Mix Matched Outdoor Furnishings?

Layers of narrative, below.  Color echoes a home run, for starters.  White to silvers, very nice.
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Curiosity too.  Hydrangeas, below, at left in foreground, then further back, to the right.  A photographer's styling?  Perhaps a stylist guiding a photographer?
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Did your mind go there at all?  The white hydrangeas merely props?
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Hardly the 1st thing I saw in this delightful pic.
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First thing?  Field gathered furniture, all painted same color.  Voila !
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Studying historic gardens across Europe for decades it was France teaching me that trick.  No worries about field gathering garden furnishings.  Paint them all the same color.
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Huge arrow in your quiver.



Pic, above, here.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Almost a complete garden design course in this pic.  Canopy/understory trees, high/low density, scale, flow, focal point, simplicity, color, contrasts, repetition, ceiling/walls/floors, seasonal interest, winter structure, invitation, comfort, myriad uses, no chemicals, low maintenance.

Old Tool Bouquet a la Toile

Start collecting now.

You've seen dozens of old tool bouquets on toiles across the span of your life.

Old tools in my garage are ladies-in-waiting.

Think this bit of garden is serendipitous?  Unplanned?  Needs weeding?  A trinity of wrong.  This garden room is rustic balance with its formal companions nearby.
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Garden Design is all about contrasts.  And finding a way to hang lovely old tools.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics shot in Susanne Hudson's garden last month.  Seems old tools, old terra cotta & old tin are a new trinity.

Lawn

What is the fascination with lawns?

French parks have beauty, children playing, adults relaxing, Nature thriving, without lawns.  For centuries.
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Notice the choice to leave the tree trunks alone?  Brave.  Perfect.
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Garden & Be Well,          XO Tara
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pic Paris Through My Lens

Princess Sturdza & Making Shade

Princess Sturdza's home, Le Vasterival, and garden in France were a hilarious welcome.  She was waiting for us standing on a tree stump holding a long sharp stick.  Describing the treasures awaiting we were also told 'never' to set foot in one of her beds.  Within the hour a silly German man leaned forward to ask her a question.  As quickly as his evil-offending-foot tapped her bed she whacked it with the stick.  Hard.

 We arrived, above, I still see her & hear the crunch of gravel.
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Last nite was my SHADE lecture.  Instead of the ubiquitous pics & ridiculous focus on shade plants blah-blah-ad nauseum bore.  I focused on making shade where desired, and the pruning away of shade where it's too thick.  

Like the Princess my home leads with a bay window, above.  

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It's tiny, faces full sun, a street & several neighbors.  A trinity of unpleasantness easily landscape designed into a charming Bay Terrace garden with gravel, shade, focal point, seating & privacy from the neighborhood view.    

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Who's the Princess?

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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara

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Top pic from internet, my Le Vasterival pics are still slides.  Bottom pic my bay window yesterday.  A great place to read, use wireless, lunch/dinner, journal, enjoy the birds-blooms-filtered lite.

Vertical Gardening

Every garden must have at least 1 cone shaped evergreen. Draw eyes to the sky. More about this Italian garden, above, here.
Gertrude Jekyll, famous landscape designer, said, "The first thing I consider is what to put on the house." At zero point in college or symposia has anyone said this to me. Took this pic in France, a private garden. In addition to vines on a house, I like espaliered woody flowering shrubs, they need no trellis or wire.
Vertical gardening on a tiny subdivision lot, above, canopy & understory trees with climbing roses. If Monet could have a climbing rose thru his understory trees, so can I. That's my garden, above. The window? It's where I'm typing this post.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Quite selfish leading with the pic I took in Italy. A garden brimming with epiphanies. While I was in it and after.

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3 Vertical Gardening concepts, get started.

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Garden Designers Round Table: MORE Vertical Gardening Posts !!

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Garden Up! Vertical Gardening

March 22, 2011 by susan morrison

When you hear the phrase “vertical gardening,” what comes to mind? You might think about roses scrambling up a trellis, or an overhead arbor dripping with wisteria. Those with a contemporary aesthetic may envision a mosaic of succulents hung on an outdoor wall, while edible gardeners see a riotous mix of creative containers, with tomatoes and peas reaching for the sun.

Vertical gardening is all those things and more. To celebrate the publication of Garden Up! Smart Vertical Gardening for Small and Large Spaces by roundtable members Susan Morrison and Rebecca Sweet, this month our designers share their own unique perspectives on this exciting garden trend.

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK
Pam Penick : Digging : Austin, TX »
Rebecca Sweet : Gossip In the Garden : Los Altos, CA »
Scott Hokunson : Blue Heron Landscapes : Granby, CT »
Susan Morrison : Blue Planet Garden Blog : East Bay, CA »
Tara Dillard : Vanishing Threshold : Atlanta, GA »

FORMAL + PSO

Deep winter dormant, I still know what this garden looks like. And why it works.

Formal hardscape: hedges & lines contrasted with chaos of plantings + informal tree trunks.

