design doesn't limit itself to era, location, size, budget.  Nor plane of thought.  Intriguingly, plane of thought.  Anthropomorphic, literal, metaphorical, spiritual.  Casting about history and Garden Design, spiritual is bound tightly to Garden Design.  Being a USA citizen, too, there is something given, inherent, from birth, from our Declaration of Independence.  Pursuit of Happiness.
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"Among the many surprises this country (USA) holds in store for its new citizens… there is the amazing discovery that the “pursuit of happiness,” which the Declaration of Independence asserted to be one of the inalienable human rights, has remained to this day considerably more than a meaningless phrase in the public and private life of the American Republic. To the extent that there is such a thing as the American frame of mind, it certainly has been deeply influenced, for better or worse, by this most elusive of human rights, which apparently entitles men, in the words of Howard Mumford Jones, to “the ghastly privilege of pursuing a phantom and embracing a delusion.”  Hannah Arrendt.
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"The grandeur of the Declaration of Independence… consists… in its being the perfect way of an action to appear in words. And since we deal here with the written and not with the spoken word, we are confronted by one of the rare moments when the power of action is great enough to erect its own monument.

What is true for the Declaration of Independence is even truer for the writings of the men who made the revolution. It was when he ceased to speak in generalities, when he spoke or wrote in terms of either past or future actions that Jefferson came closest to appreciating at its true worth the peculiar relationship between action and happiness."  Hannah Arendt.

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"Like Whitman, who believed that literature is the seedbed of democracy, the Founding Fathers were greatly inspired by the literature and philosophy of the Renaissance — particularly by the “men of letters” of eighteenth-century France. Arendt traces the chain of ideological influence across time, space, and culture to the French Revolution and its ideal of “public happiness,” which Jefferson appropriated. In a paper penned two years before The Declaration of Independence, he argued that the ancestors who had left Europe for America had enacted “a right which nature has given all men… of establishing new societies, under such laws and regulations as to them shall seem most likely to promote public happiness.” He then incorporated this insistence on happiness into his blatantly obvious yet somehow stealthy revision of The Declaration of Independence, changing the formulation of inalienable rights from “life, liberty and property” to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

That such a subtle one-word revision of language can effect so profound a revolution in ideology may be strange, but not nearly as strange, Arendt points out, as the fact that it was undebated in Jefferson’s day and went practically unnoticed as it reoriented the entire national ethos for the centuries that followed."  Maria Popova

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"Tyranny, according to ancient, pre-theoretical understanding, was the form of government in which the ruler had monopolized for himself the right of action and banished the citizens from the public realm into the privacy of the household where they were supposed to mind their own, private business. Tyranny, in other words, deprived men of public happiness and public freedom without necessarily encroaching upon the pursuit of personal interests and the enjoyment of private rights. Tyranny, according to traditional theory, is the form of government in which the ruler rules out of his own will and in pursuit of his own interests, thus offending the private welfare and the personal liberties of his own subjects. The eighteenth century, when it spoke of tyranny and despotism, did not distinguish between these two possibilities, and it learned of the sharpness of the distinction between the private and the public, between the unhindered pursuit of private interests and the enjoyment of public freedom or of public happiness, only when, during the course of the revolutions, these two principles came into conflict with each other."  Hannah Arendt
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"Every modern theory of politics will have to square itself with the facts brought to light in the revolutionary upheavals of the last two hundred years, and these facts are, of course, vastly different from what the revolutionary ideologies would like us to believe.

[…]

The rediscovery of action and the reemergence of a secular, public realm of life may well be the most precious inheritance the modern age has bequeathed upon us who are about to enter an entirely new world."  Hannah Arendt.

