John Dickinson: Design

John Dickinson said, 

"Taste is a word I avoid. Good or bad, it's all so nebulous. The more you're dealing with taste, the more you're on shaky ground. Vulgarity to me is another matter. Vulgarity has great vitality."

"There's no cop-out in using pairs of things in a room. Matching chairs, sofas, lamps or tables can bring discipline, strength and balance to a scheme."

"You cannot do a lasting room design based on a current fad or novelty. There's a fine line between being amusing and being eccentric. A whole room based on amusing things would not be a laugh."

"There are many places in a house that do not warrant expensive furnishings. It's really not essential to spend everywhere. Muslin curtains can be the prettiest things in the world if they're sewn beautifully. You just don't have to make a big production of everything in a room."

"Some of the easiest things to use as inexpensive accessories are natural objects. Seashells are heaven. The bigger the better. Coral's marvellous if you can get big pieces of it. It must be large—little pieces don't mean anything."

"I have long thought that if one has a fireplace, to feel one must out of necessity and total obligation hang something over it is absolute nonsense. I think a blank space over a mantel is very interesting. "

"I don't like viewing my designs as sculpture. It's too pretentious. This is not art, it's decorating. It's not fine art, it's decorative art and there's a world of difference."
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Garden Design writing is traditionally, as Anne of Green Gables said, "A perfect graveyard of buried hope."  Instead, I mine ALL the arts and apply to Garden Design.
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The Style Saloniste has  pics with the quotes above.  I remember most of the pics when they first appeared in magazines.  
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Dickinson's last quote, above is not applicable to Garden Design.  When working with Nature it would be the greatest failure not to apply the elements of pollinator habitat.  And the work of Nature is the purest ART.
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Pic above lost provenance.
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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.

Bruce Barone Shot Queens Pot

Pots must be so fabulous

they can remain empty.
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The Queen's Pot!
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Sustainable before Christ was born.  Been doing it myself for decades.
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Touring the grounds of Glamis Castle I saw a huge urn in the distance.  It beckoned my name.  The urn grew larger the closer I got.  Upon discovery it was sentinel to an arboretum over a century old.
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What garden center advocates empty urns?
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic by Bruce Barone.  Love & adore inventing garden concepts & The Queen's Pot is mine....!

Pots, Easy Landscape Edging

Pots, original, as landscape edging? Hardly. A centuries old idea. At my garden, with Susanne Hudson, for the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival, below. (PMHF is this weekend, June 4-5.)"It's what we do with what we have.", my mentor Mary Kistner said. I first saw pots as edging decades ago in Ryan Gainey's Decatur, GA garden.
Susanne & I have broken pots & fallen limbs.

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Perfect landscape edging. Easy & free.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken a few days ago.

Compost & Gertrude Jekyll

"The size of a garden has very little to do with its merit. It is merely an accident relating to the circumstances of the owner. It is the size of his heart and brain and goodwill that will make his garden either delightful or dull, as the case may be, and either leave it at the monotonous dead level, or raise it, in whatever degree he may, towards that of a work of fine art."

Gertrude Jekyll, Wood and Garden, 1899 When a client has compost, above, filling their drive I know they are of the finest rank.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken last week in the same garden as the previous post. Wish you could smell the sweetness of that compost pile.