E.M.Forster: Walking the Garden at Dusk with Mrs. Wilcox

Dusk yesterday, below.  I had been inside reading but the Chinese snowball blossoms beckoned.  

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E.M.Forster,  Howard's End,  "...Continually contrasting the "seen" with the "unseen"--the physical, material world of the Wilcoxes with the imaginative, spiritual world of the Schlegels--Forster posits the possibility..." 

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Decades before reading Forster peering in has been a delight.

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Is your garden pretty from inside?  Is your interior pretty from the garden?  Vanishing Threshold = 'yes' to both questions.

My dear friends (aka Viburnum macrocephalum - Chinese snowball), above/below, pulled me away from reading, Diana Vreeland, Memos - The Vogue Years.

This is a garden.  

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Best friend.  Nurturer.

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House & garden, armor harbor strength metaphor atonement listener humorist joy independence spirit music life love.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pics yesterday at dusk in my 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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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

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Tara Dillard Garden Designs installed by 

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Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home builder, from renovations to neighborhoods. Heard's Landscaping, commercial/residential construction, hardscape-irrigation-lawns-grading-pools-lighting-stone-decks.  Three decades of service.

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Shaefer Heard

Garden Pantry: Staples

Bare essentials, below.

Pair of square planters, pair of round planters, and jewelry.
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Just as salt/pepper are pantry staples, gardens have staples too.
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Love the garden jewelry, above.  Garden jewelry?  The rails.  Pure jewelry.  Lights too.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic via 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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Sofas: Backed vs. Facing

Pairs of sofas 'backed' began intriguing me a couple of years ago, after decades of adoring pairs of sofas facing each other, which is, of course, what I've had for a-very-long-time.

Cote de Texas posted this pic, above, the same day Laura, below, lept to the balcony in a smash/crash.

Once I get-me-a-man the French commode with urn on plinth will be between newly backed sofas.
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Laura, from that distance, cannot leap to the balcony.
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Decorating or catorating?
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Top pic Architectural Digest, a Mario Buatta room.  Bottom pic, apparently Laura's room, and soon to be mine again.  With pleasure my sofas need new fabric, and studying Buatta's room I will be getting a few extra pieces of furniture too.  Fine thoughts, indeed.
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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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Bunny Mellon Rustic or How to be Happy

Leaving to eat dinner at my office/guest cottage yesterday, my garden, below, stopped the car & pulled me out.

Bunny Mellon would approve of my rustic garden.  More, she knew the 'high' it gives.  Asleep in bed, my garden Vulcan mind melds.
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In this working class neighborhood of tightly arranged homes my garden is infinite.  How?  It owns the sky, and when the birds land in neighbor's yards they are still my birds.
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This little patch, above, makes me incredibly happy.  Perhaps the best mission statement ever, Make me happy.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken yesterday, before dinner.  More about Bunny Mellon, Guardian.  More about Bunny Mellon, Habitually Chic. See my neighbor's houses, above?  Merely a slice of what my garden does for me.
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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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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

Heirloom Decorating

Boxes of dishes, glasses, flotsam/jetsam arrived with the Hoosier, table/chairs.  Everything passed from grandparents/parents to him and quite emotional.  

He asked me to decorate.  Keep it pure & functional, heirlooms only, I thought.  For this little corner, everything must speak of beloved family.  Fostoria & Haviland beckoning from the Hoosier, Use me (don't keep me pristine/barely used like your mom did!)   And the satisfaction of knowing these 'things' are in the continuum of his life, going to children.

Off topic, love the fan vase, seems to arrange flowers on its own.

Justine Cushing decorated with heirlooms above/below.  After 3 decades I divorced a great Lake House with heirloom decorating.  Attached to heirloom decorating since the first time seeing that Lake House.

Would be fun to see these things, above, in their previous incarnation, then into their future incarnation.
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I didn't see the Hoosier 'decorated' before.  But I did get a wonderful hug as he said his mom had it completely different.
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Appropriately, he had friends to dinner and his parents were toasted at their table with their dishes!
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Top 2 pics from jobsite.  Bottom 2 pics Justine Cushing on Cote de Texas.
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Forsythia cut from the garden.  Cannot believe I was TOO GOOD to design with Forsythia when my horticulture degree was new.  Glad those days are long gone.
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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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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

Design: Sources of Inspiration

Cracked.  Cracked & stapled is my favorite.

