Formal into the Wild Wood

"And, I don't want anything formal."
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Gets me every time.  In the early years I would explain how 'formal' is your friend.  Now, I just let it rip, playing with formal elements, don't mention the word, and enjoy, "I love this."
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Because I know what is most important in life, I checked Pinterest late last nite, hoping something new popped up for Furlow Gatewood.  This pic, below, may not be new but I had never seen his allee of mophead hydrangea from this angle.
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Gatewood's allee has sailed a fleet of ships since its debut in Veranda in July of 2013.
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Adore how he smashed formal into wild wood.
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His wild wood of canopy-understory-walls-floors, a total home run.
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Another home run?  No dinky-is-stinky here.
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Further south than my garden, I look at Gatewood's hydrangea, nostrils flared, right eyebrow cocked/loaded, in a momentary whiff of envy.  No near decade of leisurely late freezes, in March/April, taking out hydrangea buds.
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No, there is not next year to get this decadence, below, back.  It is several good 'next years' in a row, to get the decadence back.
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Before you think this is a problem to maintain, notice front/left, a clearly exposed drip irrigation tube.
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Pic, above, here.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

Hydrangeas: Beauty, Pruning, Borers

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”  Anais Nin. 
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Hydrangea, friend.  We met in college, she changed every thing.  Not that I knew.  Her beauty, for sure, then realizing her ease.  Finally, understanding the unspoken.  This koan, a moment of intuitive enlightenment, in Earth time, for me, 2+ decades.
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The serpent enters.  Late frosts pale in comparison.
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Pruning hydrangeas had been talk of old wood, new wood, remontant, timing.  Now, enters, hydrangea cane borer.
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I've lost several hydrangeas due to, Hydrangea Cane Borer.




Hydrangea cane borers enter freshly pruned canes, tunnel down, and by the time you 'see' trouble, your plant is dead, or mostly there.






When pruning hydrangea canes, tip each cut with glue.  More, here.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Top pic I shot in Susanne Hudson's garden, bottom pics shot in my cottage garden.

Designing to Solve Problems: Maintenance & Snakes

From the 1st visit with the realtor to our new home, I KNEW the garden around the house would be gravel with meandering paths & terraces of gravel further from the house.  And, siting of large pots with HYDRANGEA, drip irrigation of course, were paramount.



Leaving a cottage garden of 3 decades, our new garden is American Farmhouse, ca. 1900.  More importantly, its design will be for our 80 year old selves.  I must be 80 years old, have a gorgeous garden with zero worries about maintaining it.  A garden must leverage life, not the reverse.
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This garden, above/below, I shot late last summer.  Limelight hydrangeas in the same situation as my new garden.  Loving, to the center of my DNA, this garden, I had zero clue I would soon be owning similar.  Alas, it's owned by a man, greatly talented, and strong.  My garden must be smarter, my strength not as great.  Game on.



Fearless, gravel will go to the house, similarly, below.



Not wanting formality, gravel will lap at our century old pecan trees, Tara Turf will lap at some pecan trees too.



As time passes, stone will be added to the gravel as needed.  Stone, below, added for rain issues.  And, I will site wisteria 'Amethyst Falls' at my front porch.  Vines or espaliered trees/shrubs add lush without space.



Knowing gravel terraces will be included, below, great anticipation in wondering 'exactly' where.


Transitioning to meadow, I will add checkerboard squares, below.



Furlow Gatewood has smashed a bottle of champagne upon thousands of ships, below, with his allee of hydrangeas in pots.  Copy, it's the 1st rule of garden design.



Wildly, without knowing the deeper truths of our new garden, my initial thoughts for design are more than suitable at age 80.  Even life saving, for any age.  Snakes, the indigenous timber rattler.  Luckily have already interrupted a long king snake under the house.  Lucky, yet totally scared when I saw him.
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Gravel is the best solution, trying to be safe, in defense of snakes near the house.  I got the memo, go me.
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Sourcing pots now, I think I've found them !
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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Top 2 pics mine, the rest from my Pinterest Board, Stone.

Garden Design: Hydrangeas in Pots

Ripe. 

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 Notice, below, the color echo?  Wonder where the axis leads from the paired entry?  Garden design tenants are rife: spikes with rounds, all layers accounted for sky-canopy-walls-floor, contrasting textures, mystery, repetition, copied, color theme, change thru the seasons, low maintenance, maximum pollinator habitat, no chemicals needed, a historical template.

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Does your garden tell me who you are?  This one does, as all good gardens must.

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Under the Tuscan Sun, Frances Mayes, her sister asked, "Have you seen her house."  Frances knew, she's asking, "Who is she, what is she like?"

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Hydrangeas do great in pots.  Choose mopheads, PeeGee, Tardiva, Limelight, etc.
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Worried about hydrangea's brown sticks in winter?  Move on from that chapter, it's too shallow for you.  Good Garden Design backdrops normal changes thru the seasons in beauty.
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Focal points change by the day.

Tara Turf, above/below.  Garden Design is fierce in this garden.
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Fierce?   Simplicity is hard, keeping elements of the poverty cycle is hard, good Garden Design is hard.
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 Getting to this iteration of his garden, I know the gardener grew through, and blew through, many life chapters.  Many.
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 Self -will ended.  Gardenese is spoken here.  A life language.  More, the language of Providence.

Garden Design's status symbols, above, are now gravel drives, no edging.  Tara Turf.

At the front end of studying the best historic Garden Design across Europe I 'got' that.

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If you want this type of Garden Design, I can do that for you.

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If you want a Garden Design to meet HOA requirements, and no more, I will not do that, anymore.

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If you wish to push your HOA rules to the max, and have to ask for approval, I will be happy to do your Garden Design.

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Understand, I've blown thru chapters and books, and continents, to get here with Garden Design.

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Ripe.

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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

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Pics taken this month.  Top pic best shows the humidity in the air.  Was with Susanne Hudson, Liz Tedder, and poor Martha Tate (we missed yo) had to zip in/out ahead of us.

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Think you can do Hydrangeas in Pots like this?

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Takes the full arsenal of Garden Design.

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Which is either simple or will take you a life time.

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

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Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Three Best Mistakes to Make in Your Landscape

Choose to make garden mistakes on the side of too simple, too little, too plain.

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Better to want more later than dig-up, move plantings, replace a now-thought-cheap/tacky-bench, regret the shape-style-color-of.....

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Long term, cute in a garden grates.  Whimsy is better.

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Be wary of 'words' in a garden.  They hold thoughts hostage that should flow randomly, Cole Porter's, Don't Fence Me In.

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Of course there are exceptions to all of the above.  Indeed.

This morning, above/below, Tomato & Hydrangea.  Perfect name for a spiked tea & scones cafe.

Feeding cats & chickens, assessing what the night wrought & will it rain today.

Tomato still in its peat pot with cellophane wrap & tags.  Awaiting a much larger pot & bamboo cane trellis.  Perhaps this weekend?  Hydrangea blossoms hanging lower, petal margins crispier, will I cut to dry or leave to enjoy from the windows?

Calm.  Boring is good.  Idle chit-chat in the head.

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Something new to learn about Social Media.  Facebook cannot control pictures during war.  Images seen cannot be unseen, merely absorbed into a safe, prayerful, place.

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Again, my Garden working for me.

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Have you watched the award winning foreign film, Burnt by the Sun ?    "The film depicts the story of a senior Red Army officer and his family during the Great Purge of the late 1930s in the Stalinist Soviet Union. Like a tragedy bySophocles, Burnt by the Sun takes place over the course of one day."  Wikipedia

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Oddly, it's beautiful. 

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Glad it taught my heart to assimilate what I saw yesterday within mundane ubiquity of beauty in a tomato & hydrangea.  The gift of choices, health to act upon them, perhaps a dinner party in late summer honoring the last of the tomatoes.  With dried hydrangeas in a vase.

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This is freedom.

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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara

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Pics taken in my garden this morning.

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 For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

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Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Garden Design Course: Free in a Single Pic

Under a pecan tree not much grows.

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Tara Turf is best.

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Why?

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Increased pollinator habitat increases crop yield up to 80%.

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 Susanne Hudson found herself with 4 benches needing a home.  Exquisitely, they found a home.
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Please put this on one of your Pinterest boards.  It's a free Garden Design course !
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Garden Design: backdrop, canopy-understory-groundcover aka ceiling-walls-floor, color, texture, scale, flow, garden rooms, mystery, serene, poverty cycle, curb appeal, focal point, subsidiary focal point, vintage theme, simplicity, low maintenance, pollinator habitat, urban gardening, structure all year.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic snapped with my phone last week.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

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Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Design: Know Where Important Views Begin

The most important views of your garden are from inside.

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Kitchen views into the garden are imperative. 

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Make a choice, it's that simple.

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Continue with your life accepting garden views harmful to your spirit or make the choice to create garden views joyful to your heart.

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Too busy?  No Money?  Life issues?

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Then, those views are essential.

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I know from whence I speak.  With zero need to relay any of it here.

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No matter where you start, your garden can take you (if needed) from victim to survivor to thriver.

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Each of us is all of the above, excepting, too often, thriver.

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When you make a choice for your garden, you indeed make a choice to thrive.

Standing at the kitchen sink this morning eating yogurt I see, above, to my left, Torte de Shelle, resting on the table Beloved commissioned for me as a birthday gift.

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The mophead hydrangeas starting to color, above, a gift from my bosom friend Penny McHenry, who died several years ago.

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Without moving my feet, and looking right, above, another hydrangea from Penny causing a great stir in my heart as it approaches peak.
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The teak bench was a 40th birthday present to myself.  It arrived with a surprise, it needed assembly.  I adore that type of chore !
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The variegated Boxwood was bought on a whim, not knowing if it would do well in this zone.  It does well.
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Is it any wonder I stand at the kitchen sink & eat breakfast?  Literally, the energy & joy filling into my spirit is felt.  Pure atonement.
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2+ decades ago I named my business, A Garden View, Inc.  Obvious, now, where I was headed though zero clue at the time.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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pics taken this morning.  Pic, below, though fuzzy is my favorite.

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 For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

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Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Conservatory in a Tiny Garden Rustique

This week in my garden, below.  Small, less than 8500sf, it never bores.

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Potted hydrangea setting bud, below, blooms all summer.  Behind the hydrangea camellia sasanqua blooms all fall.  Left of the hydrangea a camellia japonica blooms all winter.  Hellebores in stone terrace, bloomed all winter, pruned down for summer.

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Behind this curtain are a stone terrace set in dirt, tea olives, azaleas, daphne, crape myrtles, red buds, sarcococca, roses, viburnum, aucuba, liriope  & etc....

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Not a day in the year does my garden lack blooms, structure or beauty.

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WITHOUT EFFORT.

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However, those are not salient facts.

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Maximum pollinator habitat is the most important detail.  Which includes subsidiary effects.
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No fertilizer to kill mycorrhizal fungi, earthworms or poison groundwater.  No need to even mention insecticides.  And, a potager producing 80% more produce with the increased pollinators.  In addition, no lawn to mow-water-feed.  Picking up on the time-effort-money this type of garden saves?
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Shade during summer cuts electric bills by 40% with leaves dropping allowing the sun to help heat my house.  Aside from mental health this little garden has given me a career.  Very nice, but more greatly, purpose backed with passion.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Conservatory is rescued doors/windows with siding from a century old fishing cabin torn down at Lake Burton.  Chandelier, wood stove, antiques, gravel floor, lamps-more-lamps, and my wireless reaches to the Conservatory.  Go me !  For a decade my garage held the gathering storm of this Conservatory.  
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

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Construction by Award Winning:

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Furniture on the Porch

Hydrangea 'Tardiva' are so easy you must

really plant enough to give blooms away.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic taken at jobsite this week.  H. 'Tardiva' begin blooming in August and will grow into a small tree in full sun where they thrive.

Subsidiary Focal Point

Tucked in 'as if' it were being worked.

Subsidiary focal point.

Yes, this client is waltzing with her garden now.  Leading too.
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She surprised me with this little cart.  And was correct, never seen one before.  Years of fun ahead with this cutie.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken this month in client garden.  We've worked almost 3 years to get to this point.  Pure play.  Of course plantings still arriving in layers too.

Driveway Planting

This was lawn, below, with a view down the cul-de-sac & myriad houses.

"I want a better view than this", was my thought a decade ago.

And, I want hydrangeas decadently gracing the side of my car as I pull into the garage.

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Everything shown was planted as 1 gallons.

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Desire on a tight budget, just add patience.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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pics taken in my garden last week.

Checkerboard Square with Circle

Untrained, unschooled & perfect.

Viewed from deck & house the existing lower garden, above, leads to their wild wood.
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They hired me to design their landscape.  Of course I left this alone!  Tweaks could be made but out goes THEIR charm.
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And, they built this DIY !
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Alexander Pope......Men come to build sooner than to garden finely as if gardening were the greater art.  ca. 17th century
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pic via client's Facebook page

Penny McHenry's Quotes To Live By

Penny McHenry, founder American Hydrangea Society, had 2 newspaper clippings on her bathroom mirror.

