Assignment: Go To Venice

Studying Landscape Design in Italy, a day was set aside for Venice.  No gardens.  A dreaded day.  Money was tight & study was the purpose.  Not a city in water.

(I wear boots in my garden & designing landscapes.  Really, these are MY SHOES, above.)

How can any of my Landscape Designs not be redolent of having been to Venice?  (Mask, wig, flowers, dress, feathers, jewels, this is ME.)  

 Tongue In Cheek has been in Venice recently.  (Design a potager?  I can Be A Potager, above.)

This character would be marvelous in marble.  In a garden. 
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Your assignment, Go To Venice. 
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics from Tongue In Cheek   Seriously, go to Venice.  It will affect your heart, creativity, joy, spirit & more.

How To Frame A View

Thought you would like to see the depth between building & view, from previous post.Yes, the bench does have a view. Tuscany.

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Without People & Without Styling

Weaned on cover shots of Smith & Hawken sales catalogues ca. 1980's, and Horticulture magazines of the same era I've never wanted people in my garden shots. Couldn't afford it. (I shouldn't neglect the garden pics in House & Garden magazines of that era too.)My (film) slides, a roll of 36, each had to be beautiful & educational & of use till the end of my days.

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Interesting, I KNEW this in my 20's.

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Without awareness, at the time, I only shot gardens WITHOUT STYLING. Who wants a garden needing a stylist to look good?

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A picture, above, (not needing a stylist) I made in Italy, originally a slide, then a print, now a digital pic of the print made from the slide.

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Seek a garden without styling. It will be a garden of truth.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

A Slope In Italy: Drystack Stone

Olive trees sold long ago. These stones have retained this slope for centuries. No mortar.A new Drystack Stone wall begun by a recent DIY client.
Copy brilliance, I do.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Cannot wait for my client to finish their wall & send a pic.

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A previous contractor told me (with attitude), at a jobsite, this type of wall could not be built, "It has to be mortared." Should have quit using him with that job. But he was young & I thought I was mentoring. Alas. Months later 2 women clients (they don't know each other) called me in the same week, using the same word, misogynist, about this contractor. I'm sure he's missing my referrals.

Landscape Design: Copy

Tea Olive Terrace, below, yesterday morning, pic taken from my upstairs office window.
Why shouldn't I copy what I loved while studying landscapes in Italy? Copy, it's a rule of Landscape Design.
No money & no time are no match for DESIRE. (Tea Olive Terrace, aka side-yard, abuts the street. Private, gorgeous, emotionally enthralling EVERYDAY.)
English Daisy's blooming, annual blue ageratum will bloom late summer, rudbeckia fulgida x fulgida, yellow, bloom now till Christmas.
In Italy, above, this week. Nothing I don't have in a 'working class' cluster home subdivision in USA.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Bottom pic from Paul Gervais in Italy. Enjoy his blog, I do !.

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 »

A Filmmaker's Garden

Italian director & screenwriter Mario Monicelli, 1915-2010, made comedic films. He created a genre, 'Italian-style comedy'. The endings had little comedy. Asked, in 1999, is "any subject off-limits for comedy?"

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"No, if the eye is sensitive enough, all is possible." he replied.

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Taken from NYTimes obit yesterday. SHIPMAN sent me the pic when he was in Italy this summer. Monicelli is now in my Netflix que. It's bittersweet adoring bleak beauty, a film genre my mother-in-law opened my eyes to. This is a type of art that feeds my creative muse. Do you actively feed your creative muse?

Depth in Simplicity

Simplicity. Flat wall softened into 3-D with: light fixture, bell, foliage, arbor. Kinetics of bell, gate, foliage, light, invitation for eye & foot. Repetition of color. Just inside the gate, below.

Piquant surpise, below, look closely, an outdoor shower.

Not far away, below, more depth in simplicity with stones in the wall.

Surprise, a second gate, below.

A curve, using iron instead of brick & wood amplifying depth in simplicity.

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Pics taken in Athens, GA last month. Same Italianate garden as previous posts. Begun in the 70's this garden is still evolving, enjoy walking thru it. A landscape design class could be taught here.

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Notice the diminutive light fixtures? Perfection. Leaving intact a design feature of th Edwardians.

Sojourns From Italy

At the property line, below, a hedge & faux gate. Look close, it's mirrored. Hints of an English cottage garden, below.

Double axis with a potager, below, viewed from the frontyard.

Potager, below, viewed from the backyard.

Little details, oozing water ball, abound, below.

There are no wrong notes in this Italianate garden.

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Surprised to see sojourns from Italy in the same garden as the previous post?

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I knew, 20 minutes into the hour spent in this Italianate garden, it was a book. The owner, after my nonstop questions & pictures, finally relented to my rudeness and asked me into her home. Poppets, you know I had to see her Vanishing Threshold. ODG, garden views from inside her home are a day's worth of shooting.

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I would love, love, love to write & shoot the book of this garden.

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Beauty & something to learn on each page !!!!!!!

Create Seductive Doorways

Invite people thru your garden with doorways. Use a pair of pots, pair of vertical stones, pair of plinths, pair evergreen shrubs, arbor & etc. Drama of a step, narrowing to the path, above, less than 3' wide, lines of boxwood creating a hallway. Focal point on axis, creating a foyer and

beyond is another fabulous living room.

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Doorway, top pic, leads from the terrace in yesterday's post.

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It is this simple. Doorway, landing, hallway, foyer, living room. Gorgeous & low maintenance too.

Pot Display

When the setting is right a pot display is de rigueur.

Choice morsels to delight the eye and

invite perusal.

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Have seen Pot Displays from Italy to Ireland & points between. Here, a delight in the same Italianate garden in Athens, GA as previous posts. This garden is about 1 acre.

Protecting Lemons

In Italy, centuries ago, when a late freeze threatened the lemon crop,

smudge pots were lit.

saving the lemons.

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Pic taken last week in Athens, GA, same garden as the previous post. The gardener purchased these smudge pots in Italy.

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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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.