You Must be Able to Parse

A view, below, from the swing.

The swing, below, from the chair, above.

Virginia sweetspire, a native, below.

Hydrangea 'Penny Mac', below. She's opening pink, after decades of blue, due to drought/aluminum uptake not ph.

You should be able to do this in your mature garden.
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Parse the photo angles.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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pics taken in my garden yesterday.

Perhaps the Right Choice is....

What do you need to get rid of?  When Susanne Hudson came to choose colors for my interior she also moved furniture.  Then, literally, she picked up and threw out my sisal rug.  This was at least a decade overdue.

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1-2 times each month I do the same thing with clients.

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Mostly it's pots or their entire patio 'set'.  

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Today, look around your garden, what are you not seeing anymore?  

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If I came to your garden what would I throw out?

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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara

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Pic, lost provenance.

Water & Creativity

 Excellent reading venue, below.  Have recently been bathing with Wendell Berry, Nicky Haslam & a woman who's been living The Dirty Life.

Tub views are a concern.  Behind the draperies, below, the shower.  

More views soon.  Decisions finally made for the large blank wall, alas, men needed for execution.  

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Found a huge vintage Eastlake mirror, huge, $30, it will reflect a garden view.  Timing, it had just arrived into my favorite junk shop.  

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Through the decades, as I've stepped out of the shower, complete visions of the current Garden Design appear in my mind.  As if by Messenger, the Muse.

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A better drug than the $30 score.

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Do you do this too?  Create a garden & home to leverage your thoughts.  Ideas to spur action steps.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics , my bathroom

Draperies at the Door

 In the tropics of Houston, TX light is brutal.  With many ideas back/forth my sister  & I have concluded the solution to her front door furnace is drapery.

More, the builder added windows above windows across the back of her home.  

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When I visit I wear sunglasses inside, even on cloudy days.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pic via New York Magazine.

Choose a Theme then Overdose

 Choose a theme, Overdose on your Theme.

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Orchard House, (aka my starter home in a working class neighborhood of cluster homes ca. 1986, today.)

Feng shui has it right about gardens, better than any garden class, 'you must be able to flow easily around your property.'  Like Mrs. Wilcox I adore walking round my garden.  E. M. Forster knew women.  Coop, below,  is mostly rescued materials.  Why not boxwood, roses, itea, hydrangea, camellia, daphne?  The coop is worthy.

View across the drive, below, with front loading garage.  Some jurisdictions have outlawed my type of home.  Too unfriendly.  Garagecentric.  No worries, it is my starter home, here 5 years & off to something more worthy of my magnificence.

It's obvious I had to do more growing than the garden.

I'm particularly pleased with this bit at the side of my garage, above.  Though the white roses lost their graft and only the root stock is left.  Reminds me of an old vicarage wall .
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Did you see the neighbor's houses?  Why would you?  You've entered my world.  An old cottage......  and become lost in my theme.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken in my garden last week.

Fireplace Decorating Ideas

Over my fireplace mantel today.

What do you do with your worn out & broken tools?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Yes, screwed to the wall.  And each other.

Hiding Ugly Views

Pleased as the Cheshire Cat.  One of my chief accomplishments.  Do you see why?

A few feet away from my house, above, is a neighbor's house.
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Yet the view is a Woodland Garden: contorted filbert, hydrangea, camellia, azalea, hosta, fern, helleborus, bulbs, meandering path edged with tree limbs.  And the air-conditioner.
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It's a lifestyle choice.  Anything else, for me, is subsistence living.
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I travel farthest in my garden.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken yesterday, lovely rains all day.  The Woodland Walk is morning sun, with Tara's Trinity of the Southern Garden, azalea-camellia-hydrangea, there are blooms EVERYDAY all year.

Acceptable Addiction

 Pharmacology has not discovered a pill to compete with the special endocrinology I was born with.  If they had it would be prescribed, and stolen for a street drug.

I cannot get enough of this, above.

Seriously.

Anticipation, is the best drug.  Oakleaf hydrangea buds, above?  Any bud in my garden, oh my.

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Can you imagine doctors knowing to prescribe an 'anticipation pill' ?

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I'm sure it's the diagnosis for many people, yet 'doctors' have no clue.

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AND, my circle of friends has the same special endocrinology.  When we talk with each other about our gardens, yes, we get high off each others garden.

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Garden & Be Well, XO T

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Pics taken this week in my garden.

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Chandelier with a Tin Roof

Reflected lite, even during the day, of chandelier on a tin roof.

In my conservatory.

Doors, windows, tongue/groove all a century old.  Field gathered for over a decade & all free.

Conservatories must be at least 12' x 18' and have doors on 2 walls.  Minimum.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken this month in my garden.

Farmhouse Kitchen

A real farmhouse kitchen.  

The island, above, is an old dresser with detailing applied to  the back.

She removed a wall between table & kitchen.

The cafe curtains win a Garden Oscar.  Beyond those curtains, inches, is their driveway, Funeral Home parking lot, and, ta-da, a Funeral Home !
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Sky & tree canopy are all you see.
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Perhaps the solution to your garden eyesore is inside your house.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics at jobsite, same garden as previous post.  Yes, she made lunch, blueberry mini-muffins, pimiento cheese sandwiches, chicken salad, fresh fruit......iced tea mixed with lemonade.  And, I got the story from him of how he met her when they were teens.  They're grandparents now.  The story began when he was a bagboy at Piggly Wiggly.
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You did notice the rug under the island?
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They've asked for a Chicken Coop, Pole Barn, Pond & a few other delicacies.....
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How to Use Heads in Design

Got heads?

They're for

exterior, and

interior.
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Have you noticed a formula for your favorite interiors & exteriors?  Not into formulas?  No worries, formulas are nothing more than Shopping Lists!  Now, I have your attention.
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I've always been drawn to interiors with heads & ......
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In my garden is a decades old collection of broken heads.  Most were a $1.
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Top pic from same home/garden as previous post.  Bottom pics Nicky Haslam, via Cote de Texas article.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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More than heads, bodies too.  And urns with plinths.

Stairs

Did your eye already pick up the salient fact, below?

Risers & steps are not to code.  Now.
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Lovely to walk history, ca. 1900, feel the gait.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken this month, same home/garden as previous post.

Dining Room with Antebellum 'Feel'

The bones of this house 'feel' antebellum.  

Though it's ca. 1900.  

                                               Architect & owner knew what they were doing.

                        Doors, molding, ceiling height, scale & flow redolent of an earlier era.

Dining room, above, flows into the front parlour, and also the central hall and kitchen.
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It's great drama between these rooms with function, paint color, and natural light.  A treat to see a tapestry of color instead of the ubiquitous mono-color shown in most magazines and catalogs.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics from same home/garden as previous post.  They've only lived in this home since last August.  It's obvious I'm running all cylinders to balance the interiors with an equally detailed rich-in-history garden.

How to Copy Interiors into your Garden

She will have a stone roundabout with historic French church gargoyle setting atop a plinth of granite, at its center,  in her garden.

Quickly took pics in their home and realized, once I returned home & saw the pics, her Gargoyle Roundabout will be shaped like the central portion of the chinoiserie pattern, below, and outer line of the massed platters, above.

This happens all the time, designing in the garden and seeing validations inside the home.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pics same garden as previous posts.  She is also the queen of rugs, picking & placing.

Front Porch: Chain Rail

Lunch, below, this week.  Every home seen from the chair I sat in was a century old and white clapboard.  

Front porch columns each have iron rings, below, for chains lost to history, I've already designed their replacement.

With their 'swag' to mach the arch, below.

Will copy a pair of the columns, deeper into the garden, as entry to a garden room with enfilade from the front sidewalk.
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Repetition.
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Notice the power lines, bottom pics?  The bane of my existence for a mature camellia I wish to keep and limb-up into a tree.  They will contact the power company to see what can be done.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics same garden as yesterday's post.

Central Hall: Front & Back Foyers

Built in 1900, they're the 3rd owners of this home.

Beautiful & tough hardware, below, on the door is original.

Aside from the scope of the land, an acre, a few large camellias & trees the grounds/garden do not exist.  A  30 acre Pecan Orchard in a state of Chekhov-meadow-reverie flows from the back garden .  Did I mention the entire length of the driveway abuts the Funeral Home parking lot?
Central hall, below.

She adores, and showed me a pic of  P. Allen Smith's front garden at his cottage.  Indeed, perfect, but I'll add heavy doses of Loutrell Briggs at Mrs. Whaley's Charleston, SC garden too.

We walked the grounds, had lunch on the front porch, walked the grounds again.  Her husband was able to come for the 2nd round of walking the grounds, and lunch too.  He loved my idea of Bahama shutters at the pavilion, and asked if they could be 3/4 vs. full length.  Fabulous.  Yes.  Love teamwork, makes me better.  A lawyer, he likes doing carpentry.  As I left he was already heading to Craigslist to begin the shutter search.
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Back door foyer, above.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken yesterday on the job.  I helped with their Macon, GA garden a couple of years ago, it's in Southern Living this year.  Who knew a move to Jackson, GA was in their future?  You will be seeing more of this home.  She did every ounce of the interior decorating from colors to furniture to art to rugs to knocking out walls.....

Let Simplicity Serve Your Needs

There isn't a lot here yet the magic is intense.

Narrative.  Simplicity.  Choices.
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"What plant should I put here?", I'm asked often.  It's not the right question, in return I ask, "How do you want to live?"
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic The Vintaquarian.  Remember this trinity: Narrative.  Simplicity.  Choices.  What is your garden, today, answering?

Orange

When my father built a new house he let me, age 7, choose my carpet color.  Burnt Orange.  I had white walls & white furniture & white lamps.

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Loved growing up in that room with the light of Galveston Bay pulsating off the walls.

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A huge red bottle brush filled the window with hummingbirds.

Have never used Orange again.  Happy reigns when I catch glimpses of it.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic via Colorado Homes & Lifestyles.  A client, from Holland, already had orange accents in her garden when she hired me, hers is a Faded Burnt Orange.   Her garden is on tour this month, will try to get there for pics.  Since, obviously, pics of Orange are absent my arsenal!

Framed Views & Historic Hedge

Every home should have numerous framed views.

This historic hedge, rare in USA, has a Friendship Gate pruned into it between neighbors.

They had dinner & shared champagne last nite celebrating Cinco de Mayo.
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What makes a historic hedge, aside from age?  A mix of plants: pass along plants, bird seeded plants, wind seeded plants, no invasive plants, tiered layers, something coming into bloom throughout the year.  If next to meadow, historic hedges are maximum pollinator habitat.  No watering, no chemicals, no fertilizer, hi density, low density, poof-viola, maximum pollinator habitat.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Pics taken yesterday.

Nicky Haslam Said "...

Generously stuffed with bons mots.

"Flowers play an essential role, partly to enliven the rooms and partly from the sheer pleasure of thinking up new ways to utilize anything growing in the immediate surroundings.  I love massed, untidy bouquets of things in season, and try to keep the room's color scheme in mind so that the arrangement doesn't shriek, ", Look at me."  "  Nicky Haslam.
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Great theme for a garden party, Please Come to a Garden Tea & let us be Massed and Untidy on the Tea Olive Terrace.  (Which friend could possibly refuse this invite?)
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Odd week, days beginning in the tub, oodles of epsom salts & hot water.  Why move a huge English urn + plinth?  Whatever.  Have enjoyed the morning soaks with Nicky.