In Your Garden: Focal Point Ideas

 "Coleridge searched for a unified view of reality that was at once bodily and spiritual."  Sam Dresser.

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Go past the 'sign', below.  A story written, without words, in the siting of the benches.

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Too often, driving by, benches face traffic.  And, the bench is the sole focal point in the garden. 

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The ambit, below, is double direction.  A delight seeing outwardly facing benches, backing up to a beautiful mini-garden.  A rarity, especially in residential Garden Design.

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Copy.  Never concern yourself with copying good Garden Design.  It can never be unoriginal.  Never.  Each site unique.  Your iteration, is your own to bestow, brand new.

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'Inspiration, imagination and contemplation' are in your garden.  Unseen, yet surely manifest once you choose to partake.

  

Pic, above, here. 

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"It's only when we're self-consciously aware of ideas that we're fully awake."  Coleridge.

 

Pic, above, here.  

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The mundane, above, raised to art.  Plumbing pipes !  Form & Function.  

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"Culture, tradition & spiritual well being" is spoken in these gardens.  Seen, felt, copied, without a consideration for labels.  None needed, their use, seen, felt, lived.  How is it, we can each sit in this garden chair, above.  It is my belief we are hardwired for a garden.  No matter anyone's belief about gardens, we are each from a garden, with garden components, fungi, bacteria, etc.

 

Pic, above, here.

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Just-let-it-touch, above.  It's the rare focal point, not improved with foliage touching.  Seems she's also on a plinth, above.  Need a certain height?  Place your focal point on a plinth....  Keep this fact in your quiver when perusing for your Garden.

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If you only knew, your Garden speaks your life.

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In the macro, our gardens foreshadow our decline.  What we've gained in simplicity of care is a complexity of loss.  From the foresaking of transcendence, to global loss of habitat.

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Focal points are part of good Garden Design.  The Garden Design tradition planted in "the spiritual and  transcendent against those.....of the material and immanent only".

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In the garden, both are lit, body and spirit.  Whether you think so or not.  

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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

How to Site Urns on Stone Walls & Simplicity of Garden Design

Stone Wall & Finials.
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What will you use?  As a finial?
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Pic, above, here.
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Pic, above, here.
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Pic, above, in my garden last weekend.
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Sited at end of stone retaining wall, above.  In case you were wondering how I chose 'exactly' where to site the urn.  Siting, in addition, for top of the urn to be 100% level.   
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Notice what's special about the urn?
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Subtle color, and no planting needed.  It's cast stone, and will be someone's delight at my estate sale.  Remember: When Choosing a Focal Point it Must Be So Wonderful it Will Be Fought Over at Your Estate Sale.
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Something else is beyond special about this garden, above. 
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If you want to be regenerative, which is far superior to sustainable, you must know the key ingredient to the garden, above.
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Tara Turf.  No lawn.  Total low meadow with clovers, violet, dandelion, pink sorrel and what the wind blows in.
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In addition, the shrub, above, is the native Buckeye.  It will get 10' tall x 12 ' wide, sun/shade, moist or not. 
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Gardening became so easy when I got out of the way.  When I listened.  When I copied Providence, and centuries of European landscapes studied across Europe.
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Stone Walls & Urns.................made for each other.
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Garden Design Question.  How much can you take away from a Garden Design and it holds together?
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It's the last question I ask myself when designing. 
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Do you dare be this simple, above?
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Why be this simple?  I want my garden to give beauty & joy for aging into my 80's, causing no stress, only grace.
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My style of gardening is not popular with Garden Design/Build Firms.  Can you see why?  Their staff is gauged successful by the quantities of plants, lawn, mulch, stone, irrigation installed, gaining the yearly maintenance contract for mowing, annuals, pruning, chemicals, fertilizers.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

More Than You Want to Know About Starting Your Garden Design

What type Garden Design survives, centuries, in gardens?
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Easy trinity, with limitless permutations; Wild Wood, Meadow, Stone Focal Point.
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Meadow, Urn, Hedge, below.  Classical trivium of Garden Design.  A structure for adding more layers, if desired.
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Used at the front end of Garden Design it is a manner of thought toward your personal lifestyle, preferably, one you've chosen to make you a better person, at a minimum, a happier person.  Within the larger context of stewardship toward Nature. 
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Your choice. 
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"Between stimulus and response, there is a space.  In that space is our power to choose our response.  In our response lies our growth and freedom."  Viktor E. Frankl, Holocaust survivor.


