How to Have Beautiful Easy Winter Pots in Your Garden

 The identity I brought to my garden is not the one my garden wanted.  Creating what the garden desires is slow joyful work.  Somewhere along the way my garden brought into me, with a fullness of intent, my identity.

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Amusing to remember that earlier time, thinking I was the potter.

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Humbled at a skill taking me from being the potter, to being the clay.  Thankful for the journey, blessed by the lesson.

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Certainly I knew potted plants.  Everywhere to see.  Follow their methods with tweeks of intent and what's available.

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Decades of recreating those type pots.  No more.  A few years ago I discovered Deborah Silver's pots.  Deborah's heart & eye those of a florist.  Hilarious how obvious her art.  That's the magic.  Simple.  Deborah put florist and garden together, in her pots.  More, she does it in horrendous weather, bitter winters, strong winds.     

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Deborah's pots, below, copy how she creates them, and they're yours forevermore.  Each pot you create, your heart and hands, and what's available.

  

Pot plantings, above/below, are cut greenery, fake stems, real stems.  Hope pics/words have already expanded your horizons.  Well beyond my own. 

 

 "Sometimes it takes darkness & the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you."  David Whyte.

   

Deborah's pics are your visual curriculum, all above/below.  Adore visual curricula, from childhood.

  

Without words my best conversations are in the garden.  Life abounds where it is pastured.  My garden pastures my body, my soul.  I haven't the knowledge or wisdom from within to gain what my garden provides, nurturing & ripe.

 

 More fake and real greenery, above/below.

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"Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness."  Alain de Bottom.  Art is a tool.  Without art we live in the depths of unwisdom.  

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Oh my the horror of a garden labeled, mundane, or ubiquitous.  This is your garden to fill.  

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Full post from Deborah Silver, here, about putting together Winter Garden Pots.

  

"The quality of her dreaming, its interior abstraction, is exquisite.  Its wonder lies in how closed its shutters are to any mundane world."  Renee Gladman.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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For your continued prayers I thank you.  Beloved has more liver cancer tumors.  Back to the hospital for full anesthesia, again again again, this year.  This time in December.  Aside from the macro drama, Beloved rises each day and goes to work.  In the micro we speak of it little.  Choosing our lives instead.  

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This time, alert siren heard differently.  Two short conversations, life without blinders.  We go to sleep, I await his steady breathing.  I go into the living room.  To cry.  To pray.  It passes, I go back to bed.

How to Stage Small Potted Plants With Your 'Sacred Fire'

In 1781, Thomas Jefferson wrote,

"Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth."

Thomas Jefferson
Quote, from, Here.
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Hadn't seen this particular quote, above, until today.  I think we're all born with that 'sacred fire', a few in any given century, keep & stoke that 'sacred fire'.  You are one, reading this far.
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Jefferson's belief, above, quite dangerous, still, to world governments.  (Why think small?)  Taking the privilege of toiling, poyeema, with the Earth, provides more than food for the body.  Working with the soil, feeds epiphanies to the soul.  Each era garners this truth; we each have the gift of inalienable rights, from Providence.
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Filthy lucre is not part of this transaction.  Free to all; for the taking.  Tasha Tudor signed off many of her letters with a part of this 'sacred fire', Take Joy.  She knew, Joy is always present.  It's our job to 'take'.
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Pic, above, here.
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Painted, above, by Rembrandt Peal, ca. 1801, there is no loss of desire, for this geranium, and its pot, ca. 2020.  Why is that?  I must have both.  Oddly, the geranium, tall, does not look staked.  How is it not weeping over?  Ironically, the pot looks artisan made, ca. 2020.  How I want to know the pot by touch, the geranium too.  What is the fragrance of this geranium?  May I lightly touch its leaves, and their scent remains on my hands?
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What is their soil mix, how does it smell?
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Pic, above, here.
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What happens without 'sacred fire' ?  This, at a museum, above.  (Macro thoughts about 'sacred fire' in the opening, taking it to micro thoughts for the closing.  Sacred-fire-cares-not, large/small, it burns bright, in love.)
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No soul, above, with Jefferson's 'sacred fire' to make the pots/flowers a setting for the art on the wall.  Somewhere along the way to the museum, these poor bulbs were smashed sideways.  Grocery stores are better at display.
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Further, what's with those sticks/string, above ?
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Sticks should be dark twigs from tree or shrub, and string a dark jute twine.  Hyacinths don't need staking, and if staking is done, it should be created with as much 'sacred fire' as the paintings were created, and hung, on the wall.
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Are those pots, above, set bare on the table?
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Pots could be placed on terra cotta saucers, or a pair of Chinese plates, from the museum collections, creating a scene to partake with the art on the wall.  They are definitely not positioned properly.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO T
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One of my mentor's, Mary Kistner, had her memorial service at a museum.  It was standing room only.  An artist, several mediums, Mary had a special talent for hanging/displaying other artists work, for many museums across USA.  Hence my thinking museum art displays are quite-a-thing.
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How quickly did you realize the potted flowers had been smashed in a mishap?  Before, or after, you looked in amazed curiosity at the sticks/string?  Did neither register, only part?  Now that it's pointed out, do you realize why it is important to point out?  "...men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely as if gardening were the greater perfection."  Alexander Pope, ca. 17th century.
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How I would love to see what Mary would do with this art display, above.
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Mary was about 4 decades older than me, and from first meeting I was moth to her Sacred Flame. 

