Axis of Ugly: Views from this Gorgeous Interior

Interior attention to detail. 

Exterior attention to detail?
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A grill.  Swathed in vinyl, no less.  Perhaps to match the countertops?  No, to match the ovens.
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Axis of Ugly: Breakfast room window view.  Yard (yes, yard, obviously not garden) door view.  Window above the sink view.  And, probably dining room view, upstairs bedroom views.....
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Why is this acceptable?  Generally it's the person bankrolling the interior demanding the grill, hence, acceptable.  Until that person reads a post like this.  Go ahead, you know you want to show it to him.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Why so hard on this topic?  "Men come to build sooner than to garden finely as if gardening were the greater art." Pope, 17th century.  Beautiful pics of interiors that denigrate the landscape are harmful to my profession.  
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How to fix this?  Simplest? Hinged shutters, painted color of chair seats, above, in front of grill.  Fold & lean against wall when using grill.  
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Pic via Cote de Texas.
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Axis of Ugly.  Rather proud of that one !!  Would be a great lecture title for Puppet Barbuda.....

Lisa Porter Collection: Vanishing Threshold

Texture, scale, flow, color, invitation, narrative, poverty cycle, light, fragrance, repetition, simplicity, intellect, ceiling, walls, floors & more.

It's all part of vanishing threshold.
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Garden & Be Well,          XO Tara
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Pic via Lisa Porter Collection.  Take the link, lots of pics, about this home by the beach.  Original article from Traditional Home July 2001.  Photos by Jon Jensen for Traditional Home

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Puppet Barbuda adores this fireplace.  Not at all reminiscent of the stone fireplaces in every flower show across USA redolent of the monolith floating amongst the galaxies at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Poverty Cycle Into the Music Room

The library across the hall, previous post, is moody with northeastern light.  The music room, below, hums in southeastern light.

Eastern light, below, in the mirror, southern light, window above.

The garden view, below, is one of my proudest achievements.

I took the garden, a century old, to its Southern roots in time & place.  Using the Poverty Cycle.  Looking in the window, below, seen, above.

Tara Turf to the foundation, granite curbstone step instead of green-meatball-foundation-plantings, drifts of daffodils as-if-they-were-always-there.
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Plenty of areas to play & show off in this garden, and I have, but without using the Poverty Cycle the garden would lack soul, character, integrity, & have too-much-uneducated-ego.  Of course you've deduced, this is my ego, above.  This is a portion of the front porch, hence, double ego!
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pics taken last week at jobsite.  Same garden as previous several posts.
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Ego for doing-the-right-thing makes me unemployable to the largest design/install companies across USA.  Why?  It's all about sales.  Are you beginning to understand the prevalence of green meatballs & foundation plantings and, and, and?
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Oh my, a little Puppet Barbuda this morning.  Uneducated ego?  Testosterone-on-wheels-mow-blow-go-commodify-all-I-touch-get in fast-get out fast-sign my contract-pay me every month.  Sad, you'll pay later in lower house value, higher HVAC, increase maintenance expenses, poison  ground water with fertilizer, destroy pollinator habitat, and worse, harm your spirit with ugliness.  

Don't Wear This on a Garden Tour

Never wear orange on a garden tour.  You will be seen thru hedges, & everywhere, making a serious gardener, trying to take pics, rabid as an angry bull.

This happened to me in Ireland visiting Helen Dillon's garden.

At dinner that evening, at which point everyone in the group knew I was a rabid bull, excepting Miss Orange,

who commenced to order & drink an entire bottle of wine without sharing with the group as if she was the one thwarted in her picture taking.
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I was treated with great dignity by the group, condolences (for my photography being interrupted)  & respect for discovering Miss Orange needed to be totally knocked off our socially acceptable list.

After all, there is a protocol for sharing wine with the group (hello Miss Orange we all shared with you) .
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But this isn't where I was going with the pics.
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Puppet Barbuda, garden critic extraordinaire, needs clothes, hair, and apparently a ruff for her neck.  She already has a pair of leather lace-up work boot stilettos.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Top pic via Castles, Crowns, and Cottages.  Remaining paintings Diego Rivera via   It's About Time.
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
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Details about online design services.
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Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
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Details about lecture titles here.
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I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Exterior Color: White on White

A client's yellow house is going white-on-white.  Cannot wait to see the results.

Pay no mind to the landscaping, above.   Totally subdivision, 1960's brick ranch let's make green foundation meatballs a la testosterone-on-wheels-mow-blow-go-commodify-all-I-touch.  And those pots?  Lipstick on a pig.
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Garden & Be Well,        XO Tara & Puppet Barbuda
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I adore Veranda, and subscribe, but know, too well, gardening is a pitiful stepchild to most editors.  Great exception was House & Garden magazine during the 80's.  See any at the junk shops buy-buy-buy.
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Pic via Veranda.

Penelope Bianchi: Interiors & Gardens

With heart-on-my-sleeve, & happy obligation, pro bono is done each year, and making my voice heard by our state's largest trade group.  'Voice' was asked to lecture this month about Social Media.  Oops, there is a price for 'voice' being heard.  

Too many in my industry are not using Social Media's platform.

Owning every room I lecture in, props are set.  I do 100's of acres, what is a mere room?  Setting one of my journals down I had a 'moment'.  Miss Confidence, yes Puppet Barbuda, with less than 60 seconds to start, saw, above, pages from an old journal.

My journals make my eyes, brain, & soul HAPPY.  They have pages of beloved words, below.

These pages, below, delayed my lecture.  And changed how it began.

Journal was haphazardly opened to these pages created years ago of a home/garden.  Though busy, my eyes were drawn into stunned revelation.
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This is Penelope Bianchi's garden, above.  I had torn, squished, watered, dried, flattened, taped, written happy words with Penelope's garden.  Into my journal.  Moons ago.
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Puppet Barbuda honors few gardens in this manner.
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How is it possible in this huge world of peoples, distances, time I fell in love with a person's garden, & Providence conspired for me to meet the person, fall in love with her, and only then realize I loved her garden before I loved her?
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Go to Penelope's garden, here, and you will fall in love too.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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top pic Penelope's garden, other pics from my journal.  My journals are a secret weapon for serenity & hearing grace.
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Penelope, You must know this experience made me, literally, woozy when it happened.  Everything you write to me about my work was mentored by Mary Kistner into my quiver of knowledge.  She's been gone for a decade, I miss her so, and yet I've met 1 person who embodies all that she was.  You.  I love you Penelope.     XO T

Which is Cheaper: Yew or Perennial ?

Low maintenance & affordable are ubiquitous in a mission statement.

Why have a perennial garden?  Requires skilled labor to maintain & most disappear in winter.  Per square foot & volume & maintenance perennials are ridiculously expensive compared to the long life-size-maintenance expense of yew topiary.
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Yews survive centuries, perennials survive years.
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Of course Garden Centers & Design-Build-Maintain businesses promote perennials.  Perennial flowers are intoxicating.  And important to their recurring  bottom line.
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Garden & Be Well,             XO Tara
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Went less maintenance than the above.  Used understory trees & groundcover (no mowing) in a checkerboard pattern in the front garden for a young couple with babies in their starter ranch home.  How did they get so smart so young?  Me?  I planted zillions of perennials at their age.  Now, only the hardy (iris, dianthus 'bath pink', lenten rose, fern, peony) remain.  Zillions more blooms with my flowering shrubs & trees & vines & groundcovers.  Love my garden but zero time for much maintenance and became disgusted with the thief of time/money with perennials/annuals and don't get Puppet Barbuda started on the dreadful eco impact of perennials/annuals.  You know, greenhouses, heating/cooling, water, soils, pallets, insecticides, fungicides, fertilizers, 18-wheeler trucks.
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Pic via My French Country Home

Front Door Ideas

Puppet Barbuda's wicked eye.  

Boxwood disgracefully pruned into helmet hair, and wider at the top creating leggy hags with pockets of space at the bottom.
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Coiled hose lingering for pride of place.
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Blocks of wood anchoring exterior lights? Oh dear, at least stain them the color of the siding.

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The delight of the sweet round doormat.   A great touch.

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Charming vernacular baskets over the front door.

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Adore the shutters open in welcome.

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Why mulch when a groundcover is less maintenance & more lush?

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Elegantly shabby seeing money stretched.  The steps/rails are solidly good and tell a story.  Windows are at a crossroads of rotting but surviving with storm windows attached. 

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The window box & front door paint color tell Puppet Barbuda she wants inside this sweet cottage.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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A Cousin Cathy pic from Nantucket this summer.  This cottage reminds me of Aunt Tillie in her 80's, widowed & easily taking care of her brick cottage & garden.  Plenty of money but not one red cent to replace the furnace.  Smiling with a glint in her eye, "Let the next owner pay for it!"  Blessedly several of her antiques are now in my home & garden.  

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Who is Puppet Barbuda?  Landscape Design Critic of course.  

Double Axis: House of Turquoise

Sandra Espinet, designed a perfect Double Axis.  From inside the living room, below, looking out to the pavilion.

 From the garden, below, looking into the pavilion.

 In the pavilion, below,

looking into the living room.
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Sandra owns the interior & exterior.  A rare interior decorator knowing her work ends at the property line not the walls of the house.
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Double Axis is an easy concept.  Quit reading this and figure yours out !
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Garden & Be Well,               XO Tara
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Penelope Bianchi is the rarest.  Interior Decorator doing Vanishing Threshold, Double Axis & la-ti-da multiple axis to a single focal point & etc....
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When you realize these concepts are easy, historically correct, necessary to happiness/joy/grace, & affordable you will stop thinking in terms of what Garden Centers & Testosterone-On-Wheels-Mow-Blow-Go want to SELL you.  Foundation plantings & lawn & seasonal annuals?  OMG, worse than boring.  Stupid, environmentally harmful, terrible for property value, & worst of all devastating to your inner muse.  No, don't ask me what I really think, because I can go there too.  And there waits the fabulous Puppet Barbuda.
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Pics via House of Turquoise with more about Sandra Espinet, here.

Hammock Humor

Perusing last night, above.  Laughter, amusement, delighted arrogance Puppet Barbuda style.  In reality the hammocks I see are hanging from rusted metal frames, in landscapes devoid of charm, a bare patch of earth below with weeds spreading from the muck, no fringe, a mildew factory, on view from windows inside the home, with not a table in sight for a book & glass of wine, and every mosquito from miles around just waiting for you to alight to gorge on your blood and give you the disease of the day.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic from Janelle McCulloch, & thank you for picturing the answer, "What were they thinking?"

It Costs More To Do-It-Yourself

Crape myrtle tree, 25 gallon, $165 retail. 

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Crape myrtle tree, 5 gallon, $100 retail.

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2 independent retail garden centers, above, pricing.

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Dozens of trees at both price points, each more disgusting than the other in quality.

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 Puppet Barbuda cringes for her industry, Landscape Design & Contracting.  Poor quality/high pricing  at retail.  What must 'lay' people think her services cost?

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Finally, a wholesale nursery.  Gorgeous 10 gallon crape myrtle, $50 wholesale.

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Gorgeous 10 gallon crape myrtle: $100 installed and a 1 year guarantee we replace & replant.

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Disgusting 5 gallon crape myrtle: $100 you install, 1 year guarantee & you schlep.

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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

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These prices were in Texas, was doing a job for my Mom on a very tight timeline.  I was HORRIFIED at the independent garden center pricing & quality. 

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Getting into my car at one of the retail nurseries an elderly man had a tray of flowers purchased and was trying with difficulty to open his car door, within eyesight of 4 garden center employees watching him.  Literally not figuratively.  Puppet Barbuda went & helped him.  So, this is how things have changed since Puppet Barbuda worked garden retail in the 80's?

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Pic, the lovely pot with Chinese snowball blossoms is in my Bay Terrace.

Fog & Rain Dreary?

A local garden center posted on their Facebook page today about the weather (fog, wet, gray) being dreary and we should come in to buy a houseplant.  Really?  Puppet Barbuda knows good Landscape Design has no dreary days.  Returned moments ago from her garden Puppet Barbuda saw:

 Laura, above, following from inside.  Not so cute when she hangs from the chandeliers.  (Notice the terra cotta sun?  It's a wall sundial hiding a faucet.)

 With Ivy 'Gold Heart', at the front door.  Puppet Barbuda is in earnest about no dreary days.  Fell in love with this Ivy while studying Landscape Design in England.

 Sasanqua's, above, still in heavy bloom.  Native honey bees gather pollen all year in my landscape.

 Hellebores, above, opening.

 Apples & peaking gold dwarf conifer.

Crazily, with a warm January, fall leaves still falling.
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Dreary?
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Plenty of color.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Was in my robe/slippers getting these pics a few minutes ago.  Laura followed me, from inside, around the entire house while photographing.  Wish I had time for more pics....

Italian Meadow

Studying historic landscapes across Europe for almost 2 decades I was lucky to 'get it' about the use of meadows in Landscape Design.  Meadows stole my heart.  Meadows near Lucca, Italy save me from the tedium of traffic, standing in line & etc.  Give me an unpleasant task, or person, and my brain/spirit leave for Lucca.   

 Of course I have a meadow, above.  Set in the 1" spaces between gray flagstones in the formal Tea Olive Terrace.  (Alas, the stone you see is my foot trail.)

Rimmed with the formality of an abelia prostrata hedge & etc., above.
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In my meadow (can the start of a sentence get better?) English daisies bloom in Spring, rudbeckia fulgida x fulgida bloom summer-frost, annual blue ageratum bloom late summer, mazus reptans has it's tiny orchid blooms numerous months, then weeks with only stone.  Cold stone formal.  And I delight in that change.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Sir Edwin Lutyens put meadow straight up to, and touching, Sir Christopher Lloyd's Great Dixter.  THAT is where I 'got it'.  Hope you know about Lloyd's mother too.  An early naturalist.  A DEMENTED person offered to pull up my meadow recently.  Thinking it was weeds.  My college for ornamental horticulture & landscape design in USA?  It was horrible, teaching me to landscape like Mr. Testosterone-On-Wheels-Mow-Blow-Go-Commodify-Everything-I-Touch.  And to design from the street looking at the house.  Still makes me cringe.  Before Jesus even the Romans knew where to start a landscape design; from inside.  Loved my time in Israel studying landscapes.  Oh my, Puppet Barbuda came out to play a bit this morning.

How To Color Echo

Most important, below, Landscape Design feature? SIMPLICITY. Nothing between view, meadow, lake. (Bushes seen were already there. Client asked for more bushes! Puppet Barbuda KNOWS Mr. Testosterone-On-Wheels-Mow-Blow-Go-Commodify-Everything-I-Touch would, indeed, put more bushes here. CHA-CHING. )
Those chairs? Ubiquitous plastic wally-world cheap. Painted, they become HERS.
At the top, above, of her drive, colors arranged to PERFECTION on a simple bottle tree.
Colors Echoed in the chairs beyond.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken yesterday at my client on Lake Coweta, she's DIY, in Newnan, GA. Her garden is on tour today. Can't wait to show you more of it.

How To Hide A Fence

Asked to hide a fence at the back of their garden in a tiny, dingy corner,

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the MUSE said, "Put in an 'L' shaped Conservatory, gravel terrace, chandelier from the oak tree, a dining table underneath & build it from rescued parts."
It wasn't an option, below, to see the ugly fence from all these windows.
Recently completed, below, on a garden tour for Hay House, in Macon, GA. (These are smart people, create a BIG deadline!)
Artist in residence for the garden tour R. Scott Coleman, here, watercolors.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Since I designed this garden missives have been sent showing the progress. Many building parts are ca. 1870. Did you see the fence? Love my MUSE. Puppet Barbuda cringes thinking how Mr. Testosterone-On-Wheels-Mow-Blow-Go would have designed this dark little corner.

