Using Color Restraint with Intensity

Intense restraint and another example of the color trinity green-brown-white.

Restraint so intense the terrace has become a proscenium for guests.
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Subtlety so rich the bluestone & granite become focal points.
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Humbling execution.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic Wendy Posard and Associates.  Definite teamwork between architect & owners.
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2 Tara Dillard questions a patio must answer, 'Is this patio so fabulous I must see inside the house?', 'Is this patio so incredible I must see the garden?'.  Yes & yes.

Simple Manipulations: How Many Do You See?

Do you see the manipulations, below?

Seating to create a gathering spot, figs for summer shade/winter sun over the benches, drystack stone wall cut into a slight slope forcing foot traffic into defined directions, formal boxwood framing pastoral views, tapering stone wall allowing only small machinery into the pasture from this direction, gravel terrace ready for men-trucks-heavy equipment, horses, or a catered soiree for 100.
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And, of course, it must all look a century old, be easy to maintain, and provide interest 24/7.
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When something appears simple, it rarely is.  Same is true of people.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Pic at a jobsite last week.
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Do you know the maximum pollinator habitat, above?  Seriously, can you verbalize what creates the best pollinator habitat above?  Answer at bottom.
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Being simple requires each of the decades I've been learning about gardens.  Better, being simple in a garden, takes me where Joseph Campbell says our eternity is.  Ironic, in this American life/era, to have found my bliss in work.
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1. Joseph Campbell - Wikiquote

   en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell‎

   Where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own .... And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life.
2. More, being simple connects me to the message/life work of Wendell Berry & E.M. Forster.  

3. Wendell Berry Earns Highest Humanities Award, Lectures on ...

   sojo.net/.../wendell-berry-earns-highest-humanities-award-lectures-econo...‎

   Apr 24, 2012 - On Monday evening, Wendell Berry delivered the 41st annual ... The title hinges on E.M. Forster's 1910 novel Howards End, which Berry said, ...
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5.  If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.
   

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   Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.

                                                                                    .

   Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon.
6. Answer to question, above,  High density/low density, open meadow/dense woodland.

Refreshing: Interior Plants Do Not Look Store Bought

Notice something extraordinarily different about the plants styling the dining room, below?

They look as if they came from the conservatory on site.
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Quite rare to see this attention to detail, though saucers should be included with the coleus & orchid for a complete narrative.  (I have clients on tours, in magazines, TV, so, yes, I'm paid to be this particular!)
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And that doesn't begin to mention the delicious focal point on axis with the vanishing threshold.
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Nice, indeed.  Well done.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pic Architectural Digest.  Cote de Texas had the pic on a post about wall paper recently.
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  If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.

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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon.

Daffodils: Ordering, Siting, Planting

Abiding in the Rustic Barn until the coyote roundup is complete, Jefferson, below, was totally enthralled with our entry for the daffodil bulbs.  

Thousands of bulbs, below.

Once sited thousands seemed like two, maybe three.

A century old the home had no daffodils.  I'm siting them to look as if they have been there longer than a century.  Great billowy drifts.
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These daffodil bulbs, above, will drift thru the fence as if the fence came later.
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Humbling to watch my team plant the bulbs.  On their knees, each bulb hand planted with a small miner's pick.

They start planting at the middle of the drifts, facing each other, on their knees, then moving outward.  All the while bantering amongst themselves.  Teamwork.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Bulbs ordered from Brent & Becky's Bulbs.  Mostly 'Carlton' daffodils.
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Pics this week at jobsite.  Isn't the top pic purrfectly catalicious?  Jefferson was not about to admit interest in our activities.
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If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.

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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon.

Stained Concrete

Technically this should be a 'cold' space.  Concrete, glass, iron.

Instead, with staining of the concrete, there is warmth & invitation.
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Pressure wash?  Never.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic via La Maison Fou.
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If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.

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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon.

