Showing posts with label Axis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Axis. Show all posts

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Conservatory: Multiple Axis

Near the door of Susanne Hudson's conservatory, below.


And her great garden pun, below.  A plant in the conservatory!  As if.  What?  As if the Conservatory were for plants.  Ridiculous.


The same lamp, below, from a different axis.


Another axis, below.


Same hydrangea, below, different day.  Heavy rains in the interim.


The more axis a focal point has the more successful the Garden Design.
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One of the best arrows in your quiver.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken in Susanne Hudson's garden this month.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

What's the View from Your Porch Door?

Diffusing the view, Kimberly Queen, below.  Tolerates full baking sun or part shade, and she's not a shaggy mess unlike the Boston fern.


On perfect axis with the porch door, below, she diffuses the view in too.  Aka, double axis.


The lattice?  Regular, common, off the shelf, a disaster for any home but, in context, understandable here.  This home was rescued and is the Cultural Arts Center in Douglasville, Georgia.
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Back to the lattice.  For pennies more special order panels with thicker wood slats, they look custom.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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The fern stand is real, and almost a century old.  Been decades since it held a fern.  Pics taken earlier this month at the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival in Douglasville, GA.

Thursday, June 13, 2013

On the Porch with Drapes

Nothing was here, below, a few days ago.  


The porch, below, when we began.



The corner 'before', above, and 'after', below.


Lamp, above, seen from the garden, below.


Porch 'before', below, viewed from the garden.


 Of course you want to look in the window, above.


 Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics of Porch Garden I created with Susanne Hudson at the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival earlier this month.

Monday, May 20, 2013

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.

Friday, May 17, 2013

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.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

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.

Monday, May 13, 2013

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.

Thursday, May 9, 2013

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.....

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Proscenium Design is Your Desire


Porch, turkeys, garden, a new trinity.  This is my job, below.  Do you see what I've done?  


Designed the garden as a proscenium to life.  


What does that mean?
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Garden is fabulous, marvelous, incredible 24/7 with little effort and a stage set for what life tosses.
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Look at the top pic again.
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It's taken from inside the house.  A snapshot that looks like a photo shoot.
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Not an accident.
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This garden is ready for Garden & Gun.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics sent from client last week.  She KNEW the turkey pic would THRILL me !!!!!!  Don't know Garden & Gun magazine?  You want to.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Abby Aldrich Rockefeller: Williamsburg, VA

A perfect distance from the house.  The Tea House.  


Abby Aldrich Rockefeller's home in Williamsburg, VA.  She spent April/October here yearly.


The scale is exquisite.


Knowing a bit about the depth of her philanthropy the scale and sweetness of her home speak much of her character.
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Her gardens are intelligent, potent in simplicity, narrative, formality, rusticity, line, axis, Nature.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken earlier this month while I was lecturing in Colonial Williamsburg, VA.

Friday, April 26, 2013

Axis of Ugly: Views from this Gorgeous Interior

Interior attention to detail. 


Exterior attention to detail?
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A grill.  Swathed in vinyl, no less.  Perhaps to match the countertops?  No, to match the ovens.
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Axis of Ugly: Breakfast room window view.  Yard (yes, yard, obviously not garden) door view.  Window above the sink view.  And, probably dining room view, upstairs bedroom views.....
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Why is this acceptable?  Generally it's the person bankrolling the interior demanding the grill, hence, acceptable.  Until that person reads a post like this.  Go ahead, you know you want to show it to him.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Why so hard on this topic?  "Men come to build sooner than to garden finely as if gardening were the greater art." Pope, 17th century.  Beautiful pics of interiors that denigrate the landscape are harmful to my profession.  
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How to fix this?  Simplest? Hinged shutters, painted color of chair seats, above, in front of grill.  Fold & lean against wall when using grill.  
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Pic via Cote de Texas.
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Axis of Ugly.  Rather proud of that one !!  Would be a great lecture title for Puppet Barbuda.....

