How to Fix the Porch to Patio Dead-End

Lovely porch & courtyard.

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Porch opens into house, not courtyard.

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Dead-end from courtyard to porch.

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Dead-end from porch to courtyard.

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Not in my realm.

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This will not be.

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Center section will soon be French folding screen doors with steps to the courtyard.

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Why 'folding' ?

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They entertain, French folding screen doors take less space.

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Have never seen or thought of French folding screen doors till this job.

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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

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Pic on the job last week.  Yes I wanted to take precious home !!  He stayed faithfully by my side as I worked throughout his garden.

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

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Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

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Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

From Amusement to Stewardship

 This is what I sought, below.  Only recently, decades in, the mission is known to be mistaken.
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Garden Design, contrast round flowers with spikey flowers, big leaves with small leaves, dark green with silver, focal points on axis with the house, expose the sky - frame with canopy trees - dress the walls - cover the floors, a bit of woodland & meadow, something coming into bloom every 2 weeks all year.
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Go ahead, take the above facts and create your own beautiful garden.
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Sited properly HVAC costs lower & property values rise.
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Do the above & you've done a lot.

Done for myself, paid to do it for others.  Thought this was the mission.  Not a little wrong, wildly.

 With a knowing smile, I see others deeply into Garden Design, personally/professionally, aware that was me, in a past life.  Glad to leave it.

Garden Design is mere amusement.  Garden Design gives a reaction, there is much more to be had.
 

From amusement to stewardship, a relationship of atonement & abiding with Nature.

 Garden Design lesson above?  Copied from studying historic gardens across the globe for decades.  Never realizing it's maximum pollinator habitat & about survival.  Agriculture needed ornamental gardens.  What had been understood as pretty historic gardens & homes were machines for survival.
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What?  Combining agriculture with pretty flowers increases crop yield by 80%.

What I had sought as a beautiful historic Garden Design formula is instead the template of Providence.

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My garden, and Garden Designs have been organic & sustainable for decades.

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Organic & sustainable are not enough.  Stewardship is the key.

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Take the key, it's free & simple.

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Organic & sustainable, in the great USA manner, are something to sell.

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Stewardship is within you.

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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara

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Pics in my garden this spring.  Wish the chickens had been here my entire 3 decades.  Their poop goes into the garden daily.  Their eggs have become my 'Egg Ministry'.  And gave me Stewardship.  Understanding the relationship of Earth, livestock, plants, survival.

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 For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

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Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

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Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Garden Design Rule for Eyesores & Terrible Garden Gifts

This client was not home at the start of my work.

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I lasted an hour before I HAD to Move-The-Duck.

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Wish they had hired me before the new concrete walkway, and electrical outlet.
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Not much to do, if the dressed duck must stay.  Did you know there is a Garden Design Rule for this situation?  If you have an eyesore, place a focal point nearby.
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Doubt my professor imagined this dressed duck as a focal point.
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However, when children, grandchildren, or the toughest, a bit too prickly daughter-in-law are involved, the fill-in-the-blank must be 'displayed'.

Now, the dressed duck is drawing the eye away from the electrical box and providing welcome at the steps.
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A mentor said, "It's what we do with what we have."
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This garden has a child.  The duck will happily stay as long as the dressed duck magic is needed for her.
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The prickly daughter-in-law?  Easy, use her gift prominently in the garden for a few months then it has an 'accident'.  Tree limb, wind, ice, when it is safely taken to the thrift store.  In one garden the offensive item, a resin dollar store birdbath, could not be easily 'lost', that daughter-in-law had prickles of toxic steel.  The birdbath was horrendous.  Epiphany !  I designed a creeping fig at the base to engulf the offensive birdbath turning it into something lovely.
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Knocking at a friend's door for a lunch date I locked eyes on her new wind chime, melted glass beer bottles hanging from fishing line on a bit of tree root, then her.  She merely said, "My step-daughter."  I replied, "It fell and broke into shards."  Now you know the story of that thrift store item.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken at a jobsite this spring.  In the South terrible garden gifts are received with a smiling exclamation, "You shouldn't have, bless your heart."

For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Elements of Simplicity in Garden Design

Plain?  No, totally designed.

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 Embellishment?  Why?  What is that about?  Lack of confidence, knowledge of the wrong sort, arrogance against Providence?

 Tara Turf.  Gravel from the local river.

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Century old bricks made in Milledgeville, GA, an hour's drive.

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I designed the buttress copying an antebellum cotton warehouse seen near Atlanta.

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The walled garden was the client's idea.  

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It was my good fortune to design & site it.

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Oddly, with total confidence.

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Whence does that come?  Truly, a subdivision child ca. 1960, living in a subdivision still.

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Degreed in USA horticulture, not taught how to  design a good garden to save anyone's soul.  Much less my own.

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Off I went, $20 bills stuffed singly & slowly, somehow paying for 2+ decades of studying the best historic gardens across Europe.

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With this project, 300 acres, I learned what the real focus of those decades had been. 

Garden design working with land & home.

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More, mind/body/spirit.

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Land & home, team members with the garden design.  Literally, the best performers with the most talent.