A farm scene, and cracked, above.
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Perfect.
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Why do we buy dishes?  By the set.
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Fun discovering the cracked dishes at a clients last weekend.  I must look more closely at the pattern, perhaps there is something to copy into the garden.
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Ironically, her garden's color trinity is green-brown-white and these dishes are almost the exact faded brown version of her 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

Get Your Layers of Design Right

Every home needs a desk, every barn needs a desk, every garden needs a desk.

Every design project has its layers.  Completed layers, above.  Beginning layers, below.

I will always have a job.  Always.  Why?  It's DNA to put the wrong layers in first, in a garden.
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What are the wrong first layers of a garden design?  Pretty flowers.  All roses.  Mostly perennials.  Tons of hosta.  Yes, that list will keep me in a job, forever (forevah).  So, Tara, what's wrong with roses, perennials...., easy, no evergreen structure, zero relationship with the house & you've begun with high maintenance.
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Desk, above, is already years in the making.  Why?  We've been creating paths, drives, focal points on axis with the interiors, planting evergreen hedges, then flowering shrubs......
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Ironically, nurseries conspire to keep me working hard.  How?  They push annuals, lawns with needy chemicals-watering-mowing, blah blah blah & blah (are we even in the same industry?  Passed a nursery sign last week, "Kill your weeds now."  Yes, I will always have a job.)
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What is the first layer of a Garden Design to consider?  Views, main axis, from inside your home into the garden.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Top pic Susanne Hudson's garden, bottom pic at a client garden last weekend.
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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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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

Enfilades: You MUST have them inside/outside

Interiors must have enfilades, below.

Gardens must have enfilades, below.

More, each garden view from your interior must have an enfilade.
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Perhaps this is why my nose flares, eyes narrow, right eyebrow rises, and a deep breath follows when I'm first asked, "What plant goes here?"
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Major reason most gardens aren't where they need to be?  Too concerned with plants and zero thought to enfilades.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Top pic at jobsite last weekend, bottom 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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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

Leverage: Make it Work for YOU

Leverage yourself, and your garden.

A place to put on/take off shoes, set packages & etc....
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Most landscapes require work from you, or a crew, without ever (EVAH) being beautiful or helpful.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic at jobsite last weekend.
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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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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

Planting in Drifts + Ultimate Status Symbol

Several hundred acres, several barns, several thousand bulbs to plant.

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Constraint?  Bulbs must look like they've been on property for a century.

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What to do?

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Toss out every known morsel of garden design since 1960.  (Easy, been there/done that.)

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Plant in blowzy DRIFTS.

Drifts must be organic tear drops.  Stubby or elongated + versions in between.

From inside the barn, below, to the house.

Did you know this about Garden Design?  If you create beauty in one direction, it's beautiful in its opposite.  

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Notice the foot path, above?  

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How few know a foot path through meadow is one of life's ultimate status symbols.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken at jobsite yesterday.

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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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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

Suzanne Somers: Botanist & Soil Expert

With tea, toast, cats, & a fever I'm on the sofa with Suzanne Somers & Katie Couric on tv.  Who knew Suzanne Somers would say the profound?

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But first.

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At 66 Suzanne Somers is a ripe peach.  Touting her health, mental happiness & sex life.  Poor, (should have borrowed Somers make-up artist & hairdresser) Katie Couric was a peach pit, her eyes cannot smile when her mouth does & it's painful to watch (to be fair we all have a bad day here/there).   Feverish me was not yet peach compost.

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Suzanne bubbles on, and on, then, "...we have to take mineral supplements because the way we grow our food has destroyed that ability......"

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Statement of the obvious, and truth.

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Organic gardening does not mean, only, not using chemicals.

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N-P-K fertilizers are not organic.  

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They kill mycorrhizal fungi & poison groundwater & can make a bomb.

Mycorrhizal fungi help roots take up minerals from soil.  

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A Providentially planned relationship similar to the good bacteria in our digestive track.

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2 + decades ago & my first study tour of historic European gardens.  Discovered Tara Turf, above.
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Why did USA ever stop?  No chemicals or irrigation needed & less labor expense.  A trinity of money saving there.  Pollinators abound, soil microbes thrive.  Food from this soil, above, is healthier, and safer, than big-ag food.
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Sure, the supplements Somers sells are not 100% science but the food big-ag sells is engineered to ward off insects, weeds.  Doubt Suzanne's products can make that claim.

Where is the crystal ball?  20 years from now would like too see Somers/Couric on tv together again.  If Summers is still the ripe peach with a great sex life her empire is assured.  And I'm buying.
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Yes, this is long but it took years to discover even with a USA horticulture degree.  The learning was in my head.  It has since passed to my heart.
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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

The Little Terra Cotta Pot: Give it Away

Terra cotta pots.

