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.

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         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.

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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.

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.

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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.

Hindsight Wisdom: 3 Things

With irony, and infertility, I bear witness, thanks to my career, to many successful mothers.  However, never an Oprah show topic, I bear witness to parent/child relationships displaying the blessings of infertility too. 

Successfully retired from a career/business she owned, involved now with volunteer work making a difference on the national stage, her 2 children are in their 30's.  I've always put her in my successful mom category.

Invited to dinner last nite she surprised me with 3 things she wish she'd known at the front end of her motherhood.

Talk to her children sooner about drugs.  For birthdays/Christmas do not give so many nice gifts.  When their father wants to discipline the children, let him, don't over ride his input on most occasions.

Clear-eyed candor.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Have lost count of the moms, when discovering my unwanted infertility, said they would walk thru fire for their children yet if they could do it all again they would not have them.  It's an odd thing to be on the sideline & bear witness.  My unborn children are perfect, don't you know !!  Alas, it's grandchildren I miss, not children.
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Pics taken at a jobsite.  Last pic, one of  my favorite designs.  Understatement, I'm incredibly proud of creating this view.  Simple & historic yet it's new and took me 3 decades of experience to get here.    Plus the skill of my 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.

Historic Gardens Are Best: Reason #5

Reason #5 to create a historic templated garden design.

Impromptu quick pics.
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Go Deborah Silver, above.  A chaos of joy, beauty, love.  Which is the focal point here: snow, lit tree, garden, dog?
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This pic is almost a complete garden design course, by itself.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic Dirt Simple.  Do you want to create your own world, a moat of grace around your life, a place so rich in energy you are able to give more to all your endeavors?    Then, yes, you want a Historic 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.

Garden Design Lesson: In a Single Pic

Come this way, enter, welcome.

Miraculously, from the opposite direction the columns say the same thing.
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No matter the size or budget of a garden, there are no exits.  Only entries.  And, the more entries a garden has the better the garden.  With one of the most potent garden design tools in your quiver, contrasting formal-informal.   Ceiling-walls-floors are also beautifully done, above, with great drama at the enfilade.
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No, this is not a simple entry.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Of course I want the dimensions of how far apart the columns are,  heights, etc....
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Pic I Love Your Style.
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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.

Hotel Perfect Bedroom + Pretty Privacy

Aside from 'Hotel Perfect' design, below, the garden view drew my eye for its ubiquity in Atlanta.

Neighbors houses, tiny lot lines.  Yet wanting privacy.  Pretty privacy !
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Fence, understory trees, tall espalier shrubs.  Amazing the privacy, softness, warmth & beauty a few plantings provide.  And, keep it few.  Who wants to look at views full of garden chores to be done !
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In addition, from these doors, fragrances of akebia, tea olive, gardenia, daphne.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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pic BHG.  What is this style of decorating called?  Have done it in my own bedroom after le divorce, calm-serene-pretty.
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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.

Creating Lush

Vertical lawn, below.

Don't have a stone villa?  Espalier a woody shrub.  No wires or trellis needed.

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Oddly, the perfection above is undone without the  rattan chair.  Then it becomes an ad for patio furniture.

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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara

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Those white cushions?  Not in my garden, crape myrtle tree debris would win in a day!

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How lush can a garden be and have very little?  That is the best gardening question.  This garden, above, wins.

Pic Veranda magazine.

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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.

When a Garden Crosses the Line

Gardens begin inside your house.

Your garden is art on the wall.

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Gardens must be a backdrop to lives lived inside.  Beauty to enrich spirit, increase joy, diminish sadness.

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If you don't have this now, with your garden, you have a surprise awaiting.  This is what happens when your garden crosses the line, one of the best & most enduring friendships of your life.  Once you do have it, and see another with the same type of relationship, voila, a new friend.  

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pic Hen House.  

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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.

Team Elements to Touchdown

Urn on plinth.