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That college degree in horticulture?  Training to work against the land, ignore every gift of Providence.

Doubt any of my college professors could give a concise sentence about the style of Henry Repton.  In, "Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Repton wrote:

“The perfection of landscape gardening consists in the four following requisites. First, it must display the natural beauties and hide the defects of every situation. Secondly, it should give the appearance of extent and freedom by carefully disguising or hiding the boundary. Thirdly, it must studiously conceal every interference of art. However expensive by which the natural scenery is improved; making the whole appear the production of nature only; and fourthly, all objects of mere convenience or comfort, if incapable of being made ornamental, or of becoming proper parts of the general scenery, must be removed or concealed”.

The garden views, above/below, totally designed.  Providence reigns, human arrogance replaced with a pride in unveiling Nature's gifts.

Henry would know this garden.
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Beyond the Tara Turf, above, is my best design work.  Views across a Natural pasture into woodland.  .
Curiously, this type of gardening is perfect for the starter home on a postage stamp with little budget.  Instead, that type of home is built with an expensive landscape.  Lawn with mowing/chemicals/fertilizers, bushes needing regular pruning & mulching, nothing to shade the house reducing hvac, nor fruit trees to feed the household, certainly not any focal points on axis with the house to feed the spirit.
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Truth, with your full intellect, if you demand more from your landscape you will have it.
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By the time anyone hires me, that choice has been made.  Incredible to work for people who have engaged with their own lives.  Same, when I lecture.  Every chair filled with people who have engaged with their life.  They aren't there for me, nor am I, we are there for the same reason as Henry.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Pics taken at a jobsite earlier this year.
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The capitalized words? Used in the vintage sense.  Underlined sentence at the top?  Describing myself on the front end.  This has not been a boring ride !
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

How to Site the Perfect Backyard Fire Ring

Fabulous begins here, below.  Alas, merely a few minutes old.  Mulch, literally a dead brown color, is prominent while evergreen groundcover, dots of green below, grow into a mass sheet of lush green.

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Slope is nice, not long.  Did you notice the trick creating greater drama & depth?

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Steps lead from wider to narrower.  

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Steps are pre-cut, cheaper to install than natural fieldstones.

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Fire ring with circle of Adirondack chairs.  A no-brainer siting the fire ring on axis with the steps.  

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Chairs are new, curing, and will be stained  to flow with color choices from the home's colors.

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More, this is a double axis.

Looking back at the house, below, the steps & fire ring are sited on axis with the gable's peak.

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Landscape design is not voodoo or what feels 'fun' or includes 'stuff' just-because-you-can-afford/rescue-it, but a true science, with sprinkles of art.

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From your home's architecture most landscape design flows.

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The house dictates, then land, then distance from the house aka 'use', then sun/shade.

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When this garden, above, is ready for entertaining how many guests will realize the myriad layers of thought about the steps or siting the fire ring or choosing color for the Adirondack chairs?  Doesn't matter, they will know it 'feels' right.

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Often enough, true geometry for axis siting cannot be done due to 'blah-blah'.  Surprise, faux geometry works.

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Notice where the Adirondack chairs are sited, in addition to circling the fire ring?

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Perfect distance for resting the feet on the fire ring stones.

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Yes, made the clients sit with me & my general contractor and we adjusted the chairs.  Of course the rest of the team was working/digging/installing irrigation and see us sitting with our feet propped up !  

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Love my job.

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Another design element, fire ring stones are unmortared fieldstones.  Wanted the contrast of rustic, at this distance, to the formality of the home.

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This rustic-ness an element of the 'poverty cycle'.  Studying the best historic gardens across the globe for decades it is obvious which elements are consistent in each.  And, the poverty cycle is one of those elements.

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Neo-similar to Temple Grandin, I pay attention deeply to patterns in visuals of good gardens.

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If you haven't seen the movie about Temple put it in your queue.  Amazing, and humbling, learning from another so different from oneself.

Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara

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Took the pics at a job site this spring.  When is siting a fire ring not about merely siting a fire ring?  Always.   

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

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Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

The Best Table to Choose for Landscapes

Martha Washington never knew how many to expect for dinner.  

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Often she placed planks on sawhorses with a cloth on top.

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Still a good choice.

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Buying a table for your porch, deck, garden?

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Choose simplicity & function.

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Square or rectangular tables are both.

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They can be used singly, placed end-to-end, placed next to a rail or wall.

Round tables don't have that diversity.

Buy 5 of the table, below, and you have choices.

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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

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Top pic Cote de Texas.

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Bottom pics shot stopping for apples at Target.  Left without the apples.  Small bag of measly looking apples was over $7.   Stopped, on the way home, no-extra-gas, at an IGA & bought 5 gorgeous huge gala apples at over a $1 each.  Still crazy but at least worth eating.  

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Friendship is to Bare Witness

No time for cooking she finessed a curried chicken salad over arugula, added fresh fruit and a poppy seed vinaigrette.

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Beautifully served & delicious it's in her DNA along with interiors & gardens.

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She's the friend you don't speak with for months then conversation picks up mid-sentence.

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The friend warping time, hours are minutes.

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The friend knowing every terrible thing about you & loves you more.

In her new home for a year, I hadn't seen it yet.

Her grown child has a life-threatening illness.  Her choices, hard.  She never chooses the easy road.

For a decade I have watched, listened.  Of course we've done a lot of laughing.  How else to get thru?

 First is was her house she surrendered, then a series of other abodes.  Each smaller.  Every time more antiques sold.



Never has she lived without beauty, love, or laughter.  Nor tightly bound to them, tears, frustration, fear.

This is her smallest home yet.  A masters class in which pieces of furniture, art, books to keep.  What is needed, useful, beautiful.

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We have no less fun, or love, than in that huge 1st home.

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Instead, more.

This time she's landed with a roof top garden.  

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Not a garden of her own.

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She's not had a garden of her own for a long time.

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She's never complained

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Hard choices, hard truths, rich living.

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We grieve together, some.  Mostly, we are enriched & grow love in our friendship.  

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As friend, it has been my job to bare witness.

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In return, she's watched my hard choices, ugly truths.

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We speak plain to each other.  True grit.

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Mostly, we laugh.  And love one another.  No matter what.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics at my friend's home.  Sun was hot on my legs/toes and felt like the best hot steam sauna ever.

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Handling Tulips & Dog 'Business' in the South.

She doesn't ask for much.  Her backyard is tiny, she has a beloved large dog, mostly shade, a bit of sun.

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She wants a pretty little garden to look upon from her new screened porch, convenience for her dog's 'business', a few vegetables-herbs, and TULIPS.

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She's awaiting several surgeries: hips, knees.

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No mobility to be in her tiny garden.

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Full-time job.

5 shiny new galvanized garbage cans will hold her veggies-herbs-TULIPS, aka potager.

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Lined up in the sun.

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Everything in her garden designed for unskilled labor, at most 1/month.

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Drip irrigation to her galvanized garbage cans and newly planted shrubs.

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Old House Gardens, and, Brent and Becky's Bulbs are the sources I've given for her TULIP order.

Horticultural humor using the garbage can lids as plant saucers.

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Sign-up for the newsletters, above.

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“A little studied negligence is becoming to a garden.”

— Eleanor Perenyi, 1918-2009, American author of the modern classic Green Thoughts

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Old House Gardens, always begins their newsletters with a quote, above.

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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

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I took the pics last year at James Farmer's store in Perry , GA.

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For Heidi, her dog, a wide gravel path curves thru the entire garden.  Fat gravel, is unable to lodge in a large dog's paws.  Easy to pick up Heidi's 'business' with a pet scooper.  Tulips are mostly annuals in the South, they perform best from containers.  Cannot wait to see which tulips she orders, I know she has a purple fetish.

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My design included the new screened porch and my team completed it earlier this year.  We are sourcing furnishings now.  Yes, we are having fun !

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.

Three Best Mistakes to Make in Your Landscape

Choose to make garden mistakes on the side of too simple, too little, too plain.

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Better to want more later than dig-up, move plantings, replace a now-thought-cheap/tacky-bench, regret the shape-style-color-of.....

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Long term, cute in a garden grates.  Whimsy is better.

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Be wary of 'words' in a garden.  They hold thoughts hostage that should flow randomly, Cole Porter's, Don't Fence Me In.

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Of course there are exceptions to all of the above.  Indeed.

This morning, above/below, Tomato & Hydrangea.  Perfect name for a spiked tea & scones cafe.

Feeding cats & chickens, assessing what the night wrought & will it rain today.

Tomato still in its peat pot with cellophane wrap & tags.  Awaiting a much larger pot & bamboo cane trellis.  Perhaps this weekend?  Hydrangea blossoms hanging lower, petal margins crispier, will I cut to dry or leave to enjoy from the windows?

Calm.  Boring is good.  Idle chit-chat in the head.

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Something new to learn about Social Media.  Facebook cannot control pictures during war.  Images seen cannot be unseen, merely absorbed into a safe, prayerful, place.

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Again, my Garden working for me.

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Have you watched the award winning foreign film, Burnt by the Sun ?    "The film depicts the story of a senior Red Army officer and his family during the Great Purge of the late 1930s in the Stalinist Soviet Union. Like a tragedy bySophocles, Burnt by the Sun takes place over the course of one day."  Wikipedia

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Oddly, it's beautiful. 

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Glad it taught my heart to assimilate what I saw yesterday within mundane ubiquity of beauty in a tomato & hydrangea.  The gift of choices, health to act upon them, perhaps a dinner party in late summer honoring the last of the tomatoes.  With dried hydrangeas in a vase.

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This is freedom.

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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara

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Pics taken in my garden this morning.

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 For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client, local/on-line.

.

Award winning speaker, hire me for your group, local/out-of-state.

                                                                                 .

Books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

.

Tara Dillard & Associates Design: farm to city pied-a-terre.

.

Construction by Award Winning

Shaefer Heard Construction, licensed home-builder, renovation - new construction.  Heard's Landscaping a unit of SHC.  3 decades of service.