Elements of Simplicity in Garden Design

Plain?  No, totally designed.

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 Embellishment?  Why?  What is that about?  Lack of confidence, knowledge of the wrong sort, arrogance against Providence?

 Tara Turf.  Gravel from the local river.

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Century old bricks made in Milledgeville, GA, an hour's drive.

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I designed the buttress copying an antebellum cotton warehouse seen near Atlanta.

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The walled garden was the client's idea.  

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It was my good fortune to design & site it.

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Oddly, with total confidence.

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Whence does that come?  Truly, a subdivision child ca. 1960, living in a subdivision still.

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Degreed in USA horticulture, not taught how to  design a good garden to save anyone's soul.  Much less my own.

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Off I went, $20 bills stuffed singly & slowly, somehow paying for 2+ decades of studying the best historic gardens across Europe.

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With this project, 300 acres, I learned what the real focus of those decades had been. 

Garden design working with land & home.

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More, mind/body/spirit.

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Land & home, team members with the garden design.  Literally, the best performers with the most talent.

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That college degree in horticulture?  Training to work against the land, ignore every gift of Providence.

Doubt any of my college professors could give a concise sentence about the style of Henry Repton.  In, "Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Repton wrote:

“The perfection of landscape gardening consists in the four following requisites. First, it must display the natural beauties and hide the defects of every situation. Secondly, it should give the appearance of extent and freedom by carefully disguising or hiding the boundary. Thirdly, it must studiously conceal every interference of art. However expensive by which the natural scenery is improved; making the whole appear the production of nature only; and fourthly, all objects of mere convenience or comfort, if incapable of being made ornamental, or of becoming proper parts of the general scenery, must be removed or concealed”.

The garden views, above/below, totally designed.  Providence reigns, human arrogance replaced with a pride in unveiling Nature's gifts.

Henry would know this garden.
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Beyond the Tara Turf, above, is my best design work.  Views across a Natural pasture into woodland.  .
Curiously, this type of gardening is perfect for the starter home on a postage stamp with little budget.  Instead, that type of home is built with an expensive landscape.  Lawn with mowing/chemicals/fertilizers, bushes needing regular pruning & mulching, nothing to shade the house reducing hvac, nor fruit trees to feed the household, certainly not any focal points on axis with the house to feed the spirit.
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Truth, with your full intellect, if you demand more from your landscape you will have it.
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By the time anyone hires me, that choice has been made.  Incredible to work for people who have engaged with their own lives.  Same, when I lecture.  Every chair filled with people who have engaged with their life.  They aren't there for me, nor am I, we are there for the same reason as Henry.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Pics taken at a jobsite earlier this year.
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The capitalized words? Used in the vintage sense.  Underlined sentence at the top?  Describing myself on the front end.  This has not been a boring ride !
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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.

New Science: Farms Help Prevent Allergies from Birth

Science Daily amalgamates headlines.  

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Recently....children raised on dairy farms have fewer allergies, even in the womb, than other children. 

 "A study by researchers at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, monitored children until the age of three to examine maturation of the immune system in relation to allergic disease. All of the children lived in rural areas of the Västra Götaland Region, half of them on farms that produced milk."

Lower risk of allergy

The study found that children on dairy farms ran a much lower risk of developing allergies than the other children.

"Our study also demonstrated for the first time that delayed maturation of the immune system, specifically B-cells, is a risk factor for development of allergies," says Anna-Carin Lundell, one of the researchers.

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And.

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Children raised on farms with livestock are healthier, "It is extremely exciting that we can now see that not only allergic diseases, but also more classic inflammatory diseases appear to depend on the environment we are exposed to early in our lives," relates Vivi Schlünssen, Associate Professor in Public Health at Aarhus University.

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NYT article, so long ago I cut/pasted it into a file with real tape/paper, reported a study indicating plants emit wavelengths we absorb thru our skin and can increase white blood cell counts in those with cancer.  No ridiculous Nature blah-blah- is so pretty it makes me happy and healthy stuff.  Science, proving plants affect our health.

LISTEN
	Solitude by Alexander Pope Happy the man, whose wish and care A few paternal acres bound, Content to breathe his native air               In his own ground. Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, Whose flocks supply him with attire; Whose trees in summer yield him shade,               In winter, fire. Blest, who can unconcernedly find Hours, days, and years slide soft away In health of body, peace of mind;               Quiet by day. Sound sleep by night; study and ease Together mixed, sweet recreation, And innocence, which most does please               With meditation. Thus let me live, unseen, unknown; Thus unlamented let me die, Steal from the world, and not a stone               Tell where I lie. "Solitude" by Alexander Pope. Public Domain. (buy now) The Poetry Foundation National broadcasts of The Writer's Almanac are supported by The Poetry Foundation The Writer's Almanac is produced by Prairie Home Productions and presented by American Public Media.

