Make the Right Choices For YOUR Garden

The best gardens are flexible.  This garden, below, has been done myriad times across centuries and continents. 
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This garden was mine, for awhile, in my 20's.  By late 30's I knew, take out all the perennials, too much down time in winter, too much dead-heading, cutting-back, dividing.  Instead, flowering shrubs, evergreen groundcovers, a mix of bulbs.  A few perennials paid the rent, iris, hardy ferns, helleborus, Dianthus 'Bath Pink', peony, rudbeckia, a French hollyhock a student gave me, done. 


Pic, above , here.
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The necessity of making trade-offs alters how we feel about the decisions we face; more important, it affects the level of satisfaction we experience from the decisions we ultimately make.

― Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.

With changes, my garden was easier to take care of, with no major dormancy season.  Most importantly is time saved, opportunity cost.  What opportunity?  Enjoying my garden, instead of my garden working me. 
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Fall in love with the garden, above, sure.  Yet, make it work for you, your life.
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There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.

— Thomas Sowell

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Good Garden Design inherently has myriad right choices.  Oddly, when it's 'your' garden bad choices aren't as apparent.  Give Garden Design advice to a friend or neighbor, and mostly right choices flow.  A new Cole Porter song is in this truth, with a Noel Coward play backdrop. 
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"Each of the myriad decisions we make on a daily basis carries an opportunity cost. If we don’t consider them, we easily end up stuck in situations where we’re forgoing things we’d rather prioritize. We end up lamenting what we’re missing out on against our will, unsure how this happened. But if we first consider the tradeoffs associated with the decisions we make, we can end up with far more satisfying choices."  Farnum Street.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T

THE SECRET OF GARDEN ENTRIES & HALLWAYS

Did you know, the more entries a garden has the better a garden is? Why?
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Garden Entries are focal points drawing the eye, foot, imagination. Leading to foyers, hallways & living rooms. If you can do it inside, dahlings, you can do it outside.
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Above, Garden Entry with tiny landing leading directly into a hallway. See it? Can you label each section? Spread it farther. See the walls? See the ceiling?
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Creating a garden is no more than creating outdoor rooms.
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My favorite garden hallway is above. I took the pic in the Cotswolds. Don't you want to see where the hallway leads?
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How important are Garden Entries & Garden Hallways????????? Today, I'm off to finish a landscape design for a garden full of living rooms. I will add Entries & Hallways connecting them. La-Ti-Da. One of my favorite things to do.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

PRETTY vs. GOOD: Perennial Garden

Perennial gardens are like people, they may be pretty, but, are they good? Winter is the test of every beautiful perennial garden. Is it pretty in winter?
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Above, a good perennial garden: canopy & understory trees, backdrop hedge (fence-wall-house are fine too), boxwood. Each element forming structure/bones for the winter landscape.
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Dwarf conifers are great in the perennial border. They peak in winter. Of course, in my Southern zone 8, rosemary is evergreen and blooms all winter. La-ti-da. Sweet.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic from Golden Age Gardens