Gardens began, enclosed.  There was much to keep out.  Animals, and worse, other people.  Centuries of walled gardens.  The world was not a safe place.  Locked walled gardens prevail over the majority of Historic Garden Design. 
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Only recently, barely 4-5 centuries of process, have gardens been designed, open facing & welcoming to the outer world.  For most of those centuries, only the wealthy had access to creating a designed garden.  The entire world was a poor place, few with means beyond subsistence.   
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Growing up USA post WWII is the aberration, not the norm for historical Garden Design.  Ego about Garden Design, in the macro people population, private & commercial, is killing bees, other wildlife, poisoning groundwater, and ourselves.  Historic Garden Design, still reigns. 
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Intuitively, I glommed onto historical Garden Design.  Alas, getting into true historic Garden Design has meant having neighbors call the police, 3 times in 30 years, about my garden.  Why?  Too many flowers, no lawn.  My garden was different from their green meatball foundation plantings and lawn. 
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A life satisfaction about those police visits, 2 men, 1 woman, was receiving an apology from each. 
Each adored my garden.  Go me.  Indeed !
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Pic, above, here.
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Go me, without any victory is the more appropriate truth.  Why do the majority of homes with landscapes have fear about Historic Garden Design?  Why fear being 'different' from their neighbors? 
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Seems the choice is clear, but I'm weird-other-strange-eccentric (a few recent adjectives thrown my way).  Each time I'm given an adjective about my personality, my reply a heartfelt, Thank you. 
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Trust the path of being faithful over being effective.  I didn't always trust my heart over head.  Was raised to use my head.  Upon reaching the dark wood Dante wrote so well about, I knew, life moving forward would be with my heart.  A fork reached in the dark wood now?  Two questions.  Does this path enlarge me?  Does this path diminish me?  And a knowing, Don't force a solution.

 
Pic, above, here.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Historic Garden Design, all pics above/below, time tested upon continents, eras, regimes, cultures, ages, sexes, people, livestock, wildlife.  Results?  Aside from beauty and happiness.  People & Planet thrive.
 
Pic, above, here.
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Had to include David Hicks garden, above/below.  His deeply copied homage to Historical Garden Design.  More, he chose a change of seasons within his simplicity.  In leaf, above, deciduous, below.
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Pic, above, here.
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A last pic, below, of David Hicks garden, above.
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Pic, above, here.
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Every Historic Garden Design, above, is a trinity of  Hedge-Meadow-Woodland. 
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My garden, 3 police in 30 years?  I broke no HOA rules, all was abided by.  Excepting the county chicken clause requiring an acre of land.  With my home and a recently purchased house as a rental, indeed I owned an acre of land in the county.  The law did not stipulate someone must own a contiguous acre. 
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Still, most landscapes meet minimum for HOA & certificate of occupancy when their house was built.  I wonder why people desire "the ghastly privilege of pursuing a phantom and embracing a delusion."  Howard Mumford Jones.  This is too narrow, too harsh, most churches follow the same type of HOA garden design.  Spirit is allowed inside the walls, not outside.
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Why all this kerfuffle?  What a lot of 'stuff ' written above.   Few Garden Whisperers are born each century.  Few to keep the candle lit.  That candle leading to great inner joys, and manifest happiness in action, the meeting of body to Earth as Providence intended. 
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Pace of life, deep intuitive epiphanies, joys of change thru the seasons, days, hours.  Living territory not map.  Living signal not noise.  Living one with Earth. 
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Of course higher property values are nice, teamed with lower utility bills, having a Historic Garden Design.  Perhaps scientific studies about improved microbiome health and historic gardens should be inserted here.
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Humor of Providence, all I wanted was a pretty garden.  I got that, and a life.
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All the gardens above are quite formal, low maintenance, yet rustic.  Balanced with Nature.  Gardens to live in, Gardens giving back to your life more than you put into them.
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How to take charge of your ugly landscape?  Use Historic Garden Design principles.  Unique in each permutation, promise.  More, the world will adore seeing what you add to the canon of Historic Garden Design.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

Create Geometry with Faux Geometry

Within the past month, minding my own business, living in middle rural Georgia, 2 local women, they don't know each other, hired me.  One of the women found me on Houzz, the other thru her builder.
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Both women, and their spouses, have targeted specialty careers, heavy with international travel.   Heavy, for decades.  Both women hired me with strong intent.  A French garden.  Not an American version of French gardens, French.
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Attention to detail inside their homes, not French inspired, French.  Neither woman has hesitated to fill a container, while in France thru the years, and ship it home.
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At one of those gardens, before getting out of my service van at the first visit, I knew faux geometry would be used with major hedges, allees, axis.  Ironic, much can be manipulated, but the property lines, and roads, cannot.  Enter, faux geometry.



