What Simplicity Provides

Extreme simplicity in a garden creates the best focal point.
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Pic, above, here.
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YOUR LIFE.
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Myriad layers of simplicity allow for the depths & heights of your life.
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Oh my the well fought battle, above, for simplicity.
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"A woman with a closet full of clothes, and nothing to wear, doesn't know herself very well." , Bill Blass.
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What you choose to have, keep, allow in your garden, says so much about you.  Whether you think so, or not.
Garden & Be Well,  XOT

Considerations for Designing a Pool

Designed another pool yesterday, pool house too, though it wasn't requested.  Pool house along with decking & pool shapes were 'self-evident'.  Also 'self-evident' was the master bedroom bay window becoming French doors leading to a new terrace flowing to the new pool.

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Another meeting must take place after Pinterest boards have been exchanged.  

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That meeting will include: clients, pool contractor, general contractor, & me.

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Pool, decking, & pool house dimensions will be lined/flagged on site.

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And, the interior of the pool will be arranged along with color choices.

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Ironically, choosing the pool's interior will take the most time.

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Garden design is all about contrasts, and repetition, exactly why these umbrellas 'work'.  

 This client, above/below, spends a great deal of time in the Caribbean and wanted those colors.  She also knew she wanted a rectangular pool, he wanted turf around the pool.  After that, I was on my own.
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Creating the curve, below, was inspired from their new kitchen with marble topped island in the same shape.  Bulls-eye, there was the contrast.

More than choosing paint color, which you live with for years before changing, designing pools is a single shot.  

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Often, I'm not the 1st person designing the pool.  That person typically works for a pool company.

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My scope is from the center of the home to the property lines.  

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 What does that mean in real life?  The 1st pool designed was a Gilligan's-Island-Wig-Wam-Waterfall-Snaking River-Infinity Edge-Gobs of Stone-Trendiest Tiles of the Moment-Landed From Mars Behind the House entity.

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Oddly, I've never worked a site needing that pool.  Would love the chance !  Less the trendy tiles & horrible stone configurations, instead more of a lost- world- found-only-great-literature-can-describe.(Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Welty, Nabokov, Byatt, Austen, Forster, Woolf, honestly, why think small.)

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Lawn, above, is not sickly, just has plenty of visits from the new puppy!

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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

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Pics taken in client garden last month.  We built the pool 2 years ago & are adding a perennial garden.

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My Pool board on Pinterest.

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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.

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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.

Enlarging Corners

Hired for the Garden Design I could not ignore the pool decking.

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Pool is Olympic in scale yet the decking was Liliputian.

The mortar isn't even dry, above.
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Will go back this spring for full photo shoot with more enlarged corners, rims and furnishings styled.
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Have enlarged corners for driveways too.  Perfecto!
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic in client garden.  Love pics full of narrative or, like this one, a 'see it & do it', no explanation needed.  
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If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.

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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

Val-Kill, Royals, Tara Turf

FDR & Eleanor hosted the King/Queen of England at their home.  Appearances mattered greatly in this era.
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A dip in Val-Kill's pool, above, was included amongst the entertainments.
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Tara Turf touches the coping, trailing to a dirt path & wild wood.
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Contemporaneously with pioneering Tara Turf it was intuitive, Tara Turf is a status symbol.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Put, This I Remember, by Eleanor Roosevelt on your list if you haven't read it yet.  Cote de Texas has more about the royal's visit with Roosevelt's, here.
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Amazing path, Tara Turf as status symbol.  A meadow or pasture, life itself, are merely empty spaces to be taken at whim for financial gain in popular culture.  Truly heart rending.
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If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.

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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon.

Stupid Does Have a Price

Beware the landscape contractor, with one of my Garden Designs, "No, can't be done."

Stupid does have a price tag.
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Fieldstone retaining wall, above, in dirt.  No concrete + mortar.  Italy has quite a few olive orchards, older than Christ, still holding proud their fieldstone in dirt terracing.
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Stupid-does-have-a-price-tag, said fieldstone in dirt did not work, he wanted to make more money with concrete, mortar, chipped stone.  I don't use him anymore.  My jobs have grossed millions since then.  Do the math.
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When I mention my Team it's from the heart & head.  They make my designs better.  Why did I fall for SDHAPT?  I met the author of Never Be Lied to Again, when I was the garden expert on NBC-TV morning show.  Zero awareness of those lying to me at that time.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic Old Long Island.

Hemingway: Running From Crazy

Plenty of reasons not to like Hemingway: womanizer, booze, gambling.  Especially being a little girl growing up during the feminist era of the 60's.  His Key West, FL, bedroom, below.

After beloved Miss Louise & Aunt Tillie died I somehow ended up, in my 40's, with a copy of Hemingway's, A Moveable Feast.

It's repulsive how much I like Hemingway's writing.  Hemingway's, Pilar, above.

Running From Crazy, Barbara Kopple's new documentary about Hemingway's 'mental illness' doesn't mention 'addiction' in promotional materials.  Odd, yes?  (Hemingway's pool, above, "“ . . .The swimming pool is wonderful -it is very large and the water, from away under the reef, is fairly salt. Also it lights up at night -I find that each underwater bulb is five times the voltage of the one bulb in the light house across the street, so the pool must be visible to Mars -it is wonderful to swim around in a sort of green fire, one’s friends look like luminous frogs . . .”, Elizabeth Bishop.)



(Had to include Hemingway's treasure box, above.  A past client had one & it was loaded with heirloom silver pieces, more than Jack Sparrow could imagine.)

Hemingway's home now, above.

Ca. 1933, above, Hemingway's garden as he knew it, Jane Austen 'rustic'.  Much better than the 'neat' garden tourists demand.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Pics via Hemingway Home.
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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.