Garden Design's Unexpected Element

More windows should be doors.  

More doors equal magic circles.  More doors improve the garden, and the house.
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Perhaps Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language, knows 'exactly' why humans respond so well to multiple doors.
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Did you look closely, above?  5 doors.  Another thing I did not learn in college about creating gardens, doors & magic circles.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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pic Wendy Posard.

Choosing Happy

"The more you try to fathom it, the more fathomless it is revealed to be.  No matter how much of your self you are able to objectify and examine, the quintessential, living part of yourself will always elude you, i.e., the part that is conducting the examination.  Thus you do not solve the mystery, you live the mystery.  And you do that not by fully knowing yourself but by fully being yourself."   Frederick Buechner

I was once afraid to create the garden in my imagination.  Deed restrictions & a spouse both parroting, "You can't do that."
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Death of loved ones, infertility treatments, little money, alcoholic spouse, blah-blah, whatever, yawn.  Unhappiness grew too deep.
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Oh my the blessings of unhappiness.  I CHOSE to be happy.  Created my garden.  Grace entered.  Now, decades of joy.
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Many of you already know, because you live it, happiness is a choice each day.  No matter the circumstances.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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In my career I meet so many on the cusp of choosing joy.  Though they don't know that's what they are choosing, yet.  Ironic, these thoughts come from meeting a 50+ woman angry at the world & demanding from the world ease & support.  Without working for it herself.  She is a joy to behold, in gratitude her life is not mine.  More, she is humbling, I could be her but my unhappiness grew too great to carry.  It's all in our choices.  Happiness harbors power.       
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Pic via 5th & State.

Front Porch Simplicity

When the competition is an old Pecan Orchard I know to go simple, below.

Soon the tea olive, above, will engulf the end of the porch.  And then be pruned into a tunnel, for the pure life necessity of leaving the porch at its tiniest entry.  Silent Partner doesn't think this is needed.  He has his reasons, I have mine.  200 acres and I am particularly interested in this square foot.

My competition, above.  Fields, Pecan Orchard & Home, a perfect trinity.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken this month at jobsite of several recent posts.  Leaving the Pecan Orchard alone includes creating Tara Turf, siting daffodils, boxwood & historic brick path, keeping fence at the road and saying 'no' to foundation plantings.
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Another fabulous Landscape Design making me unemployable to the largest landscape design/build/maintain companies across USA.  Planned obsolescence of irrigation, keeping fence, no foundation shrubs, no zoysia, no annuals.
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MATH on what 'those' companies would lose in installation & a single decade of maintenance with my design.  New fence, irrigation system & rows-upon-rows-upon-rows of green meatball shrubs. Lawn: 2 acres sod, mowing, irrigation, pre-emergents, fertilizer, edging.  Shrubs: several prunings yearly, mulch in the beds, pre-emergents, fertilizing, replanting annuals 2/year.
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Minimum annuals charge is $500/season by the best firm (of course I use the best, Simply Flowers, & of course they are needed in many commercial, and residential situations.)  Monthly maintenance $500.  Fence $4000, irrigation $4000, mulch 350/year, chemicals/fertilizer 200/year, &  foundation shrubs $5000, 2 acres zoysia sod $52,800.
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$141,300.00 for a decade of traditional USA Landscape Design.  My Landscape Design, above, $50/month maintenance fee, no foundation plantings, no irrigation, no chemicals, no mulch, little pruning, no sod, little mowing, keep fence, no fertilizer, no annuals, $6,000 for a decade.  (A kind woman, I give away the concrete foundation expense of the brick path, mine are in dirt.  Otherwise add another $5000)
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$135,300.00 difference. 
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Has the math sunk in?  
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My work/style is not meant to save money, yet it does.  It's historic Italian.  Enfilade from the interior of the home, pollinator habitat, a thanks to Providence, a joy to look at and live within.  When away on vacation my gardens are carried in the heart with a yearning to know everything while gone & return soon.  If you can leave at all.
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Chill Pill Urban Ag!  There are other ways in this industry to make money.  Ask Silent Partner !  Thank you for letting me be on your Outreach team.

Lunch Ministry

Lunch Ministry.

Wildly productive.

Who do you target?  Why?

Providence conspired, for decades, to include Lunch Ministry in every Garden Design I create.

I say to certain clients. "You will have lunch and invite ________.  You'll join your Garden Club & host a meeting.  You will find a local Garden Tour, contact them and be included.  Friend getting married?  You will host a gathering.  You will send pics of your garden to xyz magazine."

She was gathering materials, above, for our lunch.  Things to talk about, information to share, not wanting to forget to include anything during our lunch.
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These things are not done for others.  Lunch Ministry is for you.  Your spirit.  Giving away what has been liberally given to you.  What you get back is profound & humbling.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken at jobsite this month.  Same client as several previous posts.  Please tell me you know what to do with the dirty dishes at Lunch Ministry.

Designing Anticipation

Junking last month I found a huge birdcage on plinth.

'The-plan-is', lunch with girlfriends in the Conservatory with a pair of heirloom chickens in the birdcage for entertainment.
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The Girls will love the change of atmosphere from their Chinoiserie coop & run.
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Life is good when Garden Enhancements are in the anticipation realm.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pic via It's About Time  Can't imagine  having a day of life without Garden Enhancements percolating in my imagination.  

American Windsor Chair

This isn't a chair for the dinner table, below.

 It sits for conversation, reading, napping, cradling a kitten, a scotch.

 Originally, below, at our family house on Lake Rabun.

It was,below, in my music room,

Now, below, it's in the kitchen, aka Garden Room, where I look across my rooms, enfilade, into the garden.

New floors, above, arrived at Christmas.  French doors will go in soon, leading to the Conservatory.
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Notice, you did not see the 25 year old linoleum, disgusting, that went out the door.
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Would NEVER have put the American Windsor on linoleum.  Seemed disrespectful.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Needing patience.  Have waited a quarter century for these changes and somehow the homestretch is the toughest.

Garden Room: 101

Before construction, Susanne Hudson & I knew our Garden Room was fabulous. Understatement yes? We designed architecture & landscape, decorated & styled with only items junked, rescued, borrowed. (Well, we did buy tin roofing, gravel & a few pots.)

Tiny, potent. Peek thru, below, see our potting table?

Alone, or with girlfriends, this Garden Room is a life changer. Virginia Woolf territory.

Delightfully different views into each side.

Leftover pavers from edging the gravel. Voila, a table. And a meadow, does it get any better? Yes, hearing the crunch of gravel, smelling the fragrance of meadow & woodland, sound of rain on tin, seeing the chandelier & lamps on at nite. Knowing you have a bolt hole.

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My favorite part? Building the garden & Garden Room with Susanne. And this was work?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Built for the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival, on site at Le Jardin Blanc in Douglasville, GA. Poppets, I had to spend several nites with Susanne while we created this Garden Room. Attended a Gala 1 evening. Progressive dinner another nite. Behind the scenes for a huge wedding at Le Jardin Blanc another nite. Mexican & margaritas another nite. Garden tour & Thai food 1 nite. Oh my, FUN.

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Want a Garden Room? Susanne & I can create one for you, contact here.

Details of a Garden Room

Rescued sink, "champagne is on ice in the conservatory", & stand made from leftover structural pieces, century old rescued pine. Rescued culvert, above, has a new life, & the rescued chest, windows, shutter.

How calm the shutter looks, above, hiding the sink. Carpet, #89 granite gravel.

Nap, above, on the daybed in the Garden Room? Notice its pot feet? Having a chandelier & lamps is of utter importance.