Pic, above, here.
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Once I discovered what type of gardens survive for centuries, after studying historic gardens across Europe, it became obvious how to start a garden.  Start a garden with how it will end.  'It matters how we arrive at our ideas.'
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The classical trivium turned thought & writing into logic, grammar, rhetoric.  This isn't too small, for garden design, you can add more later.  With the classical trivium you are 'imparted the 7 liberal arts of classical antiquity.'
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Pic, above, here.
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Going beyond the classical trivium, above.  Easy to see, removing flowers, the garden becomes its end state quickly, meadow, hedge/wildwood, stone focal point.  (Labeling the garden in design terms, above, canopy, understory, walls, floors, focal point.)
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It's important to have the language for a garden, to create one.  It's important to have the history for a garden, to create one.  It's important to have the logic for a garden, to create one.  You realize this isn't about your garden.  It's choices about your life.  God almighty first created a garden.  We all ate that apple.  No choice in the matter, I want back in the garden.
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Having the vocabulary to design a garden lets your mind "...collect and analyze information and to draw conclusions based on that information; it demands self-discipline and instills virtue (the ability to do what is right despite one's baser inclinations); it produces.........think, understand, solve problems and follow through on a wide range of interests.  It requires a student to examine moral and ethical issues.  A classical education is multi-cultural in the best sense of the word.  Because it takes history as its organizing principle, students learn the place of their lives, families, and communities in the broad landscape of human existence and achievement.  It imparts skills and passion for thinking and learning that allow a person to teach herself for the rest of her life.  Classical education is systematic and rigorous; it has purpose, goals, and a method to reach those goals."  Noval Classical, from here. 
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This is more than you wanted, but have included it, aside from living it, because it is how George Washington gardened, and garden designed.  More than agricultural, more than elegance, he gardened to show his political, educational, and religious beliefs.  Born into a slave holding family, what was the impetus George Washington had, to free all his slaves? 
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Slaves in America are part of historic garden study.  In Europe, for too many eras they had subsistence workers.  Ignorant, I had to ask a head-gardener what that meant, "They worked for food.  No pay, no housing, no clothing given.  At the end of the day they return into the woods."  Serfs were another layer of garden labor, not technically slaves, they worked for the manor house, were given a plot of land for their own to work, and could take those earnings, yet were not free to move about, they had to be granted permission to leave a manor's employ, which was not a given. 
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End of serfdom coincided with the bubonic plague.  So many were killed, there were few left to work the fields.  Finally, after the plague, workers were paid for their labor.  And, allowed freedom to move about.
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Historic gardens, which truly flourished after the plague, ca. 1400,  took another turn after WWI, so many were killed the grand estates did not have enough laborers to keep their properties up to prior WWI standards.  This is when 'my' trinity of historic gardens appeared.  WWII was the macro end of agrarian gardens, and beginning of industrialized landscapes we have today. 
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Industrialized landscaping parallels, unfortunately, global factory farming of livestock.  Won't go further into that realm here beyond noting George Washington's gardening choices, and life choices. 
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In the garden, beyond making design choices based upon a trivium, choosing to engage the brain in addition to body, spirit & community, there is the garden itself, with some life forces equal to ours.  At times, appearing sentient, perhaps behaving with sentience.     
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Does the neo-sentience of a garden affect our thought processes when in our garden, or woodland, or fields & streams?
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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How do you like History, thru my Garden prism? 
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From the Mount Vernon website, below.

In his will, written several months before his death in December 1799, George Washington left directions for the emancipation of all the slaves that he owned, after the death of Martha Washington.