Aerin Lauder: Color Choices

What is the most obvious fact, below?

Green-Brown-White is the top color trinity, again.
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Choose a color trinity for your garden, and it should flow from your interiors, then stay true.
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What is your color trinity?
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic Aerin Lauder.
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Aerin Lauder must be an old soul.  She's kept, yet made her mother's garden/house her own.  Building upon good existing layers.  No ego about starting from scratch, just because she can.  The garden, above, is a garden design class in a single pic.  More than pretty, it didn't cost much to create nor will it cost much to maintain.  Aerin's Effortless Style is no sales gimmick in the garden.

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If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.

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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon.

Copy from those at the Peak of their Game

You do a thing in the garden with your full IQ, passion, energy, wallet, time.  Influenced by era.

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At my front door, above, if you know the 80's, you're seeing Horticulture magazine, covers of Smith & Hawken catalog, and articles, pages long, from House & Garden magazine.

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So, where do you think I'm going with this?

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History.

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That trinity of resources, above, was from the best brains at the peak of their game.

  Drenched in the poverty cycle of the Great Depression & rusticities of turn-of-the-century Lutyens/Jekyll with generous splashes remaining of the Belle Epoque.

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So, when asked what plant should go in a certain spot or what is wrong with their lawn.  I pause, long.

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Themistocles comes to mind, " "I cannot fiddle, but I can make a great state from a little city."

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So, when I'm told, "I want a garden but I don't have a lot of money."

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Winston Churchill comes to mind, "....when he was asked to cut arts funding in favor of the war effort, he simply replied, "Then what are we fighting for?"

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The best thing I've ever done in my life was to say, Yes, when my soul told me to have a garden. 

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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

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If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.

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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon.

Element of Ranchburger Vile

Iron panels grace ranchburgers across USA.

Reading the English  Telegraph I see, above.
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And I think, Come on USA you can do so much better.  We have the same iron panels to work with yet they are vile.
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Adore getting every new ranchburger client.  Too easy to create charm from vile.  Toss in the builder's ranchburger landscaping & I can barely drive without carefully wearing my imaginary Ranchburger Blinders.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Ranchburger?  Me?  I live in a Guppy ca. 1985.  You know, gaping garage + drive facing the street with a teensy front door.  So bad, some neighborhoods were built with deed restrictions against them.  Go team !
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If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.

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                                               Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon.

Sweet Serendipity: Tuteurs + Lights

A picture note for the garden.

Shopping list: lights.  Prefer to make my own tuteurs.
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Twigs/wood can be found easily.
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Why have I not done this sooner?  Must get it done during this season of early nightfalls.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic, lost provenance.

A Man in the Garden

Decades without one, this new thing of having a man in my garden is......

We agree to disagree.  And when we do agree, much time passes before action.

In the house, he's..........superb.

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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

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pics Hollywood.

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If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

         Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon.

Phoebe Howard: Bedroom Views

Birdhouse view, below.

Thru the years about 30% of my clients have had views into the tree tops.
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Good fortune, indeed.  Hardly possible to 'fake' a tree top view from level ground & zero trees.
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If the chair, above, is the only seating in the room I would have Howard back to fix its direction !
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic Phoebe Howard.
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If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.

                                                                                 .
                                                          Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon.

Garden Design: Creating Shadows

Do you have a shadow-on-the-walls fetish?

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They are my catnip.  Especially their ephemerality.

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In particular, the shadows of mature crape myrtles on walls or blossoms running along cherry tree branches in spring.  Maybe Chinese snowball blossom shadows are my favorite.

                                                                     
                                                             Details from creator here.

Adore paradigm shifts.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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pics Hilden Diaz.   And I thought designing tree shadows across lawns was fun.  Seems lame now.
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If you want a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, and causes you to tap the brake pedal, as you look in the rear view mirror heading out, become my client, local or on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.

                                                                                 .
                                                          Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon.