Showing posts with label Furniture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Furniture. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

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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Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

Monday, March 31, 2014

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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Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

Friday, March 28, 2014

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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Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

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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Award winning speaker, hire me to speak to your group, local or out-of-state.
                                                                                 .
Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

Friday, February 28, 2014

Drop-Leaf Table

More than interiors, drop-leaf tables


are perfect for covered porches & patios.
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Have often placed a drop-leaf table, cut in half, at each side of a front door.
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Primed, & painted with outdoor paint.
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Amazingly, vintage drop-leaf tables seem to always be low priced in metro Atlanta.
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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.
                                                                                 .
Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Edna St. Vincent Millay: Burn Your Light

Light from the garden, below.


Interesting legs, garden light a few of my favorite things.
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Oh my the criticisms, for decades, for leaning inward, to seemingly insignificant small joys.
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Edna St. Vincent Millay, "My candle burns at both ends; / It will not last the night; / But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends — / It gives a lovely light!"
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I met Peter Pan yesterday, and he wasn't lost.  With a bigger life I doubt I would have known.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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My bedroom, above, renovation still needs yellow/white French check draperies a la Charles Faudree.   Walls, Benjamin Moore - Sundress.  Hence you won't see more till then!  Painting by, Christine Gholson.  Truly, the light in my home is enriched by the garden.
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A quote in NYTimes long ago, "The more you go inward the more you outwardly connect." Pure permission, be-who-you-are.
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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.
                                                                                 .
Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon
  

Friday, February 21, 2014

Overdose your Theme: Wicker Weakness




Overflow wicker, above, yet they're used at least 1/month.


Vintage wicker, above/below, glass topper for the sagging table top, below.  Adore the chipping paint.


Small wicker baskets, below, perfect for quick trips with keys, sunglasses, cell phone.


White willow English wicker basket, above, for Laskett.  Yes, he is moody.  What can I do, we're in love.


Tucked in the bedroom, above.  Mahogany Sheraton buffet arrived this color, & marked down 2x at the antique shop.
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Tool Bouquet over my fireplace.....
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Overdose Your Theme is merely an excuse for,  Wicker Weakness.
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At Lowe's this week the cashier asked, "Can I feel your basket?".  Girlfriend has Wicker Weakness too.  Along with great taste, it was a handmade Amish basket that day.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Most of the wicker came from Thift Stores or yard sales.
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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.
                                                                                 .
Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Little Input, Big Impact

A bit of meadow, stretch of wild wood, bench.  Done.


In the depths of winter, still, one of the best invitations.
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Pictorial definition, LITTLE INPUT, BIG IMPACT.
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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.
                                                                                 .
Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Front Porch: Color Choices for Views & Guests

Built in the late 50's for the Queen's sister, Mount Corbett has a few original pieces remaining, below.
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This table wasn't designed for meals, propping feet, or bridge.
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This table leveraged conversation, cocktails, cigarettes (I can hear, & smell, the Zippo lighters shutting), & considering the era, 'stuff'.
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More than views, colors were mutedly chosen to show case people.
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How I would love to go back to the early years and see the clothes, hair, jewels.



Instead,


alone on the veranda, I was the color.
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My Ken Doll did  construction & landscaping at Mount Corbett a few years ago, hence my afternoon lolling in the pool & enjoying views while he gabbed with friends at the estate.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken this month in Jamaica.  We both wanted to prune the hedge blocking the views.  Alas, or maybe good for you, Mount Corbett is for sale.
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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.
                                                                                 .
Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon

Friday, February 14, 2014

Table Top Heat

Home Depot has propane outdoor heaters in a half-pint size.


Table top sized.  Easily moved.  Where have I been?
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Lost provenance of the pic.
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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.
                                                                                 .
Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon.

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Using Color Restraint with Intensity

Intense restraint and another example of the color trinity green-brown-white.


Restraint so intense the terrace has become a proscenium for guests.
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Subtlety so rich the bluestone & granite become focal points.
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Humbling execution.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic Wendy Posard and Associates.  Definite teamwork between architect & owners.
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2 Tara Dillard questions a patio must answer, 'Is this patio so fabulous I must see inside the house?', 'Is this patio so incredible I must see the garden?'.  Yes & yes.

Monday, January 20, 2014

Simple Manipulations: How Many Do You See?

Do you see the manipulations, below?


Seating to create a gathering spot, figs for summer shade/winter sun over the benches, drystack stone wall cut into a slight slope forcing foot traffic into defined directions, formal boxwood framing pastoral views, tapering stone wall allowing only small machinery into the pasture from this direction, gravel terrace ready for men-trucks-heavy equipment, horses, or a catered soiree for 100.
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And, of course, it must all look a century old, be easy to maintain, and provide interest 24/7.
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When something appears simple, it rarely is.  Same is true of people.
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Pic at a jobsite last week.
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Do you know the maximum pollinator habitat, above?  Seriously, can you verbalize what creates the best pollinator habitat above?  Answer at bottom.
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Being simple requires each of the decades I've been learning about gardens.  Better, being simple in a garden, takes me where Joseph Campbell says our eternity is.  Ironic, in this American life/era, to have found my bliss in work.
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  1. Joseph Campbell - Wikiquote

    en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell
    Where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own .... And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life.
  2. More, being simple connects me to the message/life work of Wendell Berry & E.M. Forster.  
  3. Wendell Berry Earns Highest Humanities Award, Lectures on ...

    sojo.net/.../wendell-berry-earns-highest-humanities-award-lectures-econo...
    Apr 24, 2012 - On Monday evening, Wendell Berry delivered the 41st annual ... The title hinges on E.M. Forster's 1910 novel Howards End, which Berry said, ...
  4. .
  5.  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.
                                                                                     .
    Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon.
  6. Answer to question, above,  High density/low density, open meadow/dense woodland.

Monday, January 6, 2014

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.
                                                                                 .
                                                          Garden books by Tara Dillard, Amazon.

Friday, December 27, 2013

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.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

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.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

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.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Layers of Green are Best in Garden Design

Layers of green always work.

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Flowers.  Give-me-flowers-or-give-me-ugly seems to be the starter gardener mindset.
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Layers of green are pretty all year vs. a season.  Layers of green emit ion exchanges of serenity.
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I can assure you choosing layers of green vs. flowers is, "The spreading wide of narrow Hands To gather Paradise—", "I dwell in Possibility..." by Emily Dickinson.
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Odd how most of Garden Design is counterintuitive.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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How do I know these things?  Queen of the flower method of garden design 12-step program.  No, I will not enable you.  My goal is to help you get rid of those pink elephants in your landscape.
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pic via Pinterest.
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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.

Saturday, December 7, 2013

Ridiculous Fun vs. Doing-the-Right-Thing

Tell me again why Americans are so wedded to green meatball foundation plantings.
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Proof, below, you can still have those green meatballs at the foundation.


Today's assignment: In your mind, take away your foundation plantings, replace with furnishings-gravel-urns-plinths, from above, in any permutation that is ridiculous fun & fabulous.  Really, do this, complete the assignment.  You have the rest of the day.
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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.
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Pic via Pinterest.

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Port Cachere: Before + After

I was hired to 'refresh' the landscape.
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Leaving the port cachere as-is was not an option.  This is their main family door.  
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We went shopping at the Americas Mart in downtown Atlanta last month sourcing merchandise.  Not everything had arrived by this week but enough to get started, below.


This table is temporary, above-below, a very nice temporary.  Soon, once a vintage large French buffet is sourced I'll get you more pics.


I made do with the few pots/flowers she had last Monday, above/below.


Small moments of beauty, above.
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As she gets into her car to leave, and then returns, her port cachere is embracing arms for going into the world & returning from the world.  A matriarch in every layer of her life, she has a lot going on and appreciates all Providence provides.  It's in the small moment thanks are deeply felt.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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pics taken at jobsite last Monday.