Washington's slave census in this 1799 will and testament

Washington was not the only Virginian to make provisions to free his slaves during this period. In 1782, toward the end of the American Revolution, the Virginia legislature made it legal for slave holders to manumit their slaves, without a special action of the governor and council.

Of the 317 slaves at Mount Vernon in 1799, 123 individuals were owned by George Washington and were stipulated in Washington's will to be freed upon his wife's death. However, these conditions did not apply to all slaves at Mount Vernon. When Martha Washington's first husband Daniel Parke Custis died without a will, she received a life interest in one-third of his estate, including his slaves. The other two-thirds of the estate went to their children.

Neither George nor Martha Washington could free these dower slaves by law. Upon her death the slaves would revert to the Custis estate and be divided among her grandchildren. By 1799, 153 slaves at Mount Vernon were part of this dower property. Forty more slaves were rented from a neighbor, while another man, Peter Hardiman, was rented from the widow of Martha Washington's son. All these people would eventually return to their owners.

 In accordance with state law, George Washington stipulated in his will that elderly slaves or those who were too sick to work were to be supported throughout their lives by his estate. Children without parents, or those whose families were unable to see to their education were to be bound out to masters and mistresses who would teach them reading, writing, and a useful trade, until they were ultimately freed at the age of twenty-five. Washington’s will stated that he took these charges to his executors very seriously: "And I do moreover most pointedly, and most solemnly enjoin it upon my Executors...to see that this clause respecting Slaves, and every part thereof be religiously fulfilled at the Epoch at which it is directed to take place; without evasion, neglect or delay, after the Crops which may then be on the ground are harvested, particularly as it respects the aged and infirm."

In December 1800, Martha Washington signed a deed of manumission for her deceased husband's slaves, a transaction that is recorded in the abstracts of the Fairfax County, Virginia, Court Records. They would finally become free on January 1, 1801.    

Agrarian vs. Industrialized vs. You

Gardens begin inside your home.  Looking out.
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Your home is the garden's backdrop.
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The Agrarian & Pastoral ideal.  Idyll.  For you.  Now.  No matter the global industrialized anthropocene stew driving markets, and life.
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Agrarian.  More than sustainable.  Regenerative.
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More than regenerative.  Transcendent.  "If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need."  Marcus Tullius Cicero, Jan. 3, 106 BC - Dec. 7, 43 BC.
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Why consider Agrarian?  Why choose Agrarian?  Why be Agrarian though industrialized?  Sacred vs. profane, reality vs. grace.  The shorthand of Agrarian is unspoken, mostly, but well spoken, from birth, within.  "...the division between practical reason and aesthetic understanding is in fact untenable, and that until the relation between the two is re-established they must both remain impoverished."  Sir Roger Scruton.
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His back isn't facing you, below, he's telling you there is a life of transcendence inside.  Join us, please come inside.   



Pic, above, here.
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"Aim for the chopping block.  If you aim for the wood you will have nothing.  Aim past the wood, aim thru the wood; aim for the chopping block."  Annie Dillard.

 
Pic, above, here.
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"Hone & spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff."  Annie Dillard

 
Pic, above, here.
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"You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment."  Annie Dillard
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"If you cultivate a healthy poverty & simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then since the world is in fact 'planted' in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days."  Annie Dillard.
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Understand what the back of his robe is saying, top pic, this is Nature's gift, telling us the stories of life.  Nothing less than your life, in all its fullness.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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I take no credit for this deep need for Agrarian gardens, it came unbidden.  Since age 3, I knew.  Didn't know what I knew, no words, adults certainly weren't talking about the things 'I knew'.   More, I've always known I work for 'Tara', known I had a lane of my own.  Thought everyone had the same.   Amusing what we get right, what we get wrong, oblivious to both in error at times.

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
      Garden Design.
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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.

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

Pot Narratives

Choosing pots for your garden, choose pots fabulous empty.  Another aid in choosing a pot, ask yourself, "Is this pot so wonderful it will be fought over at my estate sale?"
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Within threads of choosing pots choose for color too.
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This pot, doesn't need to be planted, will look marvelous empty.
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Perhaps the pot planting, below, is a 10" plastic pot sold as a hanging basket, with the hanger clipped off.