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Native American Indian quote from a Joseph Campbell interview with Bill Moyers said the White man, once he strings his telephone lines across the lands will cease to live and merely survive.

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Headlines, with true science, backing up my ancestor, I have two great-great grandmothers who were 100% Cherokee.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken in Jamaica.  

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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.

                                                                                 .

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.

Garden Design Course: Free in a Single Pic

Under a pecan tree not much grows.

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Tara Turf is best.

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Why?

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Increased pollinator habitat increases crop yield up to 80%.

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 Susanne Hudson found herself with 4 benches needing a home.  Exquisitely, they found a home.
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Please put this on one of your Pinterest boards.  It's a free Garden Design course !
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Garden Design: backdrop, canopy-understory-groundcover aka ceiling-walls-floor, color, texture, scale, flow, garden rooms, mystery, serene, poverty cycle, curb appeal, focal point, subsidiary focal point, vintage theme, simplicity, low maintenance, pollinator habitat, urban gardening, structure all year.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic snapped with my phone last week.
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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.

                                                                                 .

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.

Suzanne Somers: Botanist & Soil Expert

With tea, toast, cats, & a fever I'm on the sofa with Suzanne Somers & Katie Couric on tv.  Who knew Suzanne Somers would say the profound?

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But first.

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At 66 Suzanne Somers is a ripe peach.  Touting her health, mental happiness & sex life.  Poor, (should have borrowed Somers make-up artist & hairdresser) Katie Couric was a peach pit, her eyes cannot smile when her mouth does & it's painful to watch (to be fair we all have a bad day here/there).   Feverish me was not yet peach compost.

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Suzanne bubbles on, and on, then, "...we have to take mineral supplements because the way we grow our food has destroyed that ability......"

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Statement of the obvious, and truth.

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Organic gardening does not mean, only, not using chemicals.

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N-P-K fertilizers are not organic.  

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They kill mycorrhizal fungi & poison groundwater & can make a bomb.

Mycorrhizal fungi help roots take up minerals from soil.  

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A Providentially planned relationship similar to the good bacteria in our digestive track.

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2 + decades ago & my first study tour of historic European gardens.  Discovered Tara Turf, above.
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Why did USA ever stop?  No chemicals or irrigation needed & less labor expense.  A trinity of money saving there.  Pollinators abound, soil microbes thrive.  Food from this soil, above, is healthier, and safer, than big-ag food.
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Sure, the supplements Somers sells are not 100% science but the food big-ag sells is engineered to ward off insects, weeds.  Doubt Suzanne's products can make that claim.

Where is the crystal ball?  20 years from now would like too see Somers/Couric on tv together again.  If Summers is still the ripe peach with a great sex life her empire is assured.  And I'm buying.
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Yes, this is long but it took years to discover even with a USA horticulture degree.  The learning was in my head.  It has since passed to my heart.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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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.

                                                                                 .

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.

                                                                                 .

Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon.

Simple Manipulations: How Many Do You See?

Do you see the manipulations, below?

Seating to create a gathering spot, figs for summer shade/winter sun over the benches, drystack stone wall cut into a slight slope forcing foot traffic into defined directions, formal boxwood framing pastoral views, tapering stone wall allowing only small machinery into the pasture from this direction, gravel terrace ready for men-trucks-heavy equipment, horses, or a catered soiree for 100.
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And, of course, it must all look a century old, be easy to maintain, and provide interest 24/7.
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When something appears simple, it rarely is.  Same is true of people.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Pic at a jobsite last week.
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Do you know the maximum pollinator habitat, above?  Seriously, can you verbalize what creates the best pollinator habitat above?  Answer at bottom.
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Being simple requires each of the decades I've been learning about gardens.  Better, being simple in a garden, takes me where Joseph Campbell says our eternity is.  Ironic, in this American life/era, to have found my bliss in work.
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1. Joseph Campbell - Wikiquote

   en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell‎

   Where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own .... And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life.
2. More, being simple connects me to the message/life work of Wendell Berry & E.M. Forster.  

3. Wendell Berry Earns Highest Humanities Award, Lectures on ...

   sojo.net/.../wendell-berry-earns-highest-humanities-award-lectures-econo...‎

   Apr 24, 2012 - On Monday evening, Wendell Berry delivered the 41st annual ... The title hinges on E.M. Forster's 1910 novel Howards End, which Berry said, ...
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5.  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.
6. Answer to question, above,  High density/low density, open meadow/dense woodland.

Orchard Wall & Gate

Credentials.  Every element designed.  My general contractor had the audacity to ask if I sited the daffodils.
Receiving my gimlet eye, no words, he quickly backed away a couple of feet.  Literally.

I was at the jobsite this month siting the newest layer of plantings.  The guys loaded them from the grower, above, early in the morning.  My contractor spent over a week sourcing them.

Caterpillar had to be used to move each plant.  Planting holes had to be dug by hand due to electric/gas/water.

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I staked location flags for the load of plants then zipped the acreage shooting the pics you've seen the past several days.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Some of 'the guys'.  Hardworking, pleasant, humble.  Without them, no gardens.

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Considering the top pic for a logo.  Still amazed every element is designed, newly built/installed, yet Jane Austen rustic.  Everyone got it right.

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.  

Practically Perfect

This would never happen 'new' in Atlanta, GA.  

And isn't that sad.
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Why does everything have to be so perfect?  Mary Poppins knew 'practically perfect' was better.
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This feels like a one sided conversation with Jane Austen.  Of course we know what type of character she would let live here!
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic via Pigtown Design.  Can't you smell the Tara Turf?

Garden Designers Round Table: Lawns

Lawn should have sections, arriving at, and touching, your home.

 Lawn around your home should be cut lower-tidier, above, than lawn further away, below.

 The best lawns are not monoculture, perhaps they are great for sports, they are Tara Turf.  A mix of grasses, bulbs, herbs, and what the wind  blows in.

 Tara Turf, above, in the cracks of a formal flagstone terrace.  Well, formal when the Tara Turf is 'dormant'.

 Low Tara Turf, above, enhancing the view and a place to play, sit, picnic.

 Spotty Tara Turf, above, a century old home with owners over 70 years old.  Easy to take care of, no fertilizer, no chemicals.

 What began as a design statement, above, enhances pollinator habitat.  And greater change thru the seasons.

 Lawn, above, a harbinger of spring.  And the owners.

 Lawn, above, until I realized the maintenance required.  Now, flowering shrubs.

 Lawn to the house, and it feels good.  Zero foundation plantings.  Lush planting in pots.

 Charming vignette, above?  Yes, AND, helping to pollinate fruit trees, vegetables.  Did you know 80% of pollination is from wild sources?

 At Sissinghurst, above, formal lines are mown into Tara Turf.  Tall lawn under fruit trees?  Increases yields 80%.

Tara Turf doesn't need watering, it enhances landscape design.  A detail within simplicity.
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One of my clients has a large potager, flowers/herbs/vegetables, her potager caretaker tried to talk her out of hiring my services.  She didn't need ornamental flowering plants coming into bloom every 2 weeks all year, she needed only plants feeding wildlife or people.
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We all learned something, BIG.  Her potager is outproducing any that he has created in his career.  Instead of getting 1-2 bloom cycles on her vegetables she's getting 3-4 bloom cycles.  Her yields are 100% higher, in many instances, than what he is familiar with.
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Why?  She created a landscape with something new coming into bloom every 2 weeks.  Birds, insects are in great activity everyday.  She has a mix of hi-density plantings with shrubberies/flowering trees and low-density areas with Tara Turf.
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Tara Turf is part of the equation for maximum pollinator habitat.  Beauty, low-maintenance, no expense for water, chemicals, fertilizer.
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Garden & Be Well,             XO Tara
.This month on Garden Designers Roundtable, We’re talking ‘Lawn Alternatives’, and we’re very excited to have the Lawn Reform Coalition joining us for a blogging extravaganza! The Lawn Reform Coalition is Thirteen gardening and environmental advocates from across the U.S. promoting change in the American lawn, a loose coalition of writers and activists (including lawn-haters and lawn-improvers) pooling knowledge of up-to-date solutions to the many problems caused by a lawn culture that demands perfection, conformity, and the overuse of water, fertilizer and pesticides. To learn more about the Coalition, and to join in the revolution, visit www.LawnReform.org.

We’ll be joined this month by the following Lawn Reform Coalition members:

Susan Harris

Susan Harris – Coalition instigator and head wrangler, Susan is a garden writer and blogger who promotes lawn alternatives and organic lawn care.  Online she blogs for independent garden centers, publishes a website about Sustainable-Gardening, and co-founded the national team blog GardenRant.com. Susan also co-founded the DC Urban Gardeners and Green the Grounds.org, a campaign encouraging First Families to landscape their official residences sustainably. Her individual blog Gardener Susan’s Boomer Blog, goes radically off-topic to answer the question: What Turns Boomers On?  Susan gardens and teaches gardening in the Washington, D.C. area.

Billy Goodnick

Billy Goodnick – Billy is a landscape architect based in Santa Barbara, CA, specializing in designing public and residential landscapes. His freelance writing and his Cool Green Gardens blog at Fine Gardening Magazine instruct and encourage readers to adopt a more sustainable approach in their landscapes. Billy also co-hosts an educational and humorous regional television show,Garden Wise Guys, that emphasizes water conservation and lawn alternatives.

Evelyn Hadden

Evelyn Hadden – Evelyn has been writing about nature-friendly, chemical-free, do-it-yourself, low-maintenance landscaping since 2001, when she founded the informational website LessLawn.com.  She gardens in Minnesota and travels across the country speaking to other gardeners about ecological gardening, lawn alternatives, and ideas for shrinking your lawn.  Her most recent book, Shrink Your Lawn: Design ideas for any landscape, won a silver medal in the Independent Publisher’s 2009 Living Now Book Awards for promoting a healthy and balanced lifestyle. Evelyn works with the Permaculture Research Institute Cold Climate to find and share ways to build a restorative human culture.

Saxon Holt

Saxon Holt – Saxon is a professional garden photographer whose images are well recognized in hundreds of magazine and book credits. In his work he seeks to change the aesthetic of what we expect to see in a garden photograph so that the media portrays authentic and sustainable gardens. ”The American Meadow Garden” and his two most previous books, Hardy Succulents, and Plants and Landscapes for Summer-Dry Climates, were all awarded prizes by the Garden Writers of America as “outstanding books”. He owns the stock photography library PhotoBotanic and blogs regularly atGardening Gone Wild.

Ginny Stibolt

Ginny Stibolt - Ginny is the “Transplanted Gardener” from Maryland, where she received her MS degree in botany, to NE Florida.  Her column for Jacksonville’s Florida Times Union is posted on her website and onFloridata.com, Many of her columns have been republished in Master Gardener newsletters and elsewhere, and she also writes for Vero Beach Magazine.  She’s the author of Sustainable Gardening for Florida, published by the University Press of Florida.

Of note, two of our own members here at Garden Designers Roundtable are also Lawn Reform Coalition Members. Susan Morrison and Shirley Bovshow will also be posting today.

Garden Designers Roundtable is also very excited to announce in conjunction with this month’s topic, that one of our own, Pam Penick, has a new book coming out in February of 2013 entitled “The Alternative Lawn”, to be published by Ten Speed Press. Look for more information here and on Pam’s blog Diggingas we get closer to the publishing date. Congratulations Pam!

Now without further ado, may we present to you our readers, ‘Lawn Alternatives’! Just click on the links below and Enjoy!

(and no, you’re not seeing double, Susan Harris has contributed two posts!)

Susan Harris : Garden Rant : Takoma Park, MD

Susan Harris : Gardener Susan’s Blog : Takoma Park, MD

Billy Goodnick : Cool Green Gardens : Santa Barbara, CA

Evelyn Hadden : Lawn Reform.Org : Saint Paul, MN

Saxon Holt : Gardening Gone Wild : Novato, CA

Ginny Stibolt : Florida Native Plant Society : Green Cove Springs, FL

Susan Morrison : Blue Planet Garden Blog : East Bay, CA

Shirley Bovshow : Eden Makers : Los Angeles, CA

Scott Hokunson : Blue Heron Landscapes : Granby, CT

Rochelle Greayer : Studio G : Boston, MA

Rebecca Sweet : Gossip In The Garden : Los Altos, CA

Pam Penick : Digging : Austin, TX

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK

Laura Livengood Schaub : Interleafings : San Jose, CA

Jocelyn Chilvers : The Art Garden : Denver, CO

Ivette Soler : The Germinatrix : Los Angeles, CA

Genevieve Schmidt : North Coast Gardening : Arcata, CA

Douglas Owens-Pike : Energyscapes : Minneapolis, MN

Debbie Roberts : A Garden of Possibilities : Stamford, CT

Several pics I took, some I've lost the resource, some are from Paul Gervais.