Your secret weapon to bring inside.
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Plainly with patina and an herb, or geranium.  Perhaps a topiary.
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An old ironstone plate.
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Once you get good at this, have several.  Invite a young kindred spirit to lunch, someone you don't know well but would like to.
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As they are leaving, hand them the terra cotta pot & ironstone plate.
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Lunch Ministry.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic via Fanci Taste.
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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

Choosing Color at the Front Door

Moving the pots, below, a mere inch wider will make the doorway wider.

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Staining the pots the same color as the siding, and moving the pots 3" wider creates an entirely new entry focusing on the custom door.

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What is the right answer?

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Don't know without seeing the interior.

REPETITION,  is your best friend in a small space.

In the Daily Mail Associated Press pic, above, I forgot about the topic/article I clicked on when I saw these pots.  Elegant, understated, quiet, no need to show-off, seemingly bespoke.
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Ironically, & counterintuitively, designing small spaces is tougher than acreage.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Top pic, 5th & State.
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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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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

Wendell Berry: Poem Pics in a Garden

"....If a lonely soul
did ever cry out

in company its true
outcry to God,

it would be as though
at a sedate party
a man suddenly
removed his clothes

and took his wife
passionately into his arms. "  Wendell Berry

Love laid bare.
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Penelope Bianchi's garden, love laid bare.
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Tell me, again, the comforts/securities/spirit of mow-blow-go-commodify-all-I-touch-lawn/green meatballs/annuals-weed killer-fertilizer subdivision landscape?
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Do you have the landscape you want?  You know, the one in your heart.  Life is short, time to let your love lay bare, in garden & home.  
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Beware, you'll attract the life you've dreamed of.  But, better.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Pics Penelope Bianchi.
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Terry Hershey, "...where I talked about Scandalous Love and a woman in the Gospel of Luke and how her incautious, imprudent anointing and kissing of Jesus' feet raised a few eyebrows. About a woman who finds herself--her equilibrium, her salvation, her healing and her wholeness--by falling in love. That place of vulnerability, when all of our boundaries--of control and answers and solutions and theological or religious piety--melt away, and we see who we are and what we want and who we can be and who we have pretended to be all along."
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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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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

Oscar de la Renta: Simple Garden Trinity

Backdrop + bench + meadow = Fabulous Garden.  A trinity working hard long before Christ's era.

Dark green + Chartreuse green = Fabulous

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Thank you Oscar for playing dress-up in a garden.

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Within simplicity, aside from elegance, you'll discover Albert Einstein's, 

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"The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives."

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Oscar's book, updated, 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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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

Choosing Exterior Paint Colors

Exterior colors begin inside.  Wallpaper, sofa, art are your resources.  Especially for the front door.

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Trim & window colors are often dictated by the brick, stone, or mortar, on your home.

Exterior colors should look old the first day they are applied.  No waiting.  Benjamin Moore Historic Colors are a favorite.

I'm hard on my interior.  Loving faded colors on wood & textiles.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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pics in my kitchen yesterday.
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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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Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

Gardens: Flow First, then Plants

"What plant should I put there?", is the common question.

Choosing specific plants is the last thing I put into a Garden Design.
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Flow is the first.
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What is flow?
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What direction do most people approach your home from?  Where do you park?  Which door do you mostly enter your home from?  Where are your garbage cans?  What path do you traverse to the garbage cans?  Where do your guests park?  Where do your children park?  Do you have dogs needing to go outside?  Where are your garden tools & how do you access them?  Where is the compost pile and how often do you walk to it?  Do you gather firewood in winter to carry inside?  After a storm do you have branches to pick up and where do you place them?  Where are your outdoor lights?  Can you walk, without obstruction, around your entire home?  How do you get from your deck/patio to the back yard?  Raining, can you walk your property without getting your feet in puddles?  Do you have young children/grandchildren needing a safe place to play?  Where should you put a swing-set?  How should the swimming pool be placed?  Where should the new barn be sited?  Which door do you use to get the mail?  Which door do guests knock on first?  Do guests come to the door you want them to?  Where is the fire hydrant and is it a clear path in case of fire?  Where is the circuit breaker for the house & can it be turned off quickly by emergency personnel if you are not home?  How often do you need to walk to the Pole Barn?  Where should the Conservatory be placed & how often will you use it for meals?  And, etc.
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Yes, Flow before plants.
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Get the flow right and your property begins at the center of your home to the property lines.
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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