Pic, above, here.
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At the front end of faux geometry, especially if you've never heard of it, the concept feels 'wrong'.  Faux geometry is not taught in school, nor have I heard it mentioned at any seminar/class/article.  Faux geometry was learned, on-the-job.  Once learned, it's a sense of magic.


 
Pic, above, here.
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Collateral to faux geometry is a lecture attended decades ago, Sir Roy Strong, and his wife, came to Atlanta.  His garden, The Laskett, has since been bequeathed after he's gone, to live in perpetuity as a public garden.  Of course you can guess my cat's name?  Laskett.  Even Laskett's new vet, moving rural 2 years ago, asked about Laskett's name.  And the vet is from Scotland, educated in England.
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At that lecture, all these decades later, I still hear Sir Roy Strong say, "If you have an irregularly spaced area, put a geometric shape in it."  Game changing sentence.  Faux geometry I had to learn on my own.
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In the renderings, above/below, there are geometric garden rooms, within irregular spaces, and further, faux geometry within several of the geometric garden rooms.  Staying with this?  Got it?
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Garden Design with pixie dust.  A pair of arrows for your quiver.



Pic, above, here.
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Once my pair of 'French' ladies have their gardens installed, I'll match-make them.
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Renderings, above, created by French garden designer, Dominique Lafourcade.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Not my job to tell you how to dig a planting hole, my job is telling you where.  More, if you truly want to know how to design your garden, geometry and faux geometry are a pair of major keys to that realm.

Binding House to Site: Focal Point & Enfilade

A current client, 14 acres, and well tucked into their property, built a new home to look like a historic home.  At the first visit I fell for the ruse, thought they had renovated an antebellum home.
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The lane leading to their gravel drive is a single lane gravel road along an active train track.  Open & wooded their land has all the right drama including level and a few slopes.
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First salvo with their property is the approach at the train track, flow for cars & feet from entry to house, barn, dependencies, orchard & potager.  More importantly, currently past age 50, no detailing care with maintenance, ever.  Not a consideration & won't be tolerated.  Staring down age 80 makes simplicity, simple.
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All of the above is 'easy'.  They're all necessities, and historic templates are well trod as guides.  What bothered me most is the house not being tied to its site, well sited, it has no strings attached to the garden.
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Walking the grounds about the house, with their pack of older rescue dogs, her specialty, the tie that binds house to garden appeared.  Better, it's within an enfilade, travels past the entrance court, past the entry lane, up a slope, lands upon a pasture flat, and continues up another slope finally ending at the orchard+meadow.  What are the chances of this great gift?  Woo-woo.
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The focal point within this perfect enfilade, at present, has a single florescent pink flag staking it.  More, it can be a stone slab on a tree trunk table, a statue or urn on plinth or etc.  Whatever, the focal point must be within a dias, level with the ground, of stone or brick.  Hope you already know why.  Answer is above.  
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The tractor must be able to easily whiz around the focal point.  At speed.


Pic, above, here.

 
Pic, above, here.
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She will love getting the focal point right.  He will love whatever she does, eventually.
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He will be the one installing dias and topper.  You know there will be some grumbling.  Her at the front door of their home, one terminus of the enfilade, yards away, cell phone in hand, "Move it 6 inches to the right, get it level."
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His grumbling will include me, sad for the day he ever heard my name.  This phase doesn't last long.  Glad I know that ahead of time.  Men are predictable.  It takes that first party, after the garden is installed and suddenly they knew how to do their garden from the beginning.  Fine with me, I get to be the Mary Poppins Gardener, arriving when the wind changes, leaving as the wind changes again.  In my carpet bag, knowing where to site focal points & enfilades, hedges, etc....
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Color: Use as A Tool

Color, as a magical force, below.
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Fence, below, extends architecture of the house.
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Don't know any of their constraints, below.  Simply a charming garden.
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If the garden, below, is tiny, staining the fence a green/black, instantly enlarges the space.  Pop.  And, makes the fence disappear.
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Merely using color as a tool.
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If the house has shutters, below, often that is the color for the fence.


Pic, above, here .
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Leave no layer of your Garden Design without thoughts/consequences.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T

Front Door: Vanishing Threshold

Vanishing threshold, below, garden light pouring inside.


Pic, above, here.

Our ca. 1900 house, below, is getting plenty of attention, but the list has its priorities.  Pic, above, gave me an idea for the Sheraton sideboard, below, plinth for potted plants.

 

Heart of pine floors, above/below, are original to the house.  Painting the central hall walls, on the list.
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Front door, original to the house, its bell still works.  Walls in the room, right, below, will remain their palest pink.  Would have never, ever, painted the room this color, which taught me something.  I love, adore, want to be in this room all the time.  It's a happy, happy, happier room.  More, the palest pink is warm in winter & cool in summer.  Pure magic.
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Painting in previous post, is exactly the painting I would like above the sideboard, below.



This is the fateful front door, above, 1st step over its threshold, I heard, "You have her way of walking around the house."  E.M. Forster, Howard's End.  More lines, and clear visuals, yet, how to appear calm, when every cell in my body lurched onto this house.  Events & feelings like this only occur in books or movies.  Irony, before 1st stepping foot into the house, I was angry with myself as the drive to see the house became longer & longer & longer, so long we were off any known map.  Who could ever live beyond the beyond?  Beloved was in his own truck, we had separate appointments, the smiling realtor awaiting at the front steps with her hand extended, the homeowner had arranged her schedule too.  How could I have made such a mistake?  Wasting my time, and theirs.
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We made an offer within 24 hours.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T

Versatility: French Rain Barrel

When Smith & Hawken had its going-out-of-business sale at its Atlanta store, I had the good fortune to be there shopping with a client.  Little realizing ahead of time, I'd be purchasing things too.
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Ahead of moving from my 30 year home/garden I took 18 van loads to the thrift store.  My house sold within 24 hrs of listing and there was zero time for another choice.  Once in our new home, ca. 1900 American farmhouse, it became apparent much of my cottage garden 'stuff', thought to be so worthy ahead of the move, would not 'work' in the new setting.  Yep, that was a 'moment'.
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A couple of months in the new house, Beloved had his largest work truck, large bed/tall sides, and team of men on site.  Unexpectedly he said I could have the men/truck for a couple of hours.  Code language, get rid of your stuff.  Now.
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Six work ready men, felt like I had just stepped into a fire ant pile, and could not point to stuff fast enough as they were scurrying and pulling things for the truck.  2 rounded loads taken to the thrift store.  I did manage to think quickly enough for one of my clients, and saved some things for her.
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Everything purchased that day at Smith & Hawken remained.  Not a conscious choice, the clearing of stuff was too fast for proper editing.  One of the Smith & Hawken items, a galvanized French rain barrel.
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In my cottage garden I used it as a rain barrel, and later, turned upside down, a table.
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In our farmhouse, currently, the French rain barrel is on it side, wedged not to roll in the seat of a teak bench, used as a Cat House at the back door.  With a cushion inside they love it in winter, and it's a shelter against the rain the rest of the year.   Not a use anticipated when purchased.
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Amazed at the versatility of the French rain barrel, have yet to use it as a planter, below.  More, it made the aesthetic transition from Cottage Garden to Historic Farmhouse garden.
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Why didn't I buy more than one ?



Pic, above, here.
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Great enfilade, above.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Smith & Hawken currently sells online via Target.  Hardly a hint of their 1st incarnation yet they may have that perfect xyz for you too.  No, this is not a paid endorsement.

A Touch of Black

Every garden needs an exterior color trinity.  Subsidiary colors allowed.  Green-brown-white the classic for centuries.  Black, below, boldly, tossed in instead of green.  Yet the green is there, in plantings hung on the black, and in the garden.  Blue/white, below, subsidiary to the main color trinity.
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Tell me you noticed, below, the enfilade !



Pic, above, here.
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Quick glance, appreciate the porch enfilade, with closer attention, garden enfilade travels much deeper.  Well done.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

Vanishing Threshold: House & Garden

Vanishing Threshold, below.  Interior & exterior, married.  The full monty.



When a client hires me for the garden, if needed & it's within my scope, I design interior spaces too.  What does that mean?  I know my scope.  Outside, my scope has no restrictions.  Inside, my scope is sourced off-the-shelf, antique shops, thrift stores.  Inside, if special order stone, textiles, furnishings, removing/adding walls, are the playing field, I have an incredible interior decorator on my team.
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Yesterday's jobsite, 60 of the most beautiful acres, streams, meadows, woodlands, gracious sloping views, in the last of the Piedmont before turning into Coastal Plain, are not a challenge in the least to Garden Design.  Thorn on the acreage?  The house.  A ca. 1980's ode the Bee Gee's named aptly, Stayin Alive.  Who wants to merely stay alive?  Thriving is the choice.
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Working with the interior decorator on this project and the homeowner has been quite a team.  There was an obvious wall removed inside, then magic, the interior decorator added a wall to an area I would have never 'seen', yet once designed, of-course-the-wall-must-be-added.  In return, I knew the front porch had to wrap the house, creating a new heart to the home.  Interior decorator never 'saw' wrapping the porch.  Indeed, we are a happy team of cheerleaders for each other.  In addition to giving/teaching each other a new 'eye'.
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Drawing, above, sums up having a home.  Vanishing threshold.  House & Garden.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Pic, above, drawn by John Tackett.

Planning a New Garden

Learned decades ago I cannot design a garden without seeing interiors.  Moving into a new home?  Difficulties designing the garden?  Of course.
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Grieving leaving my garden, but oh my, the excitements of anticipating the new garden.  I'm in a new relationship.  House, garden, me, well trod territory, and favorite.  Slow down, did you notice the trinity?  Is this trinity, house-garden-you, yours?
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Ignore this trinity at your peril.  It is not in the least selfish, instead the opposite, giving.
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Counterintuitive.
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It's the airplane cliche, put the air mask on yourself before helping others.
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Once house & garden are leveraged fully, they are your ally in times of need, a spiritual base and retreat.  Beauty, ease, activity.  Another cliche, the more you go inward the more you outwardly connect.
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This isn't where I'm going with you, another day.
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Not in my new house/garden yet, I cannot design the garden.  How could I?  Don't know how I will live inside the house.
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I do know I'm designing for my 80 year old self, deer, drought, unskilled labor, and my own needs for beauty, simplicity, grace,   The property has no barn, garage, conservatory, chicken coop.  They are for me to choose, not a bad bargain.
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Built 1900, 4.5 acres, wooded/open, pond, American farmhouse architecture, 1 story, deep front porch across entire front, and a dogtrot 9' wide x 50 feet long.  A dairy farm next door, with beautiful views of meadow, lake, rolling hills, Piedmont forest, and cows.  Thorns in the roses, but those are another day too.
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Exterior colors?  White on white is the classic for 1900, below.  Along with basic gray porch flooring and blue beadboard ceilings.