If Garden Design were parsed like football stats, urn/plinth stats are touchdowns.
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I adore the team  formations for every touchdown urn/plinth.  Above, backdrop hedge, lollipop standard sentinels, lawn line defense at a 90% run, contrasted textures/colors, zone coverage for heights, even the fake out play drawing eyes to the sky.
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This urn is a Heisman Trophy.  Once & done.  No maintenance, planting, watering......beautiful 24/7 for decades.
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Mostly, the touchdown urn/plinth is partially executed.  The teamwork backing urn/plinth isn't played.
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In metaphor, urn/plinth stories can be told thru: music, ballet, the bible, race car driving.....they're all teamwork.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pic Faux Fuchsia.
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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.

Why Ugly is a Good Start

 Already degreed in horticulture & engineering before studying historic landscapes across Europe there was a major potent element to be learned, Nothing is unconsidered in a garden, nothing.

Subsidiary parking court, below, is behind the garden, above.

What are you leaving unconsidered in your garden?
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Pic at jobsite.  Garden Design is mostly not about plants.  I adore ugly problems.
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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.

Ricky Lauren: The Hamptons: Food, Family, and History

   

Ricky Lauren the Hamptons Food, Family and History, is a good read for recipes, voyeurism into a sweet lifestyle & history of place.  

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A job in Alabama this year had me at Auburn University taking a government regulated landscape certification exam to legally put plants in the ground.  I took Lauren's book to mark recipes for any waiting room slowing my pace.  

More than recipes Ricky maps the decades of her marriage, raising children and stays at their various Hamptons homes.  She pulled me in.  You see my list from Alabama, below.  Ricky gives breakfast, picnic, lunch & dinner recipes.  Of course she had me at the picnics.  Redolent of the life changing picnics Jenny, my mother-in-law, created.

Fresh vegetables with angel pasta was the first recipe I cooked.  If you like Julia Child/James Beard you can taste their influence.  Ricky put her mark on it, in fewer steps + greater simplicity while leaving all the flavor.
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You know I passed the exam.  Alas, had to study for it, drive several hours, pay the exam fee, pay the licensing fee, pay the police ticket parking fee for parking where I was told to park, then discovered the license was only good for a few weeks.  Not even a year.  And that parking ticket?  Auburn was in the newspaper not long afterward for a parking ticket scam !
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Yet, I did get my Ricky Lauren list.  Go me.
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Chandelier, top pic, proves you cannot have Too-Much-Chandelier in the garden.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Top pic Harpers Bazaar.  Bottom pic my harvest table.
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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.

How to Design the Best Landscape is Not What You Think: It's Easier

Design your garden for winter, it will be pretty all year.

Spring, roses, hydrangeas, foxgloves & etc. get all the calendar shots, yet the true test remains, winter.
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Rosemary Verey's, The Garden in Winter, is the garden design book you want.  Garden design facts are counterintuitive.
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Another counterintuitive garden design rule?  Copy.  If it's beautiful in another garden it will be beautiful in yours, and original.  
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic Belgian Pearls.  A wonderful resource taken from Belgian Pearls, here.
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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.

Simple Complexities

More than pretty, easy to maintain.

This is great pollinator habitat.  High density mixed with low density.
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Focal point on axis with the front door is also on view from every front window of the home.
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The more axis a focal point has the better the design.
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 Sir Roy Strong says gardens must have a sky mirror.
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Of course there is more detail, it's almost a Landscape Design course in a single pic.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic I Love Your Style.
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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.

Double Axis: Consider Both Directions

Outside, at the tiered fountain looking into the window, I wonder if the wreath is double sided.

Double Axis, if a view is pretty in 1 direction it must be pretty in the opposite direction.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pic Habitually Chic.

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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.

How to Arrange Furniture 101: Outside

Interior furniture arrangements tell me exactly how to arrange exterior furniture.

And the colors to choose, style range, flow, forms, ambiance.
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Aside from liking this room, above, it takes my mind into overdrive thinking of resources available to recreate it outside.
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Not a problem if budget isn't a problem.
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If time is not an issue even a tight budget can get this room, outside.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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A few years ago a client with an amoeba shaped sofa LOVED how I designed her front lawn.  Yes, it was exactly her sofa shape.  And she thought I was brilliant.  Now, go be brilliant for yourself !
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Pic Cote de Texas.
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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.