Monday, April 1, 2013

Listen to the Genius of the Place


Emergency phone call last month.  Client wavering on placement of stone steps & fire ring.


Many choices in Garden Design do not have a single answer.


This choice did.


Asymmetrical French architecture demanded the center of the new stone terrace & steps be on center with the gable peak/palladian window.
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Love it when we can pull a string & hammer the stake.  Done.
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Architecture & Garden are one.  Listen to the genius of the place.
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Garden & Be Well,            XO Tara
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Pics taken 2 weeks ago on the job.  Top pic, general contractor & stone mason.  Both make everything I do better.
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Georgia red clay.  Freshly disturbed.  Love that smell.

Friday, March 15, 2013

Siting a Vintage Bell


They bought an old bell, below, and needed to know where to site it.


Have you considered where to put a bell historically?  Adore a new brain path.  Acreage, working acreage required signals.  Most important would be an emergency.  Secondarily, calling the hands to meals.  Here, above/below, the bell is close to the kitchen.


Soon the camellia hedge will obscure the cabin.  I do like the Double Axis pics, top/bottom.  Formal  & informal.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics taken at jobsite this month.  Same garden as several previous posts.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Design Interiors From Outside

Front porch, below.


 Lamp seen from the front porch, above, and from inside, below.


Further to the left of the lamp, below.


You do know this already?  Interiors must be gorgeous from every garden view.
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Your home is the focal point of the garden.
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Walking with new clients, around their garden, seeing an ugly interior view I will turn my head, look into their eyes and my right eyebrow goes up.  Enough said.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pics taken at jobsite last week.  Same home as previous several posts.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

What To Do With A Bad View

Of course the dining room, below, has an awkward view. 


Swag of curtain, below, in the downstairs window is the dining room.


Same swag of curtain, below, in the dining room.


Do you see the triple air-conditioners?  Do you see the industrial generator?  Do you see anything fussy to maintain?
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No.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Pics taken at jobsite last week.  Dining room opens into central hall of previous 3 posts.

Monday, March 4, 2013

A Central Hallway


 Over a century old, the home has a long & wide central hallway copying the dogtrots of old.  Back-in-the-day it was 'air-conditioning'.


Now, it's a place for extra chairs.  Easy to grab for gatherings in other parts of her home.


Cannot imagine the first matriarch of this acreage outside Athens, Ga.  Summertime with no cooling, cooking dinner, and breakfast, daily.  No cell phone, internet.  Only her man, children & workers for interaction.  Laundry, with clothesline, a great effort + time.  Harvesting the kitchen garden, canning.
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Epiphany.  No wonder rural Southerners were tightly bound to their church.
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Women taking the edge off.  Meet & greet comrades in life, unload frustrations, share joys.  Get the gossip, trade successes/failures on life topics.  Hopefully get a good sermon.  Enough to manage another week.
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All this from a dogtrot.    
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pics taken last week at jobsite.  Same foyer as previous 2 posts.
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Women In History was an elective I took for my engineering degree.  It ignored physical discomfort & religion.    

Saturday, March 2, 2013

A Foyer View

Doorways, rooms, and an upstairs landing, a myriad of garden views, flood natural lite into the foyer.


I must get each of those garden pictures, from the foyer, next time at this jobsite.
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Garden views from this foyer are enough for a garden design book.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken last week at jobsite.  Same home/garden as yesterday's post.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Bedroom View

Garden design begins inside your home on axis with main views, below.


I assume there is a better view on the opposite wall?  Otherwise, even if this is a B&B I would turn the bed.  It truly looks like advertising photography.
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Have been on the hunt for a diminutive round bedside table.  Must be 2 tier, lovely wood, vintage, French.  Those books, above, make me smile.  There is never a time a stack of books isn't by my bed.
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A girlfriend I never see enough has an incredible French style bed.  And home too.  When we do see each other it is me spending the nite with her and gossiping till sleep takes us.  Next time I'll get pics for you.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic My French Country Home.
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
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Details about online design services.
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Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
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Details about lecture titles here.
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I've written several garden books available on Amazon.