The Zen of Choosing The Right Fence Color

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Beck, adds a simple definition for integrity. 

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INTEGRITY = INTACT

  

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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

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

QUICK Free Garden Design Class: Putting Together Patio Table & Chairs For Lunch

 At first glance, below, knew something 'off' about the dining spot.

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Beautiful, yet its layers are a mere simulacrum of beauty, below.

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Did you notice quickly too?

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The garden takes your heart and mind.  You go into it thinking, your body doing.  The garden is not telling you what to think but letting you think.  Thoughts being worked on by living organically, from before the dawn of time.  A wisdom, coming at your thinking, in partnership with your garden.

 

  

Pic, above, here. 

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Joy to have the millstone, base, chairs, urn, above.  Yet, you don't want to put them together like this for a lunch, or dinner.

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Looking closer, do you see why?

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Gorgeous urn, above, at center of table, is too large for everyone to see each other.  Conversations affected. 

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Fabulous chairs, above, are improperly scaled to the table, chair seats too low.  Chair backs are too low, and chairs have no arms.  Comfort for all your family & friends adds to lingering conversations.  Their depth, their connection, their life.  Your life.

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Garden chairs, especially at your Garden Table must have arms for comfort.  And, the backs of your chairs should be tall enough to lean your head back, onto the chair, and fall asleep, if desired.

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Your chairs could be field gathered, aka don't match each other.  They'll blend beautifully if you paint them all the same color.

In defense of the photo, above, it looks like a quickly conceived shot for the photo spread it was a part of.  Perhaps the photographer's assistant was asked to put it together with what was on hand.  No issue with that.  Excepting, if you're new to Garden Design, you're not looking at Garden Design, yet think you are.

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Hope you liked your Quick Free Garden Design Class.  See it Do it ! 

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Yes, it's a big deal, your table in the garden.  Your table to eat a quick bite alone, take a phone call, have family, friends gathered round.  Life happens, your life, better.   

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Garden & Be Well,   XOT

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"Teaching is a sacred profession.  Art is a form of teaching."  Merely creating your best table & chairs in your garden,  inviting friends for a meal, teaches your art to others.  It's how I learned, not in a classroom.  Women who cared enough to mentor me, you are receiving my favorite women, lunches & dinners, and conversation......

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 Best in 2021.  Good health, good thoughts, good actions.   

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"Bad Times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good, we are the times: such as we are, such are the times."  St. Augustine ca. AD 354-430, Sermons to the people, 80:8.

How to Take Charge of Your Garden: Foundation Hedges

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

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

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

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

  

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

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Pic, above, here.

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

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

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

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 Pic, above, here. 

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

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

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

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

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Garden & Be Well,  XO  Tara

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How did I ever dislike hedges !  True.

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

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

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