Chandelier, for sale, alas borrowed from Le Jardin Blanc, hanging from the tin roof. Ugh, we had to buy the roof. Curtains? Jute erosion control fabric. Bedding borrowed from Susanne Hudson's home, & mine.

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Hydrangea welcome, above. After all it's the garden Susanne Hudson & I created for the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival on the grounds of Le Jardin Blanc.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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You will not believe what this Garden Room looks like. Can't wait to show you the money shot, soon poppets ! Alert, this garden room built solely with the labor of 1 man & 2 women. None labeled 'young' in contemporary culture. Ha, young in what we create. Please, let us create a Garden Room for YOU. It's all we wanna do. Oh dear, this snippet is turning into the lines of a country song......... ta-ta before it gets worse.

THIS WAS A RANCH?

SURFER CHICK & TENNIS bought a dystopian ranch. Then hired architect John Knight . Do you see any hint of the ranch? It's still there, all of it.

SURFER CHICK & TENNIS liked my idea of French doors off the dining room, above. Creating a magic circle.

After the landscape design was complete TENNIS said he wanted a level frontyard.
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Hence the stone wall, above.

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Plantings are not yet a year old. A true dwarf loropetalum 'Purple Pixie', above, will soon soften the wall. Along with gardenias, variegated pittosporum, hydrangea, Southern Indica azaleas, & perennials.

Stone for the wall copies what John Knight chose for the house.

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Repetition & copy are 2 landscape design tools.

The new landscape is redolent of another era, 1930's, using pass along plant favorites.

John's details are fabulous, above, round copper downspouts, and a slight pitch to the shingle siding where it meets the brick.

Entry to the garden from the street, on axis from the front door, creates an enfilade. Adding depth, warmth, welcome, focal point, movement.

Thru the black-eyed Susan's, above. Pairs of gardenia are used at the front entry near the curb and at the front porch.

Last Friday I was on site to draw the backyard landscape.

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I've added another pair of French doors to the left of those above. And 2 new arbors. One extending from the screened porch and the other directly opposite. Ceiling fans on the arbors, cozy seating with Adirondack chairs and a harvest table with chairs.

Potting table & gravel terrace (#89 granite gravel) will be added in front of the back wall, above, with the oval window. Camellia sasanqua hedging will embrace the gravel terrace.

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The upper lawn, above, will keep it's tapestry hedge of azalea, ligustrum, liriope, camellia. I've added several oakleaf hydangea and a new sitting area.

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The front door has an enfilade thru the French doors, patio & lawn, above. A bench has been placed on axis with it in the plan.

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And I'm feeling negligent I didn't get a picture of the plan for you.

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I'll ask SURFER CHICK to send a picture of the plan AND a picture of their original ranch.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

A WINTER LANDSCAPE--A LITTLE HOWARD'S END

Enter as I did. A gap in the hedge. No hint of what lies beyond. Curious? Standing in the gap, seeing a charming garden. A small Howard's End.

Echoes of the frontdoor................

.......in the back wall of the summer house.

More evergreen hedges, below, leading where? Mystery. A potager? Clothesline? Chaise lounge for sunning nude?

Flagstone terrace, not lawn, at the house. Extending the house.

This house doesn't have a back. Each side is delightful.

Lead horse trough now a rain butt.

All the sticks & browns soon to become blossoms, calendar shots.

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Winter's bleak chic more important than the ease of spring/summer blowzy caresses.

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I didn't want to leave this Howard's End-a new clip- world-life-feeling-energy-joy.

This dirt path is landscape design brilliance. A feeling of the country in the city & cementing the idea of being in another garden room. Leaving the garden through another gap in the hedge. Tara's Golden Circle: the ability to enter/leave a garden room through 2 or more doorways. A little design trick I observed in the best of old landscapes.

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This landscape is a several hour design class but you're busy. Thanks for taking the time to walk in the garden with me.

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I shot these pics last month at the Birmingham England Botanic Garden.

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Garden & Be Well, XO T