How Florists Simplify Front Door Garden Design

Pinterest's myriad international Florist Front Door pics showcase, unintentionally, residential front door Garden Design at its greatest impact with smallest input using potted plants, colors, textures, found items, throughout all seasons.  Staging, change by the month, season, day, your choice.  If you're wanting live plants.
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How they 'plinth' their displays, the found items, of great interest. 
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Colors chosen, flow from inside to outside.  Everything must be easy to tote.
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Each Florist, saying, "This is my honey, you are the bee."  Each Florist playing Nina Simone, "I want some sugar in my bowl."


Pic, above, here.
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Pic, above, here.
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Quote, above, doesn't apply to copying Garden Design ideas.  Why?  Every site, every plant is unique.  Further, unique by the moment throughout each day, year, century, region. 
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However, you must make sure you're copying Garden Design from the good, and, enduring.  Enduring?  I prefer centuries, at a minimum. 
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Pic, above, here.
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Gardening...."can be a pretty desperate endeavor, because it is about some of our deepest needs, our need to be visible, to be heard, our need to make sense of our lives, to wake up and grow and belong."  Anne Lamott
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It's simply this; a few potted plants at the front door, to take it back, making our statement in reply to Bertrand Russell's moan, "...we've come to measure our progress by our 'separation from the life of Earth.' "  Maria Popova
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There is John Muir's Wilderness, and there is our own.  At the front door, "We are gardening the wilderness."  Jon Mooallem.  Take the metaphor.  It's taken for you, already, in your name.  Whether you think so, or not.
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We're all born into, "a puppeteer role in the theater of organic life.", Mooallem.  Delightful, we each get to choose our puppet's role. 
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Garden & Be Well,    XOT
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Not uncommon, reading, to change a word, taking the entire sentence to Gardens.  From, above, Anne Lamott, was originally, "Writing can be a pretty desperate endeavor, because it is about some of our deepest needs, our need to be visible, to be hear, our need to make sense of our lives, to wake up and grow and belong."
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Do you do this too while reading?  Then putting it into your Common Place books?  Do you have Common Place books?  Mine are escalating.  Didn't see it coming. 

Bringing Potted Plants Inside: Not Your Mother's Advice

Months, no rain, weeks, 100f, without a goodbye, cold.
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Quickly, pots luxuriating all summer outside, now inside.
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No drama, no worries where those pots would be placed.
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Garden Design Course, in a photo, below.
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Got the memo first seeing this table/pots.  And a new Garden Design Rule.  You must have a pretty table, inside, to be ruined with potted plants.
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Beloved, with great concern, "You're damaging the table."   Me, with a smile from the heart, "I know."
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Of course I made sure to use a table I had bought at a thrift store, solid mahogany, dropleaf, gateleg, ca. 1940's.
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Pic, above, here.
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Pic, above, here.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO T
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So, do you already have a table to ruin, or heading to thrift store today?
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Aside from childish glee in setting pots to table inside, humbled by the layer of beauty and joy they bring to what had already been thought a pretty room.  Whoa, missed a layer?  Bigly.   

Easiest Pot Watering

Part of my mission statement, looking out my windows, ".......Oh WOW.........."  Not, "I must go get that done."
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Wouldn't want to water these pots, below.  Could never leave town.
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Drip irrigation.  Nor do I want to see drip irrigation tubing.  Easy, thread the tubing up the pots, from the bottom drain hole. 
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If the pots are by the pool, line the pot with landscape fabric, ahead of placing soil in the pot.  Less staining on the hardscape.


Pic, above, here.
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At the front end of gardening, these gardens, above, were ridiculous, awful & boring, knew it for sure.
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Now, these gardens, above, are smart, modern, playful, even better, useful upon myriad layers.
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Perhaps you already knew, this is Valentino's garden, above.  Smart man, nothing in the garden is original, instead, centuries old. 
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Not in your budget, above?  Don't fall for that thinking.  Too small.
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Canopy, understory, floors, & pots arrive at all price points, free to extravagant.
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Amusing, remembering my first thoughts, years, about these gardens, above.  Who was that person?
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"Talent hits a target others can’t hit. Genius hits a target others can’t even see."
– Schopenhauer

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Genius, above, was designed by truly great minds, Valentino saw it, finally, I saw it.  Hope you do too.  If you don't, at least hang on to the genius of others, maybe you'll see it in time.

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Then arrives another layer of genius.  And one of the first Garden Design principles.  COPY .
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT

Outdoor Pots in Winter: New, FUN, Florist Arena

It's rare someone changes my mind, and getting their result includes 'more' money, time, effort. 
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Deborah Silver is the florist of planting outdoor pots.   She changed my mind. 
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Prior to Deborah I was content to not plant my pots, just as the Queen, and Queen Mother, did not plant their pots.  Once I saw their royal pots I knew, A Pot Must Be So Wonderful It Can Remain Empty.  Dubbed, The Queen's Pot.
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Then comes Deborah.  Queen of Pots, 2.0 . 


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More.  Worse?  Deborah makes me want to plant my pots during an 'off' season, fall.
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More than 'pretty', Deborah's pots share her exuberance for life, in each permutation.
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For years she's shared her seasonal pots, and how to create them.
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These pots, all above/below, use the shape of the pot, with the shape of their 'arrangements'.  Creating a new florist arena.
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By now, your eye, studying Deborah's pots, has already noted, I'm sure, it's not specific plants she uses, but their shapes, colors, and contrasts to each other, along with scale, form, flow.
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Perhaps the best ingredient in all of the pots, above/below, is the element of pure FUN.
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Why are Deborah's pots so incredible?  At their core, is a transcendence.
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My eyes are already calibrated to hunting/gathering phase for pot planting.  Of course my eyes are calibrated to Deborah's instructions. 
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Thought you would like to have the same fun too.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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More fall pots from Deborah Silver, here.
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Fall pots Deborah Silver's team made, to her specifications, with their own freedom, here.
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No, this is not a sponsored post !

A (BETTER) New Way: Outdoor Container Plantings

Traditional container gardening met Deborah Silver, Dirt Simple.  In an act of agape love, traditional container gardens said, Bring it On !!  It was time.  Cliche, trite, uninspired one of many trinities describing traditional container gardens.
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With that agape love, and great skill, Deborah looked at traditional container gardens with a floral designers eye.  The entire silhouette from bottom of pot, sides of pot, rim of pot, plantings at pot rim, how the plantings taper upward away from the pot and the scale of width and height to pot, plinth, plantings, house, garden, sky.  Within the silhouette Deborah had a new vision for specific plantings, their texture, color, form, no holds barred.
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Once I saw Deborah's container plantings, it was immediate love.  With immediate passing of old ways.



At change of seasons I always head to Deborah Silver's blog, wanting to see her latest planting/pot arrangements.  Years of this, never disappointed.



In Deborah's latest post she refers to her tallest container planting layer as, Farmed Twigs.  Big day, learning a new gardening term.



Love a new style not needing a 'class'.  See it, do it.



Notice the plinths Deborah chooses for her pots.  Not merely getting the pots to the right height, they accentuate the silhouette.
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Deborah's pots aren't container gardening, but arrangements, changing the container gardening genre.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Agape love?  I bow down to Deborah's skill, and give great good thanks.  Seems so simple seeing her work, yet, no one else thought of it in several centuries.
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All pics from Deborah's website via Pinterest.

How to Take Charge of Your Flowering Containers

Give the Button Top pot a go this year.
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No need to go fancy a simple holly will suffice.  Perhaps a groundcover conifer, pruned into the Button Top.
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Why are Button Top pots rare?
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Not into the Button Top?  Rocket Top?  Square Top?  Square With a Button....  Play.
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This garden, below, a Garden Design course in a single photo.
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Flow, canopy, understory, groundcovers, walls, entry ways, color all year, low maintenance, insect/disease resistant, deer proof, drought proof, maximum pollinator habitat, contrasting textures, contrasting colors, focal points, seasonal focal points. 



Pic, above, here.
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Wish I could swoop this pair to my garden.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T

Pot Narratives

Choosing pots for your garden, choose pots fabulous empty.  Another aid in choosing a pot, ask yourself, "Is this pot so wonderful it will be fought over at my estate sale?"
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Within threads of choosing pots choose for color too.
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This pot, doesn't need to be planted, will look marvelous empty.
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Perhaps the pot planting, below, is a 10" plastic pot sold as a hanging basket, with the hanger clipped off.


Pic, above, here.
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Get your pots at the right height.  Use a plinth, above. 
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This pot is doing heavy lifting in the Garden Design realm.  Did you notice already?  More than merely a focal point for this photograph.  This pot, above, is a focal point from more than a single direction. 
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The more axis a focal point has, the better the focal point.
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See it, do it.
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Funny how much narrative the Garden Design realm performs.  Seems so easy at the front end.  Until someone points out your focal point needs a plinth, and multiple axis.  In addition to that estate sale question.
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See it, do it?  Easy?  Requires that Johnny Cash bit, Meditate-on-it.
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Garden & Be Well,  XOT
 

In Praise: Galvanized Buckets

In praise of galvanized buckets, tubs, pails, garbage cans.  Myriad sizes, no cracking, better looking as they age, relatively easy to find, flow with every house color, light weight, handles for carrying, good price points, stack easily for storage.
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Hammer, nail, easy tools to put holes in the bottom.


Pic, above, here.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Tabled Pot Cluster: Simple Beauty

Always a good day, learning something new.  Pot cluster in terra cotta drew my eye, then saw the scalloped metal trays to catch water.  They seem to be from the kitchen, a tart tin?
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Where I would like to place a table top pot cluster, front porch or back deck, both have same issue.  Living rural, winds across pastures are a 'thing'.


Pic, above, here.

Great table for a pot cluster, below.  Learned long ago how to keep the wood from rotting.  Do you already know too?  Brush boiled linseed oil on it once a year.  Once Beloved has his pole barn built, I take ownership of a delightful shed with double, large lean-to tin roofs, one facing east, the other west.  Each side will have a pot cluster on a table, with a rolling barn door built of conservatory windows, blocking pasture winds.  Toad of Toad Hall was never more joyful in an adventure, or planning in his garden, than I, and this little shed.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Pic, above, here.
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One table in my garden, a harvest table made of historic tobacco barn wood, receiving fierce winds, I will use large pots, above.  And, in the category of living a simple life with a fabulous garden I know exactly what choice morsels to plant in them.
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Big impact, little input.  Every layer of my garden, its full narrative, has rent to pay.  Don't pay the rent, you're gone.  What's the rent?  It must make me happy.  Needy for attention, not beautiful, don't tell a story, too much down time, poof, voila, gone-gone.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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“Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.” 
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Classic Button Top

Lush, easy, pretty all year.  The classic button top, below.


Pic, above, here.

Now, when you see, below, you'll think, Classic button top would be better.

 
Pic, above, here.

Of course my favorite pot, The Queen's Pot, a pot so incredible, below, it can remain empty and still be gorgeous, never fails either.

 
Pic, above, here.

Then there is the Furlow Gatewood pot, below.  This man sailed a thousand ships !


Pic, above, here.

Lastly, there are the pots of Deborah Silver, creator of the florist shape.

 

Pics, above/below, here.



She's known for lighting them too, above.
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All, good choices, none the tired, shag carpet, avocado green, stale pots I was taught to plant in college.  So bad, they shall not be represented here, yet I see them still, proudly touting an era past its prime.  Doing that style now, for me, is jet stupid.  "If stupid could fly, you'd be a jet."  Love this little quote, great way to detach, remembering it, once I've done something stupid, again.  Jet stupid is difficult to eradicate.  It's Anne of Green Gables, I may do something wrong but never the same wrong thing twice.  With age, it's confounding what jet stupid whips up at times.
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Speaking about her sister, the wildly successful Nora Ephron, "Delia Ephron sounded one cautionary note on the subject of her sister's expertise in all matters large and small.  "Ten percent of the time, Nora's wrong." she said, "and you never know what the 10% is and it's really scary -- you know, ' Could this be it ? '
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T

Pot Cluster Double Axis

Moving backward thru these blog pages you'll discover several posts dedicated to the Pot Cluster.  Studying historic gardens across Europe for decades, this American was smitten by the Pot Cluster.  Often at a front door, often at a back door, often sprinkled somewhere in the garden.  Pot Cluster, I got the memo.
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There is a common thread with Pot Clusters, they are classic or interesting pots, with a choice array of plantings.  Occasionally the Pot Cluster is on a plinth, aka table.
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Whether studying in a historic garden attached to a modest cottage or 2nd3rd5th10th... home/castle of a monarch, there you'll find the Pot Cluster.
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What else to call it?  What would you name it?  Me?  The Pot Cluster.
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Last weekend, Cote de Texas sent me a personalized post, seemed that way anyway.  Within, she posted a double axis with a Pot Cluster, and didn't even know it.
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I adore a Garden Design class in a single photo.  Pot Cluster Garden Design class, below.  More, the home, below, is huge-historic, and the garden space, minuscule.  More than a Pot Cluster Garden Design Class you are also taking a lesson in creating a lush garden in a small amount of space.  How many layers do you see, creating a lush garden in a tiny realm?  Name those layers, describe them in winter.
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If you take a garden tour in Europe always pay extra for the tea/scones.  Most often, served inside.  A Garden Design study is nothing without seeing inside the house, discovering the axis into the garden, site lines, usage for interior, and exterior.  Flow must be entirely around a garden, and from house to garden, and garden to house.  Effortless, beautiful, seamless, no matter the necessities of hvac, water/hoses, etc....
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Enough, let's go inside.



Notice the lamp inside, above?  Same lamp, below.



Different time of day, below, and the lamp staged differently.



Prepared for a dinner party, below, sofa removed and table on axis with French doors into garden.




Interior & exterior of this home are a Garden Design class of Vanishing Threshold.
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No matter your price point, this is your Garden Design class.
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A friend I met at church lived in a welfare apartment.  She is a gardener.  98% found plants/pots/furnishings on her 2nd story balcony.  I had a blast designing her balcony with what she had, using every Garden Design layer used in the home, above.  Rearranged a few things inside too.
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That's the thing with me, I don't except the excuse, 'I don't have the money......'.  My story is backwards in postings, if you know a bit you know I did it without money.
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Excuse the vulgarity, mentioning money.  Perhaps it's because I remember well, in the 80's after college when my gardening began, and the Smith/Hawken garden catalogs arrived in the mailbox, I assumed those beautiful gardens were not for the likes of me, they were shot in gorgeous estates blah-blah how ridiculous those thoughts.  They slowed me down, and I don't want anyone else to be slowed by that, I've proven the money thing to be wrong.
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There's another thing the garden does for the house, above.  Will show it in next post.  Do you already know what it is, and in shock I've been able to refrain from putting it in this post?
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T  
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Why are there so few good gardens?  Why is it so difficult to create our own beautiful garden, at the front end?  Several layers, at the beginning.  Ignorance, we don't have the knowledge.  After beginning with ignorance we enter the phase of ineptitude.  Knowledge gained but applied incorrectly, typically using a fragment to expound the whole, with a strong bias towards understanding the map but not the territory.  

Masters Class: Adding Subsidiary Focal Points to a Focal Point

Focal points in your garden must be so wonderful they are fought over at your estate sale.
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One focal point per garden room, subsidiary focal points allowed.
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Pots in your garden must be so marvelous they never have to be planted.
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Tara's Trinity of focal points, above.
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The best focal points are placed on axis seen from myriad directions, and better, if each of those axis is not visible from the others.
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Focal points must have a focal point view in their opposite direction.
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No matter the slope of your land, focal points must be level.
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You must know these focal point tips within your DNA.
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A delight, below, seeing this pot recently.  Pretty all year, even when the herbacious plantings are dormant.
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What did you think, first seeing the pot, below?  Did the plantings, and their year-round essence enter into contemplation?


Pic, above, here.

Moving on. More details about siting and living with a focal point.  Contemplating a single focal point's effect upon your life, a Providential gift, using my focal point, below.
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Up front, seeing the urn & plinth, below, at a wholesale nursery, I was there buying items for a job, not to get myself a pot/plinth.  After making the purchase for the client job, in a hurry, my feet moved me over to the pot/plinth, you knew they would.  My DNA knew more than my lizard brain which kept saying, You're in a hurry, no time for this, and certainly no money.
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Wholesale pot/plinth were expensive, and wildly heavy.  Had 4 men put it into my pick-up truck.
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Into my garden, below, direct axis from the large bay window fronting my home, my previous 30 year home.



With the urn/plinth at my back, below, this is the view into that bay window.  Now you're entering the realm of Living with your focal point.  Not merely having your focal point.  Huge difference.  Huge.



Inside the bay window, below.  Living more deeply with the pot/plinth, having meals at the table, bringing my laptop to the table and working, putting together more journal pages at this table.



With the focal point urn/plinth at my back, below, turned to a different axis view, a subsidiary focal point.  Ironically a subsidiary focal point, within a subsidiary focal point.  Go me !  Know what I am talking about here?  Hope so.  The blooms of wisteria 'Amethyst Falls' are owning the day, once finished the dovecote recovers its dominance.



Turning to another axis, below, with the urn/plinth at my back, is another subsidiary focal point.  A planting designed to greet me as I enter/leave my driveway.



Another axis view, below, with the urn/plinth at my back, Laura watching me, totally acting as if I'm not there.



Another axis view, below, with the urn/plinth at my back.  This view another subsidiary focal point within a subsidiary focal point.  Who can deny the Chinese snowball is dominant?  After flowering the pair of adirondack chairs take their rightful place as subsidiary focal point.  And, destination.  When the snows of spring are this pretty, not about to walk to the chairs, harming the petals on the ground, or sit in the chairs, harming the petals in the chair.  Instead, swimming for days in the intoxicating beauty of the petals.


Bottom 7 pictures, shot in my garden.
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More fabulousity with this urn/plinth, above, the house is at the street with 7 neighbor's homes crowding in.  Do you see them?  Do they exist?  Not in my realm.
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This is garden design as Garden Design, capitals for the same reason as using it with Providence.
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Creating a focal point with the Garden Design 'rules' above creates Sacred space.  A moat of grace around your home, and life.
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Today, and for the past 14 months, my urn/plinth have been lying in the materials yard, on their side on a pallet, awaiting placement in our ca. 1900 American farmhouse.  Clearing invasives, renovating garden sheds, building new outbuildings, grading, drilling a well, renovations to the house, have all come ahead of starting the Garden.  Before moving I tried to tell Beloved what my Garden meant to me.  No words existed.  I have those words now, having been without my Garden for so long.  My Garden was my best Friend, unconditional love.
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Missing my Friend.
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Today, I'll do something I've only done 3-4x's.  I discovered it by accident, at present it's the most potent feel good drug I know.  I will sit in my materials yard for lunch, with accoutrements from my previous garden, about 10 pallets, Friends awaiting placement in my new Garden.  Sacred made Palpable.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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At the opposite of creating a Sacred space, I was on the phone yesterday with a client who had to remove an odd/ugly covered porch addition the previous homeowner had added.  More than ugly, more than unusable, the space felt 'evil'.  Didn't want to be in it or walk thru it to get to the back yard, or even see it.  The owner felt it, and her friend, a client who referred me, felt it too.  The 'evil' room is  now gone, a new space built, with subsidiary gifts.  All the 'evil'?  Gone !