Pic, above, here.
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Get your pots at the right height.  Use a plinth, above. 
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This pot is doing heavy lifting in the Garden Design realm.  Did you notice already?  More than merely a focal point for this photograph.  This pot, above, is a focal point from more than a single direction. 
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The more axis a focal point has, the better the focal point.
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See it, do it.
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Funny how much narrative the Garden Design realm performs.  Seems so easy at the front end.  Until someone points out your focal point needs a plinth, and multiple axis.  In addition to that estate sale question.
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See it, do it?  Easy?  Requires that Johnny Cash bit, Meditate-on-it.
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Garden & Be Well,  XOT
 

Garden Narrative: 20's vs 50's

Layers of narrative, below.  At the front end of learning Garden Design professionally, mid-20's,  this type of garden, below, equaled the type of home it fronted.    At that front end, this garden was also too simple, too rigid, too formal, too boring, too lacking.  Oh my what 3 decades have wrought.


Pic, above, here.
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Now I see the narrative of this garden as pure joy, wisdom and a proscenium for your life.  Infinite scope for the imagination.  Importantly, easy to maintain.  No drama, your life, fully, enough. 
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More, a Garden Design for any era, any architecture.   
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"The best of life is life lived quietly where nothing happens but our calm journey thru' the day, where change is imperceptible and the precious life is everything.
-John McGahern".
Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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We are back from 10 days in Maine with a bit of Boston.  Portland, Freeport, Kennebunkport, Bar Harbor and more.
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One particular morning, staying at a B&B, still a private home built ca. 1880, on the shore in Bar Harbor, I arose early in excitement, knowing the coffee was awaiting, and exactly where I was going to sit and fully live.  The owner was awake and about, and as I carried my coffee to the porch, an older gentleman, already sitting and fully living, with a great deep voice said, "Good morning."  I replied in kind.  We two continued our full living in the greatest of silence, that symphony of Nature and ocean.
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An hour passed, the owner came outside to ask if we were ok.  The gentleman replied, "We are sharing a deep companionable silence."  She left.  We continued that deep companionable silence.  A few minutes later Beloved arrived, soon breakfast would be served and the day had begun its new threads.  "Take joy", Tasha Tudor signed off with.  Yes, indeed.
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Early morning view, Bar Harbor, Shore Path Cottage.

Serendipitous Focal Point

Approach, below.



Obvious, below, pair of urns as back drop to the bench.  But wait. there is more.



Look what happens, below, with one of those urns from above.



When I'm designing gardens on site or in my office, this 'game' always happens.  Designing historically, and receiving serendipities, above.
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Makes me laugh out loud, every time.
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The serendipities are sign posts, "You're doing this right."  More, knowing my Muse is in league with the same Providence as, above.  They're all having a party while I'm working.  This 'work' my party ticket.
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Work a poor word for my livelihood.  One meaning includes, "...the absence of pleasure."
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Anyway.  All of the above merely letting you know when you get it right, you'll receive party tickets too.  Along with a gorgeous garden.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO T
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Pics from Ben Pentreath.

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

When the Shovels Speak

Through the decades how many discarded shovels have I seen?  Never did I see this, below, in them.


Pic, above, here.
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"...expression is not revelation...Art reveals something beyond the message."
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"A poem of the right shape will hold a thousand truths.  But it doesn't say any of them."
Ursula  K. Le Guin
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I saw shovels and took them for noise, he, above, saw shovels and took them for signal.  Where else am I confusing the map for the compass?
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"Learning is something you pursue for yourself, after all, whereas education is something that is done to you."  Farnum Street
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"The notion that you can look at a work of art as pure form strikes me as idiocy.  If the work comes at you, it comes with everything it's got, all at once."  William Rubin, MOMA curator
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"...A lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences.  So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem."  Steve Jobs.
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"Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought." Einstein.
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"Take an object.  Do something with it.  Do something else with it."  Jasper Johns.
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Garden & Be Well,  XOT

A Cure for the Green Meatball

Truly curious.  Did green waves, below, start life as green meatballs?  Hope these green waves sail a thousand ships.
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Fence color.  Perfect, enlarges the space, and the potted tree, again, color enlarges its space too.
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Both artworks sited on axis from the house, with pure museum backdrop.
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Gas grill is pruned into its niche, hiding from view.
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Little maintenance, merely blowing, pruning.  Would like to see same shot with the green waves at their peak of scruffy, before a pruning day.


Pic, above, here.
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Bravo to the pruner, foliage to the gravel.  Amazing perfection.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T

Tabled Pot Cluster: Simple Beauty

Always a good day, learning something new.  Pot cluster in terra cotta drew my eye, then saw the scalloped metal trays to catch water.  They seem to be from the kitchen, a tart tin?
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Where I would like to place a table top pot cluster, front porch or back deck, both have same issue.  Living rural, winds across pastures are a 'thing'.


Pic, above, here.

Great table for a pot cluster, below.  Learned long ago how to keep the wood from rotting.  Do you already know too?  Brush boiled linseed oil on it once a year.  Once Beloved has his pole barn built, I take ownership of a delightful shed with double, large lean-to tin roofs, one facing east, the other west.  Each side will have a pot cluster on a table, with a rolling barn door built of conservatory windows, blocking pasture winds.  Toad of Toad Hall was never more joyful in an adventure, or planning in his garden, than I, and this little shed.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Pic, above, here.
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One table in my garden, a harvest table made of historic tobacco barn wood, receiving fierce winds, I will use large pots, above.  And, in the category of living a simple life with a fabulous garden I know exactly what choice morsels to plant in them.
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Big impact, little input.  Every layer of my garden, its full narrative, has rent to pay.  Don't pay the rent, you're gone.  What's the rent?  It must make me happy.  Needy for attention, not beautiful, don't tell a story, too much down time, poof, voila, gone-gone.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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“Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.” 
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Tara Template: Entry Ways

Once I decided to create a beautiful garden, age 22, living in a garage apartment, no suffering it had 3 bays backing up to 50 acres of woodland & pasture a little like the movie Sabrina, I bought a few things from the nursery, planted them, nothing.
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Nothing.
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Add a decade, books, more planting, Extension Service courses, moved into my starter home, and acquired a 2nd college degree, this time horticulture, and still the great, nothing.
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Insert 2 decades of studying historic gardens across Europe, thankfully, at the front end of those study tours, 'nothing' turned into the mother load.
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Garden Design, aside from being mostly counterintuitive, is palpably honest.  Garden Design hides nothing,  Its secrets freely given.  It was I, seeing 'nothing'.  One of the oddest things I 'saw', when my eyes opened, entry ways.
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And once you get it about entry ways you are well on your way to Garden Design of the ages.
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What is so important about entry ways?
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First layer, answering, is ineffable.  Much as an epiphany, moment of intuitive enlightenment, or a koan.  But there are several layers definitely not ineffable.
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Odd fact about entry ways in a garden.  And, important.  The more entry ways a garden has, the better a garden is.
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Odder fact about entry ways in a garden.  Entry ways are a focal point, and you cannot have too many.  Yet, the rule about focal points, One-Focal Point-per-Area, absorbs and enriches the rule about entry ways.
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Yep.  Told you, counterintuitive.
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More, entry ways in a garden never create an exit.  From both directions an entry way is an entry way.  There are no exits in a garden, only entry ways.


Pic, above, from Bunny Williams garden.
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Entry way into the wildwood, above.  One of my favorite Garden Design arrows to use.
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Without the drama, above, of the entry way, specifically the spheres on plinths, you are not beckoned, Come this way, walk here, you will be enchanted, there is more.  A bit of the Scheherazade layer of Garden Design.
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Gardens are stories.  Gardens are narrative.
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Whether you think so or not.  Don't put your story into your garden.  Fine.  Your garden is telling a story about you.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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Very nice, below.  Thought you would like it too.
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Friends of Old Bulbs Gazette

Old House Gardens, Ann Arbor, Michigan, (734) 995-1486

“If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?”

