Princess Sturdza & Making Shade

Princess Sturdza's home, Le Vasterival, and garden in France were a hilarious welcome.  She was waiting for us standing on a tree stump holding a long sharp stick.  Describing the treasures awaiting we were also told 'never' to set foot in one of her beds.  Within the hour a silly German man leaned forward to ask her a question.  As quickly as his evil-offending-foot tapped her bed she whacked it with the stick.  Hard.

 We arrived, above, I still see her & hear the crunch of gravel.
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Last nite was my SHADE lecture.  Instead of the ubiquitous pics & ridiculous focus on shade plants blah-blah-ad nauseum bore.  I focused on making shade where desired, and the pruning away of shade where it's too thick.  

Like the Princess my home leads with a bay window, above.  

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It's tiny, faces full sun, a street & several neighbors.  A trinity of unpleasantness easily landscape designed into a charming Bay Terrace garden with gravel, shade, focal point, seating & privacy from the neighborhood view.    

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Who's the Princess?

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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara

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Top pic from internet, my Le Vasterival pics are still slides.  Bottom pic my bay window yesterday.  A great place to read, use wireless, lunch/dinner, journal, enjoy the birds-blooms-filtered lite.

Front Door Ideas

Puppet Barbuda's wicked eye.  

Boxwood disgracefully pruned into helmet hair, and wider at the top creating leggy hags with pockets of space at the bottom.
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Coiled hose lingering for pride of place.
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Blocks of wood anchoring exterior lights? Oh dear, at least stain them the color of the siding.

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The delight of the sweet round doormat.   A great touch.

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Charming vernacular baskets over the front door.

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Adore the shutters open in welcome.

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Why mulch when a groundcover is less maintenance & more lush?

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Elegantly shabby seeing money stretched.  The steps/rails are solidly good and tell a story.  Windows are at a crossroads of rotting but surviving with storm windows attached. 

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The window box & front door paint color tell Puppet Barbuda she wants inside this sweet cottage.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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A Cousin Cathy pic from Nantucket this summer.  This cottage reminds me of Aunt Tillie in her 80's, widowed & easily taking care of her brick cottage & garden.  Plenty of money but not one red cent to replace the furnace.  Smiling with a glint in her eye, "Let the next owner pay for it!"  Blessedly several of her antiques are now in my home & garden.  

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Who is Puppet Barbuda?  Landscape Design Critic of course.  

Brooke Astor Library

French doors into the garden and you must slip between the chair & table to get there.

Sweet, sitting at the desk with a French door open on an early summer day, birds chirping.  I see the lamp on as I come in from the garden at the gloaming.  Of course turn the yellow chair slightly for a better view of the garden while still seeing across the library.  Book in hand, cat in lap.
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This room had me at hello.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pic via Habitually Chic.  It's Brooke Astor's library at Holly Hill.  Saw it somewhere else & it 'stuck' then in the memory bank.  A fabulous garden is IMPLIED with this room.  Miss the days of seeing her mentioned in the lifestyle section of NYT.

Built To Prosper

 

"In Pennsylvania we find the first pre-conceived garden schemes, William Penn directed the commissioners who settled the colony in 1682 to see that every house "be placed if the Person pleases, in ye middle of its place as to the breadth way of it, so that there may be grounds on each side, for Gardens, or Orchards, or fields, yt it may be a greene Country towne, wch will never be burnt and will allways be wholesome."  Richardson Wright

 

 

How many decades now have our homes been laid out for the convenience of getting into a car and traveling to the nearest strip mall?  Developments approved for their tax base (and the developers pocket)  not what the roads, schools, water, sewage, police, etc can handle.
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Garden & Be Well,        XO Tara
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Pic le Jardin Blanc.  Built by a doctor at the end of the Civil War in Douglasville, GA   

Gravel To The Foundation

 

What is the incessant USA love affair with foundation plantings about? 

Bushes are either leggy hags or green meatballs.
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Ugly, requires maintenance, depreciates the value of a home.
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Garden & Be Well,         XO Tara
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Adore the gravel solution, above.  Pic from Deborah Silver who owns Detroit Garden Works.
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I left USA for Europe to study gardens once horticulture degree was firmly in hand.  Was taught how to be a guy with a truck mow-blow-go.  Worse, they taught  how to landscape design from the street looking at the house.  Europe was a grand teacher.  Will never forget the first time I saw gravel to the house foundation.  GOT IT.  Love moments of epiphany.

Choose A Theme

The 1945 Florida room with 3 walls of jalousie windows

 will be decorated in blue & white.  Using Bunny Williams style.

 Like the garden, the room has a theme.

Until the theme was chosen the room was stuck.  Now, hunting/gathering are easy.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pair, pics above, custom down 18" square pillows found at my favorite junking haunt, $6.75 ea.    

Science: Tree Power vs. Solar Power

Trees increase pollinator habitat increasing yield on crops, decrease HVAC bills, increase property value.

 

 Fruit trees feed wildlife & people.  Evergreen trees to block winter winds.

Trees are a known resource to improve health. 

In the eastern USA what would happen if the average front lawn were replaced with the design, below?  In addition to the benefits listed, no weekly lawn mowing, no watering once established, 2-4 x's/year maintenance needed.

Where is the science & math on this simple solution?
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Have done this design numerous times thru the decades for clients wanting low maintenance.
Garden & Be Well,             XO Tara
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Deciduous trees, evergreen trees, canopy trees, understory trees.
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Pics Architect Design.  Small house living large with its garden.

Immigrant Labor

For my Landscape Designs to become fabulous gardens there are many to be named a prophet-without-honor.

 

 This week we lost one at a wholesale tree nursery.  He was bush hogging with a tractor.  It turned over & the mower hit him.  Hours passed before this hardworking man was found.  A wife & children are left behind.

Most of the men making my career possible are immigrants.  Their laboring, striving, leaving home/country, attitude, humble me.
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Garden & Be Well,              XO Tara
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Went to a lecture luncheon last month at DK Gallery, Gina Hurry is the artist, above.

Lamp in the Landscape

 

Women who have these lamps, I thought as a child, are wacko.  Ticky-tacky gold leaf, gaudy.

Was there an exact date I grew up to be 'wacko'?
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Even in the afternoon I can see the sparkly light bulbs from the house, and they make me happy.  More stupid, about this lamp was its price.  Found at my favorite Antique shop I waited several visits for its mark down.  Not.  I made an offer & you see my trophy!

French Garden

 

In France, below.

 I count this, below, one of my greatest joys.

 Because in this garden, above & below,

You aren't in France anymore.  You're in my garden, Stone Mountain, GA, USA.  In a subdivision of tiny lots.  Without my garden, bottom 2 pics, I would see neighbor's houses-driveways-air/conditioner alleys etc...
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In my garden, I am free to be where ever I want to be.  Any era.
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Pictures don't lie.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Top pic Our French Garden.  Bottom pics my sweet garden.

A View of Central Park

Atop the Metropolitan Museum, below,

 

 an art installation I visited this summer. 

 With its views of Central Park.  How I wish I could sleep in its various pods.

I imagine its views in different seasons & weather.  And, in my imagination, I have a telescope.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Oddly, these thoughts only arrived once I got home.  Yes, this artist did their work on me !

Arne Maynard

Arne Maynard gardens simply.

 

 He listens to the soul of a site.

 He beckons in the language of formality or raw Providence.

 Lush simplicity.  There is no age only the ages.

 A fierce love of landscape is unafraid to look 'not done'. 

 A man willing to copy from the past.

Clothing a home, below.

A drive could have been put in, below.  Without, it's timeless.  Restraint.  Voluptuous.

Arne Maynard.  A light touch with a sure mission.
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Garden & Be Well,                XO Tara
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Pics via Arne Maynard.