Following Matriarchal Advice

Blessedly I've followed the matriarchs.
I did get caught up, alas, yet happily, in the work of Ryan Gainey/Brooks Garcia/David Bennett McMullin . A trinity of FABULOUS, their work inspired, and I needed to 'go there'.

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Preparing for an open garden (High Museum), the MATRIARCHAL EPIPHANY arrived, "Why copy the gardens of 'those guys' ?"

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Thus arrived LEAF LITTER MULCH.

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By the end of the day, exhausted-bruised-bloody (you know....gardening), I perused my garden & inexplicably began to cry. Big tears. Deep sobs.

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I was seeing the gardens of my MATRIARCHS; they used leaf litter mulch. My grandmothers, long dead, yet in that moment of epiphany, both held me.

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The missing component, LEAF LITTER MULCH, was so simple.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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I took the pic in Ireland at Helen Dillon's garden. In addition to leaf litter mulch matriarchal gardening is: tough plants, proper soil prep, no chemicals, no irrigation system, little expense, little time, little to no turf..........living incredibly busy lives. Mentor, Mary Kistner, began gardening in earnest after her beloved husband died. He didn't believe in ornamental gardening. Amazing, yes? A man would stop a woman from ornamental gardening. Hers is not the only story in this vein. Most are from earlier eras but some aren't. Also learned about proper soil preparation from my matriarchs..........the 'guys' at the Extension Service were wrong. More about that tomorrow.

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Loving the movie, To Sir With Love, Puppet Barbuda honors her trinity of FABULOUS guys. They gave her the MATRIARCHAL EPIPHANY. Hope you have time to visit their links.

Good Looking, And Free, Support

Why buy plant stakes?Sticks are
more attractive & FREE.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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No sticks? Pilfer what your neighbors put out at the street. I do.

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Pics from Rob's garden, Au Coeur du Jardin, in France.

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Puppet Barbuda KNOWS no one reading this has ugly plant supports (costing real $$$) with green plastic ties (costing more $$$). Once, shopping at the Handy Ace Hardware in Tucker, GA I hit the brown twine/jute lottery. As they stocked shelves with product from China its jute twine was tossed aside as trash. Puppet Barbuda was quickly on her knees, gathering her treasure.

Butterflies, Gravel, Fresh Poop

Butterflies, oddly, adore gravel after a rain. Gathering nutrients & moisture.Butterflies adore fresh poop. Again, gathering moisture & minerals.

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Brooke at Velvet & Linen put a potager in her frontyard, above. She also acquired some chickens.

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Increased pollination, the circle of life.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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What good is increased pollination? Increased food production/acre.

Yesterday: Good & Bad

I designed their garden several years ago, yesterday they sent their newest focal point, below.Less than a week ago my guys completed a client's duck house. Yesterday CBS-TV parked
in front of their home. Storms, 2 days earlier took trees down & power was still out.

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The duck house?

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Smashed, gone. Ducks fine.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Cannot wait to meet Shiloh, top pic. Duck house? Will rebuild.

Thomas Jefferson's Scrapbooks

Long thought to be the work of his daughters, researchers, not too long ago, realized scrapbooks at Monticellowere scrapbooks by Thomas Jefferson.

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Fascinating.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Centuries of peoples have 'scrapbooked'. Kept my 'scrapbooking' a semi-secret for decades, as if it were a vice. Something only children do. Now? I think 'scrapbooking' is left brain/right brain stuff. Mine help me navigate. A source of memory, inspiration, creativity, calm, & etc.

Gertrude Jekyll: Munstead Wood

Christopher Lloyd said, "The garden dies when the gardener dies." Gertrude Jekyll's beloved home, Munstead Wood, above.

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Technically correct, but dead.

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I see a garden needing its mistress. Missing her. Aching for her.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic above, Charlotte Wehychan.

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I also see maximum pollinator habitat: canopy/understory trees, walls, groundcovers, high density, low density. When Jekyll designed landscapes was she aware of her interface with pollinator habitat?

David Austin Roses Follows This Rule

Visiting David Austin Roses in England is more than roses. It's good Landscape Design. Fabulous focal points. And worth the effort.My rule for focal points, just-let-it-touch, above.

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Cheap focal points aka terrible-bad-disgusting look best at the dump, or at least engulfed in a vine.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Took the pic, 1 of 100's, at David Austin Roses in England. Was there at peak rose season.

New York Times: A.O. Scott On Landscape

"Idiosyncratic...........sneaky.......overt....cosmic.

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Mundane.......dispiriting.

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Calabria......earthly transit........material transmutation.......care......engrossed.....cinematic prose.......epic.

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Lyrical depth.......all of creation.

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Incursions of modernity are minimal..........ancient.
Freshness......sense of discovery......

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Totem.................tragic........plot......character.....performance.................peasant customs.

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Clarity................

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Wit of a silent-film maestro.............................sustained..........Elegantly staged accident.

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Absurd.

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Rigged..............deftly.............most Newtonian of his farces..........

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Intrinsic preposterousness...

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Philosophical stratagem.

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Accessible and endlessly mysterious........

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If you pay attention....

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Grasp the connections..............................startling.........shocking..............angle of vision.......

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Disparate..........lingering.............

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You have never seen anything like this movie, even though what it shows you has been there all along."

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'You have never seen anything like this GARDEN, even though what it shows you has been there all along.' (My version of A.O. Scott's sentence.)

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How to describe what you've just read? Inspiration via words.

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A.O. Scott is a film reviewer for the New York Times. I read his articles with a pen, circling & underlining phrases & words. Later, I put his words & phrases into my journal, written by hand. Seeing his words/phrases I see gardens. Stories of gardens.

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The best gardens contain all of A.O. Scott's words/phrases.

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Gardens are where all resides. Metaphors for living. A moat of grace.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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My paternal grandmother played the newspaper on the piano. Her brain translated words/letters into notes. I translate stories into gardens. Forms of synesthesia?

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I took the pic in France, a private garden.

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A.O. Scott words from his recent NYTimes article, Eternal Complexities Of the Very Simple Life.

How To Place Beautiful Things

My beautiful pot on plinth, below, placed on axis with the middle window pane of my bay window at the drawing room. Thus sited, it's part of my drawing room. Not separate.How to place, below, a beautiful summer house?
On axis with a main pair of windows from the home, of course !

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Oops. No pic of the view seen while in the summerhouse above. Ha, must get back to the Cotswolds for it.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Top pic in my sweet garden, in the Bay Terrace, aka front yard. I took the bottom pic in the Cotswolds at Sir Hardy Amies garden.

How To Choose Flooring

Landscape Design is a series of layers. After creating your ceilings & walls (previous 2 posts), create your Flooring. Shade, grass won't grow? Choose checkerboard, below, with shade loving groundcover.Forget STUPID lawn. Choose Tara Turf, below. A mix of what the wind blows in, the birds drop, clover, dwarf bulbs, herbs, spreading groundcovers & etc. Tara Turf is meadow made formal with mowing heights.
Want million dollar flooring for $20/ton? Choose gravel, below. Zero mowing, lovely crunch.

Choose flooring, below, to emphasize formal, informal. If this were a woodland design the flagstone would be removed & woodchips used. (1 of 3 gates, below, at the front of my garden.)
Mother Nature, below, laughed at my efforts, sprinkling a flagstone path with her petals.
River stones, glacial stones, laid in patterns for paths &
terraces. Rough laid stones, above, contrasting nicely with smooth stone folly & pair of obelisks.

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Wood floor inside with antique oriental rug? Same concept in the landscape, above:

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stone path=wood floor

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plants=antique oriental rug. (Adore using my engineering degree in this manner! You do realize you are entirely within my landscape design equation at the moment?)

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Design outside is the same as design inside.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Top pic I took in Susanne Hudson's garden, 2nd pic I took at Sissinghurst, 3rd pic I took in the Cotswolds, 4-5 pics in my sweet garden, 6th pic I took in Sir Hardy Amies garden not far from the 3rd pic. This is hilarious, I don't remember anything. These pics? Remember taking each of them.

The Walls Of Your Rooms

Landscapes ARE architecture. Begin creating architecture in the landscape with ceilings, yesterday's post, then walls. (My Tea Olive Terrace, below, along the side of my home.)Landscape walls can be the side of your home, above, or all plantings, below. (Wall, below, is mine & hides the neighborhood from my tender sensibilities. What me not living in the Cotswolds?)
Espaliered woody shrubs & vines dramatize the walls of a home, fence, dependency & etc., below. (My Bay Terrace, below.)
Using wit, below, Susanne Hudson swags a window. Pow, Shazam, baby.
With more wit, intellect, & drama she created a garden room, raised on a dais (aka deck, but dais is ever so much nicer, yes?),
with old church windows.
Landscape Design: create walls.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Slow down, peruse again, Landscape Design IS this easy. Look at the 2nd pic again. Notice how much sky I own because of my walls? You would CRINGE knowing how many houses along the ubiquitous subdivision cul-de-sac lane (aka street) my garden obliterates in that 2nd pic. Who knew? Gardens are offense & defense. A moat of grace around home & life.

Landscape Design Is Architecture: Ceilings

When I begin a Landscape Design I create ceilings: sky, trees, arbors. Within a landscape design a cone shaped plant should be in each garden room, drawing eyes to the sky. My tiny property lives as large as the meadow/pole barn, above, I own the sky, and use it, framed by trees, as ceilings to my garden rooms. Landscape design upon acreage is the same for a postage stamp.
Sir Hardy Amies, above, uses sky, canopy/understory trees, cone shaped summerhouse, and the wit of cone shaped obelisks with balled toppers.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara