Decadence at Garden Entry

The first time I arrived to Penny's drive, below, my car stopped as the hydrangeas lay heavy either side my hood.  Had to stop.  To take in what was happening.  More than greeting my arrival, I was being caressed.
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Garden Design's decadent greeting.
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Creating entryways in a garden, perhaps the most overlooked necessity.  Early into serious Garden Design study it was obvious, the more entry ways a garden has the better a garden is.
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Penny took it to new layers.


Pic, above, here.


 

If you've read my missives for a length of time, you know exactly what to do next.  Copy.
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Entry into my backyard, above, entry into my frontyard, below.  Hello.



Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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Pics of my garden, above, taken in my previous 30 year cottage garden.  Penny founded the American Hydrangea Society, and the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival in Douglasville, GA is a huge annual success.

Garden Gates are Meant to be Read

  Do you know why the gate, below, has its styling?

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 Think chickens.  

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This gate was designed to keep chickens from wandering away.

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Several times I've been hired to open a hedge at the front of a woman's garden.  In each instance a couple of plants were removed, a gate installed, a path added, creating a new entry to the front of the home.  Flow, open, welcome, beauty where there had been a hedge saying, 'Keep Away'.

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Welcome vs. Keep Away

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Most often, when I'm hired, the metaphors in the client's life/garden are dripping significance.  I'll say the obvious and get back, How did you know?

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You know exactly how I know.  Easy to see another's life metaphors.  It's our own dancing behind clouds.

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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

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If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.
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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon.

Garden Design: Airstrip Neighborhood

The brilliant 'Urn Idea' atop their low columns was nixed immediately.

Instead, we'll hunt for these caps, above.
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Brain dropsy, I had forgotten airplane wings must easily navigate the driveway.
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Every home in their neighborhood has a hangar + plane.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Used portions of the gate, above, for another client.  Hers had to be chicken/rabbit proof at the bottom.  It's obvious I have the best job within the galaxy.
 

Fruit at the Front Gate

At my front gate

my apple orchard with H. 'Tardiva', above, and R. triloba, below.

In person the visible is a working class neighborhood of closely set homes each with green meatball foundation plantings and lawn.
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Amongst this setting my apple orchard & flowers are outrageous.  A negative to neighbors.  And some who love me.
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Go figure.  Gardening is subversive?
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Merely following my heart towards the beauty it desires.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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pics taken last week in my garden.

Beauty & Politics

Ca. 1400.

Chain at the gate says the fencing isn't about keeping only wildlife out.  And she had to chain it while in the garden?
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No, this isn't a bucolic garden scene.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic It's About Time.  All politics is local.

Choosing Color for a Fence & Fixing a View

May Day, yesterday, at one of my jobsites, below.

White fence?  Not happening.  Made the space smaller & became a focal point.  Detracting from the focal point of the home.

Now, above/below, a blend-into-the-background Benjamin Moore Alexandria Beige.

See the stop sign, roads, & home across the street?  Of course you do.  Ouch.
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Soon evergreens in a tapestry hedge, with fruit trees, will create a garden with grounds and no offensive views.
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Can it get better?  Yes, using existing evergreen shrubs needing to be moved anyway.
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Garden & Be Well,         XO Tara
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Pics sent from client.  Lucky children, my last May Day pole was in the 60's.

Orchard Wall & Gate

Credentials.  Every element designed.  My general contractor had the audacity to ask if I sited the daffodils.
Receiving my gimlet eye, no words, he quickly backed away a couple of feet.  Literally.

I was at the jobsite this month siting the newest layer of plantings.  The guys loaded them from the grower, above, early in the morning.  My contractor spent over a week sourcing them.

Caterpillar had to be used to move each plant.  Planting holes had to be dug by hand due to electric/gas/water.

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I staked location flags for the load of plants then zipped the acreage shooting the pics you've seen the past several days.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Some of 'the guys'.  Hardworking, pleasant, humble.  Without them, no gardens.

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Considering the top pic for a logo.  Still amazed every element is designed, newly built/installed, yet Jane Austen rustic.  Everyone got it right.

Details

Multiple meetings with the mason, iron monger & carpenter.

Each with decades of experience.

Attention to details.

Each layer, their own voice.

You see, above, a messy wax myrtle too close to the gate.  By design, it will be pruned into a tunnel of green.  We are awaiting a bit more growth to prune.

Perhaps by year 3 a tunnel of green engulfing both sides of the gate.
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Yes, an idea from childhood, The Secret Garden.  I can still remember my 3rd grade teacher reading it too us after lunch.
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Garden & Be Well,          XO Tara
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Pics at jobsite this month.  Same garden as previous several posts.
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Attention to detail?  Learned quickly studying historic gardens across Europe for 2 decades.
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. Details are not restrictions, they are liberations.

How To Create A Timeless Landscape

Landscape Design question, "Can you take black/white pics of your garden & it's TIMELESS ?

Was this pic taken 2012 or 1972 or.......?  And WHERE?  USA, Brazil, Italy........

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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara

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Pic via Habitually Chic.  Can you imagine having those beautiful dogs !!!  And driving on that gravel.....

Leggy Hags

Leggy Hags!  And this latest pruning is wrong too.  Want lush foliage top to bottom?  Prune the top of your bushes slightly narrower than the bottom.  It's that easy.

This gate is perfection.  

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Garden & Be Well,        XO Tara

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Thank you Cousin Cathy for sending your vacation pics from Nantucket...

Attention To Detail

 

200 acres.  Attention to detail.  Even hinges receive total teamwork

with owner, ironmonger, me.
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Garden & Be Well,             XO Tara
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Pic taken at a jobsite this month.  A pair of new gates with historical bones. 
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Don't think for a moment your landscape is worth any less attention.  If a hinge on 200 acres has a teamwork of input how much more does everything in a 1 acre landscape matter? 
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All the decades of studying landscapes across Europe it's easy to learn, leave no element undone in a garden.

Choosing Swing Open Garage Doors

I'm hunting garage doors that swing open.  The garage is a charming 1945 cinder block with low sloped roof.  Privacy is an issue, and money.

 These are the doors I'll send to Magic Man, below.  A potting shed near the garage needs one of the doors above, alas, that money issue.  But dreams are free.

Will use a frosted glass.
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Magic Man will say all sorts of wonderful embellishments to simplicity, above.  Alas, again, that money issue. 
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Hardware isn't much of an issue with these doors either.  A huge savings.
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Garden & Be Well,            XO Tara
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Top pic via Velvet & Linen.  Bottom pic via Rachel Ashwell.

How To See A Gate

Designing gates vs. seeing gates. 

Does this gate have hog wire at the top?  Is hog wire needed?  To keep the chickens in, or out?  Coons, possums could easily climb over.
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Why is the bottom of the gate solid?  Am I looking into the garden or out?  Is it to create mystery?  A lure?
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Is the gate teak?  Historic wood?  Vintage?  What type of hinges?  Open in, out, or both?  The doorknob rescued or new, perhaps new & custom?
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Does the pattern at the top match the moulding of the dining room ceiling?  Is the top pattern repeated in a vintage rug?
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Who is capable of making this gate?  Repairing the gate?
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Age the gate or stain it?
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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No money & your heart pounds for this gate?  How will you create it?  Not a financial problem, in the least.  Pure intellect.
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Total disdain for, "I can't afford that."   Total.
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Found the gate via It's About Time

How To Create 'Ancient' From New

The Ancient Orchard is new, its bricks are over a century old.

 4 sided, doors let you into each side.  Each door is custom, and

each door is different. 
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Doors decay, are damaged & replaced through the centuries.
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That is the narrative for this new Ancient Orchard.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Gates will be stained soon, this garden has a base trinity of colors.  Green, brown, white.  None in shades popular today. Each door a conversation of pics/ideas with owner, Magic Man, & me.  One of the walls has 2 gates, they will be iron.  And fabulous. 
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At this garden last week she told me a friend of hers was touching the wall, couldn't keep her hands off.  Of course my hands were on the wall while she told me.

Gardening For Children

I don't believe in Gardening For Children.  A fully formed adult, gardening from their heart will attract children.  Children of all ages, from 1-100 years old.

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What child doesn't want to peek thru this garden gate?

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Yesterday, a neighbor child, about 6 was in my garden, he didn't know I saw him.  He found my Secret Garden gate.  Promptly, he hit it with a stick several times and said, "Cool, a gate to nowhere."  Then he poked that stick at many plants, carefully, deeply perusing.

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Shazam, he ran back to his own garden.

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 This type of garden also affects grown women.  I've never had an open garden/tour without a woman, manipulating a private moment with me and she cries.  Hard.  Tears ending with our arms around each other. 