Pic from here.
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Close to the street, I immediately thought of low fencing, friendly, with 'X' pattern, below.  Alas, my 2 chimneys, after inspectors report, had to be removed.  Repairing/replacing them not an option at this layer.  Asked the current owner if I could have the bricks, realtor texted after chimneys were down, the bricks are stacked and waiting for me.

 

Pic via here.

30 years in my home/garden, a garden cat always in attendance.  Will take this, below, and style for my own architecture.

  

Pic via here.

For my dogtrot, below.  Door, table, door, the perfect enfilade.

 

Pic via here.

 

Exterior lights, above, are long gone, replacements chosen without regard to the home's age/architecture.  Finally, will get to purchase lighting from the man I refer to all my clients.



Pic via here.
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There is no library, above, in my new home, this cannot be.  Great joy in anticipating where it will be built.

 

Pic via here.
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Terra cotta, above, and galvanized metal will predominate with my pots at the new house.

 

Pic via here.
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Ceilings are 11' tall, above, and I've spent too much time researching how high to put curtain rods.



Pic via here.
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Will slipcover, above, some of my furniture, some in big check, the rest plain.



Pic via here.
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The master bedroom is shaded and needs a bright Nancy Lancaster yellow, above.



Pic via here.
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Dishes, above, will go on the walls.  Which dishes and which walls, too fun, the anticipation.



Pic via here.
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Cloth on table, above, again, where, more than one?

 

Pic via here.
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Have done variations on this garden entry, above, for decades.  The joy of knowing they will be designed, but not knowing where, for now.

 

Pic via here.
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My new home can lend itself formal, but I won't go there, wanting a blue striped rug, above, somewhere.

 

Pic via here.
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Have chosen the best room, very Enchanted April, for my office, above.  A fun day when I can set the stack of 5 books I've written in their new resting place.  Better days coming soon when I start writing my new books.  3 in the pipeline.  Which to choose 1st?  Adore these  sorts of 'problems' !

 

Pic via here.

No conservatory, I'm considering this type, above, placed backside a small barn in the orchard.  Neither barn/orchard existing anywhere but in my head.  Already, they are on perfect axis with each other, house, and garden views.
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Amazing how little I know what to do in my new garden.  In the macro, yes.  Fine tuning exact placements, flow & scale, no.  Life is good.  My next job is to get moved in, and live.  Choose interior colors, place furniture, art, lamps, library.  And litter box.
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This ride has already begun.
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Blessedly my new home is not Victorian, it is Edwardian.  A favorite era.  A little later and it would have been Depression era Poverty Cycle.  It will be included for history, and necessity, yet the elegancies from the Edwardian will each be a joy.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Getting my homes ready to sell has about done-me-in.  Fourteen trips to thrift store with stuff, packing boxes, and staging, all at the same time.  Gardens included, and alas both garages.  Made the choice to use a realtor because of my day job.  30 years in my home, only 3 years with office/guest cottage.  Have written about staging a friend's hard to sell vacation cabin, 6 years on the market with 3 realtors, I sold it on Zillow for-sale-by-owner, renting it on AirBnB while for sale.
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Staging works.  Both of my homes have a signed contract, last week, with the first person who looked, then made an offer less than 24 hours later.  No, homes were not priced too cheap.  They were priced dictated by nearby comparables.  Quite a week, last week, still not believing the speed life is happening.
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Grieving leaving is intense.  The outreach I'm receiving is helping immensely.  Humbled, and giving thanks, at this unexpected chapter of grace.
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None of the above is 'afforded'.  I must write about the financial devastation of being married to an alcoholic, college sweetheart, for 3 decades, and losing every dime to my name.  Repairing the financial damage as a Garden Designer, on my own.  Alcoholic did not aim his misery at me, I was merely collateral damage.  Was a victim for 15 wasted minutes.  Was fortunate to pass thru survivor stage in fewer minutes, thankfully, to years of thriver.
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At lectures, local/national, and in my open gardens I've had many opportunities with other women, hugging them, tears down their faces, smiles too.  Why are they crying?  They had the epiphany, If she can do it, I can too.