Garden Design: No Flowers

Designing a garden, now, with horrid views thru a pair of formal dining room windows.  Horrid.
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Pool pumps, rickety/collapsing/rotted potting table, spent/broken pots, stacked plastic bags potting soil, you have the vision.
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Luckily pool pumps are backed by another wall of the home, clad in lapboard.  Easy fix.  Carpenter will fence pool pumps, to proper height, in matching lapboard, each section removable for maintenance.  Have ridden this bull at rodeo before.
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Remaining disasters easy fix too.  The pair of windows are several feet apart on the same wall.  Carpenter will make custom potting table running full length of window-wall-window.  At each window, clustered, a collection of topiaries in her well chosen lead color pots.
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A flock of topiaries, plenty to swap inside her dining room, yet have rich amount for outside views too, on that new potting table.  This is Vanishing Threshold.  Notice, Garden Design goes inside.  More than the topiary arena, but that's beyond the scope of this missive.


Pic, above, here.

Garden Design begins inside your home, below.  Views to the garden, everything.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Just wow, below.  Curtains take on a new meaning in this home.  Candle & vase of foliage pure homage to the work of Providence.

 Pic, above, here.
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How could I let my client look at pool pumps and a broken potting table?  Not in my realm.
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Pic, above, here.
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Another new layer for her Garden Design.  Replacing a wall of windows with this door, above.
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Shot pic, above, in Susanne Hudson's garden.
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She's also getting her Conservatory this layer.
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Pic, above, here.
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Muse surprised me, above.  Client is also getting the open portion of this structure; client's scaled a bit longer.  It's on axis with the opposite end of her garden. 

This is phase 2, with my client.  Mentioned new clients to her, and their husband's mostly worried about the 'Garden Designer' spending money on flowers.  Her best laugh of the appointment.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Paired Down Richness

Minimal embellishment, below, yet, I want what they are selling !  Whatever it may be.  At the front door, they have me.
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Color, potted plant, and font.
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Oddly, there's a great example too of Garden Design and downspout color.  At right, below, downspout color is the wise choice.  At left, below, must be neighbor's downspout.
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Best proof, ever, white jumps forward, and tries to act like a 'column' with a downspout.


Pic, above, here.
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A richness, above, having nothing to do with filthy lucre, and everything to do with warmth, confidence, come-inside, you won't regret it, for there is joy within.  And, you'll be back.
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My favorite Garden Designs are the ones with the fewest ingredients & richest living.
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Notice how they handled the slope, above?    Becomes a non-issue.
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Pic, above, here.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Intuitively I sense, owner/s of Brassica live/breath, quotes, above.
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Garden & Be Well,    XOT

Simple is the Most Complicated

Centuries of story, below, in this French home/garden, wars, plagues, art, architecture, transportation, taxes, riches, poverty, gain, desire, love, grief, loss.  What remains?  Formality with agrarian.  The former, easily located, can you outline the agrarian parameters, and label them, below?
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Two things, below, never mentioned in my measly USA horticulture degree.  If you're a Garden Whisperer, they don't whisper, below, they shout, in tears of joy or Wendell Berry poetry.
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First, below, is the magic of Tara Turf.  Meadow with a mix of what the wind blows, choices that are planted, herbs, bulbs, etc.  Mowed at 1-4 heights creating formality, paths, guilds.  Just meadow, it has no name.  It's literally biblical.  Earth as Provider.  Pastures & meadows, hallowed ground for pollinators, increasing crop yields by 80% with zero extra effort.  Tara Turf is unique to each site.  There should be myriad Tara Turf's for sale.  Tara Turf Gulf Coast, Tara Turf Mid-Tennessee, Tara Turf North Georgia you get the idea.
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Back to the agrarian parameters, below.  They are, expanse of meadow, feeding both pollinators & livestock.  Tallish meadow lapping the tightly controlled pruning of the topiaries?  Pure metaphor.  I adore this phase of maintaining a historic garden, rich in stories.  Tallish meadow lapping the topiaries cannot stay as a permanent feature, it would defoliate the base of the topiaries.
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Second, the Poverty Cycle.  The landscape below is not a conceit designed in, it's organically evolved.  A thread the worlds best historic gardens each has, eras of deep poverty, due to wars or disease.  Touring those gardens I learned to design using elements of the Poverty Cycle.  With zero Poverty Cycle, below, the garden would be entire shrub beds in various forms/shapes with intricate pruning, paths, bulbs, annuals, a morass of boredom, expensively maintained.



Pic, above, here.
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Before studying historic gardens across Europe, I thought the gardens, above, seen on TV or in books were a bore-bore-bore.  Amusing to look back at that 'me'.  Those days were the 80's and I certainly had every perennial and gee-gaw.  As Zorba the Greek so well said, The full catastrophe.
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Where are you on the pendulum of the garden, above?  What do you see?  Do you like it?  Does the house intrigue you more than the grounds?  What is the metaphor of this garden, above, to you?  Why is this agrarian landscape better than HOA rules/restrictions subdivision?  Oops, a little book club question section.
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Best part, and proof for this garden, above?  Looks good, above, and would look good at a 1959 3b/1b ranchburger.

Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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A few more from Zorba:

• As I watched the seagulls, I thought: "That's the road to take; find the absolute rhythm and follow it with absolute trust."
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• Tell me what you do with the food you eat, and I'll tell you what you are. Some turn their food into fat and manure, some into work and good humor, and others, I'm told, intoGod.
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• Is it possible to talk by dancing? And yet I dare swear that's how the gods and devils must talk to one another.
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• How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else. And all that is required to feelthat here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.
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• You must sometimes rejoice that the dark forces of destruction are so numerous and invincible: for thus your aim to live almost without hope becomes more heroic and yoursoul acquires a more tragic greatness.
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• In religions which have lost their creative spark, the gods eventually become no more than poetic motifs or ornaments for decorating human solitude and walls.
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• Action, dear inactive master, action: there is no other salvation

    

• The highest point a man can obtain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodness, or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: SacredAwe!

Topiary: Levens Hall & Arne Maynard

Levens Hall, The Lake District, Cumbria, was the first European study garden I visited.  I was on my way to Scotland to study historic gardens.

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Levens Hall is known for many things, especially topiary, below.

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Topiary was not off my radar, entirely, for decades.  I didn't like it. 

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Now, I get topiary.  Better late than 'nevah'.  Proof, my mistakes are never small.

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Large properties, especially, find topiary useful.  Small properties too.

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Accent, focal point, all year effect, easy to maintain, design uses are many.

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Across USA millions of homes retain their PSO's planted by the builder to satisfy mortgage loan requirements with new construction.

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PSO?  Plant Shape Only.

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Plenty of mature USA hollies are ready for topiary.

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From Levens Hall, below, a chart of some of their topiary.  What's not to like?  You get to put your mark on topiary.

Discovered the work of Arne Maynard via the internet.  Have never been to his garden, nor those he has designed.  Soon, soon...

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Knew immediately he was already where I was headed.  Deep simplicity, Nature, house architecture, wit, intelligence, deeper simplicity.  Of course, Levens Hall runs thru the fragrance of Maynard's work.

Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Top pic Levens Hall, bottom pic Arne Maynard.

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The famous topiary garden at Levens Hall was laid out on axis from a bank of windows inside the home, the middle lead.   Not written anywhere, discovered during my tour.  Levens Hall has had a head gardener entering in the garden journal for almost 4 centuries.

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Life is good, have been to Levens Hall 3 times, and Arne Maynard's gardens await.  Oddly, have zero inclination to travel to international gardens at present.  Too important to design gardens and get them in the ground.  

You Must Create Complexity Into Simplicity

Only the tree was here when we began. No gravel road, walled garden, bushes, gate.

How do you create complexity into simplicity?  Expose yourself to the best gardens, burn their DNA into your brain cells.

Christopher Lloyd's , Great Dixter, below, inspired the topiaries in Tara Turf, above.

 Soon we can choose shapes.  Each yew will be allowed to speak.
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My reservoir is deep, understanding Themistocles, "I cannot fiddle, but I can make a great state from a little city."
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Have had the good fortune of meeting Christopher Lloyd in USA, we had lunch and toured several gardens. Met him again in his garden, Great Dixter.  Have no books by Lloyd?  You are not a serious gardener, yet.
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Same garden as previous several posts.