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I know where those tears come from.

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She's recognized I've let my 8 year old self out to play, with permission.  And she has buried hers.

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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

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Pic taken in a client garden last week.  Another gate made by Magic Man.  Yes, you do want to go thru.

Gate Is Born

Her gate has to let a horse & carriage thru, we left a 12' opening.  Before choosing the new gate a new drive was in use and a new vista beheld.  Unexpectedly, this gate became, almost, a front entry view.  Deer are an issue plus I wanted a bit of mystery & enchantment.

Yesterday, above, her new gates. 
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I perused dozens of pictures, sent 3-4 to the owner, voila-poof, she chose my favorite gate, top pic.
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Of course it came with no dimensions/details.  Our carpenter, Magic Man, scaled it to the site.  He used the curve a fly-fishing rod makes to judge the correctness of his top curves.  He asked me a few questions about proportions. 
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You normally don't see unfinished pics here.  But the work, above, of Masonry Man & Magic Man is enough to speak for itself.
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More pics as this project continues.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Top pic found online, did not keep the origin.  Had no idea I would be showing off with it.  Love, love, love the pace of this project.  Love more the team I'm working with.

Vision Quest Design Solutions

We need a door to balance the fabulousity of historic brick, acreage, meandering heirloom chickens, orchard, potager, Jacobs sheep, ornamental plantings, views from the house & more.  Life. 

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1 gardener, David Hicks, and his book, 

came to mind. 
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This door, top pic, was in David's own garden.   
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A garden library is wonderful for vision questing.  Adore doing it via blogging too, but having one of my antique tables covered in books open to various pages creates more lit-up neural paths in my brain with touch, smell, site, lite, sound the ipad can't compete with.
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Ironically, My Kind Of Garden, by David Hicks, was recommended on a blog I read years ago.  Blogging & booking are a loop I love.  They feed each other.  Helping me feed the creative MUSE. 
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara

A Gate In Croatia

She is Spomenka.  We call each other 'Sister'.  From Croatia, she has family there.

Sister sent me this last week, from Croatia.
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Sister knows EXACTLY what will pull heartstrings.  What is unique yet timeless.  Simplicity.
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And when we're together again, Sister's porch or my conservatory, she'll describe how this garden smelled, sounded, types of insects, birds, wildflowers,  temperature, humidity, a house nearby & more.  Sister will also tell me I was there with her.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara

Leather Hinges

Have your eyes locked on the Leather Hinges?

Mary Kistner, a mentor, said, "It's what we do with what we have."  No, I wouldn't have thought, EVER, of leather hinges.

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Of course I contacted Penelope Bianchi, this is her garden, about her leather hinges.

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Her man, adore that phrase & adore women gardeners who say it, has done many years of volunteer work in other countries.  He learned from them to use everything.

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Thank you 'Her Man' & Penelope for widening my horizon, to see Leather Hinges.  Of course I can't wait to see these with more age on them.  

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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There should be a special sainthood for that class labeled 'Her Man'.  By the time 'SHE' calls he KNOWS whatever it is is impossible but he will do it, because he's 'Her Man'.

Turning A Hedge Into Entries

For decades I've designed gardens. What I know for sure? It's not about the plants. By the time someone contacts me they are in a new chapter of life, sometimes a new book. Are they aware? Mostly, no.

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When the garden is born again, their life is changed.

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My job is to "capture the humanity of what is under way".

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Myriad times I've taken 1-2 plants out of a hedge & put in a path. Creating 2 entries instead of 2 dead-ends. Isn't the vocabulary stunning? Entries vs. dead-ends.

Then, it happened to me. A hedge in front of my home became entries.

Within the new hedge/entry a potager became a gravel terrace with adirondack chairs, a place to have lunch, talk on the phone, eat breakfast, read, sit still waiting for hummingbirds to fly so close I can hear their wings. And the Chinese snowball blossoms drop their petals in benediction of the foxgloves, above, about to bloom next.

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How could I know when the entry was born I would have a new room to LIVE in? And I had entered a new chapter.

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It's easier to see a new chapter in a client's life.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken in my garden last week. I've done more than the Bay Terrace the past year. A Conservatory, Tea Olive Terrace, Natchez Terrace. Though I didn't know it while creating these garden rooms they have given me the strength to finish a book in my life.