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Pics from The Daily Landscape.

Landscaping After The Tornadoes

Lecturing near tornado devastation yesterday I had time to meet & speak with the Floyd County Master Gardeners & Rome, GA mayor.
Let's do a Free Landscape Design Symposium.

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Siting trees properly cools in summer, heats in winter. Contouring turf properly reduces mowing-fertilizer-chemicals-water-maintenance; more space for flowering shrubs & groundcovers creating maximum pollinator habitat & beauty. Choosing paint colors, light fixtures, patio/deck shape. And the fun of siting focal points.

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Lovely garden, curb appeal, raised property value. Greater tax receipts.

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Puppet Barbuda went in for the kill, with the mayor, on that last bit. Increased Tax Receipts!

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In hindsight the mayor looked like a deer in headlights. Hmm. Puppet Barbuda was in her element. In hindsight Puppet Barbuda should have let the mayor speak. In Puppet Barbuda's defense, she had little time with the mayor before mounting the stage to lecture. Think Puppet Barbuda would miss a single second of STAGE TIME?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Stopped at Liz's Antique Barn on the way out of Rome. Puppet Barbuda found a TUTU.

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Took the pic in France moons ago.

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.

Chinoiserie & Design

Wisteria 'Amethyst Falls' at my front door today. A tiny area, yet interesting, and welcoming. (Without moving my feet these pics are a scan from left to right.) Peeking beyond the Wisteria, below, urn/plinth on axis with my bay window.
Filtered thru Wisteria foliage, above, the gravel terrace with large flagstones leading to the frontdoor.
The little Pot Cluster, above, and adirondack chair.
Classic Landscape Design, above, and pollinator habitat. (High & low density, canopy/understory, walls, floor, contrasting foliage textures/colors.)
Landscape Design's Pulitzer Prize, above. Beauty, privacy, low maintenance, organic, all season interest, pollinator habitat, fragrance, fantasy within reality, a place to sit, a spot viewed on axis from within the house.

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Take the camera view a bit to the right you'll see neighbor's homes, their cars, their landscaping, the street. Honestly, who wants to live that way? Seeing neighbor's stuff? It's not my realm. The pics above ARE my realm.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Puppet Barbuda apologizes for bluntness in her captions today. Puppet Barbuda is zealous in details of landscape design/pollinator habitat. Puppet Barbuda disdains the ridiculosity of pretty garden pictures focusing on 'a plant', 'how to dig a hole', 'plant them 2.5432" apart'. Information providing you nothing about putting a beautiful garden together. When Puppet Barbuda reads interior design books/blogs/magazines they don't tell her how to produce the fabric on the couch, how to dye it, cut it, sew it, staple it & etc.....they appreciate she has a BRAIN.

Bunny Mellon Style

A garden, below, needing tending or a garden tended to perfection?
Is this garden, below, your idea of heaven or a mess? (Have this garden, below, in any post 1985 deed restricted subdivision & you'll get 'nastygrams' from the HOA demanding it be 'weeded'.)
A fairy tale, below, or needs pruning?
Bunny Mellon likes it SCRUFFY !!

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A woman to love.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Oddly, I've always been repelled by deeply manicured landscapes. Repelled & disgusted by tidy landscapes omitting an intellectual component entirely. Is Puppet Barbuda being too vague in her dislikes? Puppet Barbuda abhors subdivision tidy landscapes installed by the 'builder' and maintained ad nauseum thru the decades; as if tidiness is an excuse for a 'decent' landscape or an intellect.

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Vanity Fair has a lovely article, where the pics came from, about Bunny Mellon here.