– G.K. Chesterton, 1874-1936, British writer, poet, and philosopher

The Right Green Man

Another Green Man, below.  If you don't know Green Man, take the link, centuries of lore, multiple continents & cultures.
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This Green Man, wrapping a corner, owning the garden & house, yet subtle, below, perfect for my previous garden, 30 years in a red brick cottage garden.
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Now, our ca. 1900 American farmhouse?  No.  Wouldn't look of-the-whole.  One possibility for my house, have Picasso customize a Green Man for me.  Matisse may be the better choice.  Yes, dear Henri.  His Cut Outs steal my heart.
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Ahead of moving into pure history, I had a quaint cluelessness, in totality, how Garden Design focal point choices would change.  


Pic, above, here.
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No exaggeration to say TRUCKLOADS of garden items were taken to Goodwill once we moved in.  Hard action step, Beloved's big work truck, his team of men dispatched decades of hunting/gathering.  Zero time for yard sale, or to take to consignment.  Out, gone.
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Nothing like a TRUTH, when we do it to ourselves.
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If that makes you laugh, it should, you understand my entire premise of Garden Design.  Layers of truths.  Each simple.  Yet each layer a black hole to previous thinking.  Blessedly so.  Good riddance.  .
Garden & Be Well,    XOT
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Matisse.  Definitely Matisse.

Garden Design Template: Gravel & Green

A trade article I read earlier this year, European sourced, blamed the lack of young'ish people gardening upon 'older' people being poor examples of gardeners.  More than missing the boat, greater than missing it by a galaxy, they shot past our universe, to be wrong.
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Whatever !  Not going there now.
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Isolating Garden Design templates, you know, the ones that keep cropping up.  (Sorry, too amusing, that horrible pun, it wasn't intended.)
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Garden Design templates, all are centuries old, most are BCE.
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What, oh what, to name them?
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Continually, I'm doing Garden Design work, with no name.  Tara Turf, for example.
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I came to Garden Design, same as most of the herd.  It's a pack animal belief system, especially in USA.  "What do I want to do?  I want this & this & that & etc.  Oh, I love that, it will be wonderful in the front yard."  Wilderness years.  Money & effort, no results, aside from visual proof, arrogance, with zero use of intellect.  Most, alas, never set foot into the wilderness years.  No desire, I get that.  Those getting into the wilderness, never quite pull themselves out.
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A tiny few, decide to leave the wilderness and hire a Garden Designer.  When I decided to leave the wilderness, zero funding.  Off to college for a 2nd degree, this time, horticulture.  Total bamboooozzzzzle was that USA horticulture degree.  Next, off to study historic gardens across Europe for decades.  Finally.  True beginning, learning Garden Design.
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Back to those Garden Design templates.
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You're looking at one, below.  Every element of a garden room is here, sky, ceiling, walls, chair rail, flooring, focal point, flow, function.
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Gravel & Green.


Pic, above, here.
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Wonder lies in each template.  Intuitively, you know, "I can do this."  Better, your mind/heart, understands and morphs the Gravel & Green into shapes, plantings, focal point, perfect, and original to you and your site's needs.
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Now, this moment, whether you like the Gravel & Green template or not, mentally eradicate your existing Garden Design, replace it with Gravel & Green.
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Fun, yes?
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Garden & Be Well,     XO T
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BCE?   Never saw, BCE, until I went to Israel and did the Foot Steps of Jesus tour.  Two weeks of wonder & joy.  Love Israel.  Shock of seeing Jerusalem, from Mount of Olives, and realizing the West Bank is merely a Landscape Architecture construct.  Going to a new settlement and realizing it is literally, Guns and Roses.  Building new homes upon rock, bringing everything it takes to grow plants.  Building settlements is Horticulture.  Landscape Architecture & Horticulture in this humbling biblical place, from its earliest settling.  Ironic, exactly where G*d first placed people, in a garden.  Earth.  BCE, Before Christ's Era.

How To: Break Garden Design Rules

Made me laugh, below.  Know why?
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Think back to a Garden Design Rule.  Broke it here, in triplicate.  Backhand down the line winner.
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Shooting this Garden Room, many angles can be shot, proving this particular Garden Design Rule reigns.  Pull the shot back, Garden Design Rule broken.
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Know the Garden Design Rules into your DNA, break a Garden Design Rule when it makes your soul smile, a wicked smile.  That's what made me laugh, below.
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Garden Design is a language.  In the beginning, Garden Design was what I wanted it to be.  Rules?  Not for me.  In time, a koan arrived.  In bed last nite, zero desire to read on my phone, instead, wildly strong urge to read from a book, though the lamp would have to be turned off.  Oh my, the bother, yes?
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Two books, grabbed, Daily Strength For Daily Needs, by Mary W. Tileston.  Recommended by Celestine Sibley, a well known columnist for the AJC when I moved to Atlanta over 3 decades ago, and used in many of her columns thru the years.
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Thomas (1795-1880) Carlyle, puts it clearly about why you must break Garden Design Rules, "Know that 'impossible', where truth and mercy and the everlasting voice of nature order, has no place in the brave man's dictionary.  That when all men have said 'Impossible', and tumbled noisily else whither, and thou alone art left, then first thy time and possibility have come.  It is for thee now: do thou that, and ask no man's counsel, but thy own only and G*d's.  Brother, thou hast possibility in thee for much: the possibility of writing on the eternal skies the record of a heroic life."
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With this quote, above, Tileston chose, Matt. xvii. 20, Nothing shall be impossible unto you.
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Along with,

So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low. Thou must,
The youth replies, I can.
R.W. Emerson


Pic, above, here.
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Garden Design Rules, now I trust them, knowing how to break them.  More, they are the tools to break them with.
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Garden Design Rule broken, above?  Garden Design Rule: One Focal Point per Area.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO T

Historic Layered With Mid-Century Modern

Divine smash-up of mid-century modern AND historic Garden Design.
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My kind of maintenance too.  Rustic, refined.  Sharp mind, sure hand.  
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Ooooh, that color on the furniture.  I'm in.  Had me at hello.
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How little can you have in your garden, and it's useful, and it's beautiful, and it's easy to maintain ?
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Keep it simple sweetie, check.  Pushing all the right buttons.
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Both masculine, feminine.
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Can you label the parts?


Pic, above, here.
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Canopy trees, understory trees, wall, floor, focal point, flow, axis.  Exterior architecture, a garden room.
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT

Oddly: Design For Winter

Winter.  Design your garden for winter, and it will be pretty all year.
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Terra cotta pot, below, stopped my eyes/heart/head.  Hmm.  Never seen this particular Garden Design effect.  In this particular moment, below, the terra cotta looks like a movie effect, not real, injected artificially.
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These are the moments, exactly this.  Design, plant, time passes, wait for the exact right weather event, poof voila, you have, below.
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These are my moments of choice.  Dancing with Nature.  And knowing it, while in the dance.  In the moment of awareness, feet are not tethered to Earth, time no longer a force, only the oneness of pure atonement.  Joseph Campbell writes of it much better, "If you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere."


Pic, above, here.


Pic, above, here.

 
Pic, above, here.

 
Pic, above, here.


Pic, above, here.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT  

Play a Bigger Game: Focal Points

Well placed urn focal point, below, at the end of the path.  The Garden Design for the urn is playing a Bigger Game.  Do you already see?
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The more directions a focal point is a focal point from, the better the focal point.  It's playing the Bigger Game.


Pic, above, here.
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Looking at the urns, above, from the side direction, they are placed as an asymmetrical pair leading into the covered porch.
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Very nice.  No thought of the ubiquitous pairing each side of the opening.  More, the wider asymmetrical placement creates the illusion of a wider entry into the covered porch.
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Wish I could see the entire garden, I'm sure there's more to these urns we're not seeing here.
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Adore being in gardens playing the Bigger Game.  Even better, designing a garden on paper, putting in a focal point on main axis, then immediately seeing were 2 or more axis belong with it too.  Muse has quite the humor.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T