Below, is one.

The 2nd said, "It is more important to be kind than to be right."
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She was in her 70's when they were taped to her mirror.
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Active, Penny was forever getting into 'pickles'.  At least once a year she forgot these quotes, thoroughly. 
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Her charm lay in immediate repentance & contrition.  I drove Penny a lot of places thru the years & it was always a thrill when she would begin, "Perhaps I shouldn't have told....."
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Pics via my bad.  Apologies for not saving the sources.   

Hydrangeas On Speed

At my back door, below, this week.

 Potted hydrangea & a potted variegated boxwood.  Last year this hydrangea was a cutting in a 4" pot.

 Susanne Hudson has phenomenal growth planting 4" potted hydrangeas in large terra cotta pots.  Phenomenal.  Of course I copied her.  It worked.

Aaron Copland anticipated my arrival, writing Appalachian Spring for my garden & for me.  I hear it in my garden & looking at the pics.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pics from my garden during days of great drought, heat, humidity & zero maintenance or watering.  This is why I've taken you around my garden the past few days. You must know how easy it is to have a garden.    

Front Door: Curb Appeal

Yesterday, at my front door.  

Ivy 'Gold Heart', discovered studying historic landscapes in England.
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Espalier Oakleaf hydrangea, discovered studying historic landscapes in Italy.  (Irony, Italy teaching a USA southerner how to prune hydrangea.)
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Plaque is a Christine Sibley piece & I don't like 'words' in a garden.  (Great profession, exceptions to EVERYTHING.)
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Garden & Be Well,            XO Tara
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Epiphany yesterday.  With heat-humidity-droughts my garden is gorgeous from every window view.  And I haven't done any gardening for weeks.  Groundcovers, flowering shrubs, flowering trees, a few perennials & self-seeding annuals, focal points on axis.  No accidents.  I paid attention studying across Europe AND have a mission statement for my garden.
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More correctly, my garden is a metaphor for what I want in my life.

Sir Cecil Beaton In Reddish

"Cecil was actually the first person ever to walk me round a garden, which he regularly did at his house in Reddish.This seemingly simple act, like so many in one's life, was seminal in opening up to me the very idea that one could actually make a garden at all." Sir Roy Strong, about his friend Sir Cecil Beaton.
Do you walk friends round your garden?
Do you have friends that walk you round their garden?

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I do.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken in my garden last week. FYI, zero watering for these plants. Beauty Without Effort; great mantra to me. Just another little detail why "sustainable" is such a COS. (Does this show Puppet Barbuda's age?) Sustainable? Why accept sooooooo little? FTS.

Tuteur & Drama

Cone shapes draw the eye in landscapes. Charming tuteur, below, buta subtle color.

Imagine if each tuteur were bright yellow or red. Changes the garden, yes?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic from the same garden as yesterday's post. My client made these tuteurs. Notice the drama of tuteurs in pots. The Anna Belle hydrangeas are a victory in this drought & hi temps & sun.

Hydrangea Drying Now

Hydrangeas, too many weeks, have spilled into my paths. (These are EXACTLY the type of problems I want in life!) Finally, edges of their blossoms feel 'papery'. Time to dry. Drought & hi temps are the obvious diary entries upon each petal.

Cut the stems, peel off the foliage. Voila, ready to dry.

Lazy Woman's Guide to Drying Hydrangeas by Tara Dillard.

Could it get any easier, above/below, than sliding an entire bouquet in the slats of my French garden chair?

I like that the blossoms are not perfect.

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Their story, more potent.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken Sunday. Love, love how my Robin's egg blue looks in the top pic. The table, from France, on the patio many years, was moved inside while redecorating earlier this year.

Pink Whispers

Oakleaf hyrangea, below, in shade. Flowers begin white, fade pink, & will go beige at their conclusion.

Another oakleaf hydrangea, below, 5' away, in partial sun. Fading, with bits of pink, to beige.

Full baking sun, and no rain in 4 weeks 2 days, below.

White fading into beige, no hints of pink, a few crispy browns on foliage.

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Sun to shade, 5' apart, different stories. Both gorgeous, both happy.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken yesterday morning at my Bay Terrace. Are you a Plant Whisperer? Did you know both plants are vigorously happy?

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You don't expect perfection & uniformity with people! Why expect perfection & uniformity from your plants?