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Italians have cone shaped shrubs, with scruffy PSO's, behind evergreen hedges. (My favorite!)

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French gardens are quite rigid with evergreen hedging enclosing, oh let's say, tulips.

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Ah, the English. Evergreen hedges exploding with herbaceous borders & flowering shrubs.

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Take this style, evergreen hedge +lines + backfill plantings. Make it your own.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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PSO? Plant Shape Only!! Yes, more pics I took recently at Wing Haven.

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My garden began as mostly English. Now, it's Italian + English.

MAKING IT LESS MAINTENANCE

Know how to create less maintenance, below? Replace turf with groundcover.
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Notice what is not in this landscape? NO FOUNDATION PLANTING !!!!
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Notice what is in this landscape? A French theme. OVERDOSE YOUR THEME.
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Notice how simple this landscape is? KEEP IT SIMPLE SWEETIE.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic via Things That Inspire. A favorite blog, named to perfection.

RETOOLING FLORAL ARRANGEMENT

Shrubs, urns, tools are the new floral design. Design techniques are the same.

But the scale is larger than life. Look close, above, old tools drape the arbor.

Fresh, silly, classic, stately, sustainable, low-maintenance, above. So old it seems new. French toile patterns date back centuries using the old tool bouquet motif.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Yes, I took these pics in Susanne Hudson's garden.

GARDEN SHOPPING

Will stain lattice boxes, wall brackets, & white lantern green to match the rest of the wood in my garden. Chickenwire cloches will be painted Robin's egg blue to match other iron. Tiny blue/white pots, above, were only $1. Bought all they had, only 4.

Hope you already know about Marshall's & TJMaxx for your garden. Granite gravel, #89, along with other bulk materials is available from Stone Forest.

For plants, locally, try: Buck Jones, Land Arts, Wilkerson Mill, Piccadilly, Goodness Grows, Ashe-Simpson, Pikes, Hastings, Habersham Gardens, & the ubiquitous big boxes.

Good pots, don't buy any other kind, are a specialty at Four Seasons Pottery.

Garage sales & rescues are necessary to every good landscape. Scott Antique Market, 2nd weekend each month, helps you create magic in your garden.

Nursery, 4 pics above, I shot in England at an estate garden open to the public. A fantasy. Where we all want to shop for plants, service, accouterments. Instead, gardens come together via hunting & gathering. Much hunting & gathering.

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It's odd, gardening is a multi-billion/yr industry yet so difficult to shop for.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

LANDSCAPE DESIGN: WASHINGTON PARK, ALBANY, NY

Gertrude Jekyll, world's 1st landscape designer, said, When I design a landscape the FIRST thing I consider is what to put on the house.
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Near Washington Park Jekyll's edict is planted. And there's a thrilling roof. Stone shingles are larger at the gutter, tapering toward the ridge.
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Having something on your house does not always mean a vine. I prefer espaliered woody shrubs. No wires or trellis needed. Vines are often too much maintenance vs. an espaliered woody shrub. Nearby, below, what my LANDSCAPE DESIGN EQUATION advocates. When you create a landscape design begin with trees. What survives in a landscape? Trees, meadow & stone focal point. If you care about low maintenance, organics, sustainability with rainwater only, creating a realm of beauty to live amongst & leaving something for the future. TREES.

With age the trees have become more spectacular than the house, below.

Why is this painted brick, below, working for me? I used to hate painted brick. This painted charmer is near the homes pictured above.

And each of the homes edge Washington Park in Albany, New York. Yes, I was there during the tulip festival.

Original plan, below, for Washington Park. Much of the land has never been privately owned.

Below, the wisdom of what lasts in a landscape (trees - meadow) contrasted with the ephemeral (tulips).

Contrasts, another landscape design tool. Above, see the tree design? Canopy, understory, cone, weeping, horizontal, burgundy foliage, deciduous, evergreen, brown bark, white bark, grey bark.

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There is a template for landscape design with trees. I didn't learn the template in college for horticulture. No. Studied landscapes in France. They don't muck about, as the English would say.

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Pics of Washington Park from their website.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

LANDSCAPE PHARMACOLOGY: TREES

A Scottish study concluded, living in eyesight of a landscape extends life. Not gardening. Seeing. How much better seeing a beautiful landscape? Landscape pharmacology? If musical pharmacology exists, so does landscape pharmacology.

When beautifully landscaped gardens surpass their owner, what survives? Trees.

Creating a landscape? Begin with what it will end with. Trees.

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How the French do trees: a large variegated leaf tree, a weeping tree, a large cone shaped evergreen tree, a burgundy foliaged tree. At the minimum.

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In my garden today, above, cherry tree (pink) & Chinese snowball.

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For a couple of weeks I'll be living, in a subdivision, amongst beauty dating past centuries of Chinese scrolls. And the beauty is alive. Not a scroll painting.

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Without modesty, I'm hearing in my head, Peter O'Toole as Lawrence of Arabia, I DID IT.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara