Interesting Times

Indeed, these are interesting times. A recent client had a cracked & buckled asphalt drive.To save money, she was willing to replace it with another asphalt drive.
Interestingly, & true, a new concrete drive was cheaper than asphalt.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Brick apron, above, wasn't installed yet when I was taking pics.

Capabilities

Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, 1716-1783, below. "The castle is enchanting; the view pleased me more than I can express, the river Avon tumbles down a cascade at the foot of it. It is well laid out by one Brown who has set up on a few ideas of Kent...." Walpole, 1751.

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"His (Brown's) style of smooth undulating grass, which would run straight to the house, clumps, belts and scattering of trees and his serpentine lakes formed by invisibly damming small rivers, were a new style within the English landscape, a "gardenless" form of landscape gardening, which swept away almost all the remnants of previous formally patterned styles." Wikipedia Oh my, thought I was copying Sir Edwin Lutyens at Great Dixter, ca. 1900, with this idea !

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"judicious manipulation of its components, adding a tree here or a concealed head of water there. His art attended to the formal potential of ground, water, trees and so gave to English landscape its ideal forms. The difficulty was that less capable imitators and less sophisticated spectators did not see nature perfected... they saw simply what they took to be nature". Richard Bisgrove H.F. du Pont designed his beloved woodland at Winterthur in this manner. You must walk the grounds of Winterthur if you haven't already.

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"Russell Page, who began his career in the Brownian landscape of Longleat but whose own designs have formal structure, accused Brown of "encouraging his wealthy clients to tear out their splendid formal gardens and replace them with his facile compositions of grass, tree clumps and rather shapeless pools and lakes".^[4] Richard Owen Cambridge, the English poet and satirical author, declared that he hoped to die before Brown so that he could "see heaven before it was 'improved'". Wikipedia Russell Page wrote, The Education of a Gardener, order it NOW. Ironically I see Capability Brown's work within Page's work.

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Maximizing simplicities maximizes the capabilities in your landscape.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic taken from Kew Gardens in England. Thank you Wikipedia for the delights about Capability Brown. More about Brown, here.

Copy Landscapes

Resist the temptation to be UNIQUE in your landscape. It will slow you down, and fail. You & your landscape are inherently unique. It's already there. Lipstick-on-a-pig when you 'add' uniqueness.
I fell in love with Susanne Hudson's little cloche's, miniature tools & wood shelves, above.
All year I've been collecting, above/below,
old wood shelves, antique English lead garden pieces & little cloches. Soon, they will be in my new conservatory. Just like Susanne Hudson.

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Poppets, everything in my garden is copied from somewhere. EVERYTHING.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Every effort at uniqueness does not fail, obviously. Don't let me sway you from trying something deep in your passionate soul bursting to get out. Ironically, uniqueness arrives in my garden when I DON'T try.

Sophie's Uptown

The human race is salvageable. Sophie's Uptown is proof. Between appointments I finally made it to Sophie's. (Sophie's Uptown, in Buckhead, 54 Pharr Road, Atl., near Peachtree St.)All the florescent ceiling lites, above/below, have this pic !
Food at Sophie's Uptown is real. Cooked daily. Sandwiches, soups, salads, deserts, casserole of the day, catering. The Homemade Apple Dumplins (sic) are DANGEROUS.
Open for lunch Mon-Sun, 11am-4pm, dinner will soon be added.
Sophie's Uptown, 404-812-0477, info@sophiesuptown.com, is GOOD FOOD.

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Sophie's Uptown donates 25% of all profits to Local Animal Rescue organizations.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Poppets, you must know I'm in love with dogs & cats. Have designed many landscapes for dogs. Have also designed many Memorial Gardens for pets too. Cannot fathom a life without my pets, garden, friends, books, junking...... Sophie's Uptown did not ask me to post this.

Seeing Thru Your Window

Janus, January was named for this god, looks forward & backward. Janus was with me in TEXAS last week. My parents, below, are gorgeous. My sister, below right, came to my parent's home too.
We slept in the same bed, to visit more. She stole my pillow.
My life, below, moved forward while I was gone. A dream come true, my conservatory of new & rescued materials was begun. Only for family would I have done this, missed the start of my conservatory. Ironic, family helping me to see backward in my life last week while starting my house of windows.
"We have an inner window through which we can see the world and though it gets cloudy in life it's our job to wipe it clean." von Donnersmarck

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I'm not always brave on the wiping-it-clean. Poppets, do you know the name of my landscape design business? A Garden View. Clean windows are much better with the moat of grace of a garden.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Artist Harrison Howard

Harrison Howard.

STATEMENT

"The Flower Ladies", as I call them, are a series of whimsical watercolor and gouache paintings, which have grown from a long standing interest in fashion illustration, children's book illustration, and of course flowers. I do not regard them as paintings of fairies, fairy art or fantasy art, but would prefer to think of them as fantasies based on fashion design. They are the product of numerous other influences as well, including many of the things surrounding me in everyday life, and extending to a passion for many areas of the decorative arts, such as the fanciful Chinoiserie designs of the 18th century Frenchman, Jean Pillement. In particular, I would acknowledge the countless other artists through the ages, too numerous too mention here, whose work has electrified my imagination. My pictures are aimed at the fundamental pleasure that almost all of us take in imaginative and quirky ideas. My paintings are for all people, however diverse their backgrounds may be, who share a common delight in art on this level. Harrison Howard

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic from Harrison Howard site. 1 of these would be great. An entire wall? Ooooooooh, yes, better !

Sex, Insult & Designers

Tim Richardson wrote in the Telegraph recently about Landscape Design doyenne Rosemary Verey. Full, stuffed, rich with pugnacious tidbits. He managed a pugilistic slap at the United States, "...enjoy a career "selling" her Englishness to the United States..." Gotta love it!
No less than Sir Roy Strong enters the drama, Rosemary, "...enjoyed japes." and was, "...highly sexed."

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As proof, Richardson mentions, "Details of the affair are recorded in a shoebox of love letters that document their trysts..." Even David Hicks receives a mention.

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Christopher Lloyd is named favorably, & other newer, apparently much better than Rosemary, landscape designers. Looking forward to Googling them this weekend & seeing pics of their work.

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Rosemary Verey, in my (not) humble opinion, wrote the best Landscape Design book, The Garden In Winter. Sir Roy Strong is my favorite (living) Landscape Designer; yes, you want his garden books too.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic of my dreadful-but-fabulous Table Chandelier. A tacky-drama lamp but I adore it. FYI, Sir Roy Strong's garden is called, The Laskett. Can you guess what I named my cat? Yes, Laskett ! Well, Poppets, this post is strongest proof yet of my total Landscape Design NERDINESS.

A Filmmaker's Garden

Italian director & screenwriter Mario Monicelli, 1915-2010, made comedic films. He created a genre, 'Italian-style comedy'. The endings had little comedy. Asked, in 1999, is "any subject off-limits for comedy?"

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"No, if the eye is sensitive enough, all is possible." he replied.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Taken from NYTimes obit yesterday. SHIPMAN sent me the pic when he was in Italy this summer. Monicelli is now in my Netflix que. It's bittersweet adoring bleak beauty, a film genre my mother-in-law opened my eyes to. This is a type of art that feeds my creative muse. Do you actively feed your creative muse?

Do You Mentor?

On my tiny property, below, in a small working-class neighborhood I create myriad garden scenes in denial of time, budget, location. Along with a passion for Garden Design, Providence gave me mentors from the last of an era, the Stoics. Their mentoring comes with a hunger to pass it along. Barbara Allen mentored me. She died yesterday.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic taken with our last snow (Feb.?) from my bathroom window. See the street of houses? Ha, this is what good Garden Design does. Barbara is in every Garden Design I've done, and will do.

Are You Interesting?

From the garden, below, it's obvious I want to know this woman.Her details seduced me before she opened her frontdoor.
Indeed, CHANTEUSE exceeds expectation. Trim, tiny, well-dressed, deep sexy voice, wicked funny, athletic & in her earliest 60's, matriarch, with a true southern accent spewing intellectual bon mots, hardworking lawyer, she knows how to have fun, handle good scotch, & tell her husband, "This is my garden designer, I hired her, you can leave the room." (He did.)
After I said her fence looked stupid, painted white, CHANTEUSE fell in love with me.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Poppets, are you interesting from your garden views?

Still Life: Creating Effortless Beauty With Your Ephemera

Arriving at Pecan Orchard's home/garden a couple of weeks ago, below.Carrying landscape design paraphernalia my goal was to simply unload it from my arms. You know, the chaos of arrival.

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The pic isn't styled but it could be a catalog shot for: the chair, the boots, umbrella, baskets or perhaps a brick manufacturer.

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It would be fun to see a series of pics, taken throughout the year, at Pecan Orchard's iron chair. Without words the story of a family's life.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Poppets, did you notice my fabulous umbrella? My dear girlfriend brought it back from Spain for me. Alas, beloved girlfriend is moving to London at New Years. Proud of her professional successes but it stinks having her move so far.

Landscape Views

"The aim of an artist is not to solve a problem irrefutably, but to make people love life in all its countless, inexhaustible manifestations." Leo Tolstoy The subdivision is tiny, my frontyard minuscule, above & below.

Ideas, field gathered in gardens across Europe, books, & friends gardens.My office ensorceled with a crenellated hedge, above.
View from my garage, above. Every window & door, the same choice; beauty. I didn't realize making a choice for beauty, from all views, would become a moat of grace around life. Affect how I design landscapes, interact with people, gain perspective.

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Choosing beauty is choosing grace.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Helen Mirren is Tolstoy's wife here, loved this movie. Poor PUPPET BARBUDA driving about town, exhausted at the views of homes & gardens with the worst possible choice, keeping the landscape the builder put in. It's not about getting rid of everything and starting over in a landscape. Plants can be moved & bedlines changed. Yes, PUPPET BARBUDA knows this would be a fabulous TV garden show. Using What You Have, & Rescue, Landscape Design !!!