Showing posts with label KISS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label KISS. Show all posts

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Color in the Garden

Which part of this doesn't speak?

A full narrative.
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Great metaphor.  It's more important what we say 'no' to in the landscape.  And life.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pic via Slim Paley - A Classic Combo

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Curb Appeal: Color, Pots, Lights

Pair of pots, pair of lights, pair of sidelights, black front door.


                                                       Works in myriad situations.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pics taken at a client last week.  KISS.  Keep it simple sweetie.
                                    

Monday, November 26, 2012

Easier Than House Plants


Vintage plant stand, below.
             
Why be normal?
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Blue/White is the theme for this Florida room.  Time to maintain houseplants?  Not on her agenda!  Quirky projects demand quirky ideas.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Vanishing Threshold with Liz Caan

Eye catching, welcoming, simple, confident, a statement, sense of place, timeless, elegant.


Inside Liz Caan Interiors, below,


the Vanishing Threshold frames exterior views & is a backdrop for her aesthetic.
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It's the biggest impact when you can do all these things with the fewest amount of materials.  'Elegance is refusal.'
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Garden & Be Well,             XO Tara
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Pics Liz Caan Interiors

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Which is Cheaper: Yew or Perennial ?


Low maintenance & affordable are ubiquitous in a mission statement.


Why have a perennial garden?  Requires skilled labor to maintain & most disappear in winter.  Per square foot & volume & maintenance perennials are ridiculously expensive compared to the long life-size-maintenance expense of yew topiary.
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Yews survive centuries, perennials survive years.
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Of course Garden Centers & Design-Build-Maintain businesses promote perennials.  Perennial flowers are intoxicating.  And important to their recurring  bottom line.
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Garden & Be Well,             XO Tara
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Went less maintenance than the above.  Used understory trees & groundcover (no mowing) in a checkerboard pattern in the front garden for a young couple with babies in their starter ranch home.  How did they get so smart so young?  Me?  I planted zillions of perennials at their age.  Now, only the hardy (iris, dianthus 'bath pink', lenten rose, fern, peony) remain.  Zillions more blooms with my flowering shrubs & trees & vines & groundcovers.  Love my garden but zero time for much maintenance and became disgusted with the thief of time/money with perennials/annuals and don't get Puppet Barbuda started on the dreadful eco impact of perennials/annuals.  You know, greenhouses, heating/cooling, water, soils, pallets, insecticides, fungicides, fertilizers, 18-wheeler trucks.
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Pic via My French Country Home

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Quietly Good


New construction completed earlier this year, below.  House & garden stand sentry as old souls.


Shadows fall on their proscenium as atonement.


As if they think, "Of course we abide here.  This is ours, the rent we pay is grace."
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Garden & Be Well,         XO Tara
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Pics taken at a jobsite last week.  Asked the client for a walk through with both of them.  Wanting to know, "How are the parts working?"  A lot of challenges with this site & no room for error.  Exactly my type of fun.

Monday, October 22, 2012

Creating Layers

View into the garden, below.  Pic taken at jobsite last week.


 Not mature yet, above, but doing its job.  You don't know what that job was.  Means the job was done right.


My job?  Hide the view (pic taken 2 years ago) of the dependencies, above, create mystery, pull your feet to investigate, be a proscenium for all weathers, fill the spirit of any mood, provide entertainments for small groups, large gatherings & yet be easy to maintain while providing maximum pollinator habitat for potager, bees, & yet more.  Now we're in the realm of my Landscape Design classes.
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Every step in Landscape Design is counterintuitively simple.  
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Garden & Be Well,           XO Tara
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My basket is in yet another pic.  It was a 2 basket day.  Did you know I rate my days by how many baskets are needed?  The best days are 4 basket days.  Means I've been designing & lecturing & overseeing an installation.
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Last visit home my sister told me it was infantile and not appropriate for a woman my age to use baskets.  In fact, the little basket I was using embarrassed her.  We were having Sunday lunch at the club with mom.  It's a joy to irritate her without trying.  When the server was clearing away she told me how cute my basket was & what a great idea to use it.  Sensing the Cheshire smile my sister received from me?  Obvious I'm the younger sister.

Friday, September 21, 2012

Princess Sturdza & Making Shade

Princess Sturdza's home, Le Vasterival, and garden in France were a hilarious welcome.  She was waiting for us standing on a tree stump holding a long sharp stick.  Describing the treasures awaiting we were also told 'never' to set foot in one of her beds.  Within the hour a silly German man leaned forward to ask her a question.  As quickly as his evil-offending-foot tapped her bed she whacked it with the stick.  Hard.

 We arrived, above, I still see her & hear the crunch of gravel.
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Last nite was my SHADE lecture.  Instead of the ubiquitous pics & ridiculous focus on shade plants blah-blah-ad nauseum bore.  I focused on making shade where desired, and the pruning away of shade where it's too thick.  

Like the Princess my home leads with a bay window, above.  
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It's tiny, faces full sun, a street & several neighbors.  A trinity of unpleasantness easily landscape designed into a charming Bay Terrace garden with gravel, shade, focal point, seating & privacy from the neighborhood view.    
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Who's the Princess?
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Garden & Be Well,       XO Tara
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Top pic from internet, my Le Vasterival pics are still slides.  Bottom pic my bay window yesterday.  A great place to read, use wireless, lunch/dinner, journal, enjoy the birds-blooms-filtered lite.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Conservatory Built With Existing Wall



Too many garden walls haven't had their

Conservatory attached.
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Today's assignment: walk your garden, exactly as Mrs. Wilcox did at Howard's End, and decide where your Conservatory is to be placed.
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Garden & Be Well,        XO Tara
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Pic via Belgian Pearls.   

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Wickedly Neo-Unprepossessing

Across Europe the best gardens, with attenuated home of course, invite you thru a neo-unprepopressing entry.
 Arriving, above, I knew it was a carriage house or guest cottage.  How?  They told me I would lecture in the porte-cochere.  Executed to perfection, below right. 
 Whoever owned the estate HAD ME at the curb. 
 In the porte-cochere, above.
The bench is a metaphor for the house and garden.  Detailed, quality, elegant, enduring, comfortable, welcoming.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Did my 4 lectures in 2 days last weekend in the porte-cochere, at Sugarloaf Country Club Garden Tour & Boat Show.  This house & garden donated proceeds to Mothers & Daughters Against Cancer.  Of course I have more pics for you.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

How To Create Exterior Simplicity

The hedge is brilliant.  Vine on the risers is more brilliant.
Topiaried green meatballs are fun.  Terra cotta on the table?  Perfection.
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Notice the lack of pattern on the textiles?  Be careful with exterior textile pattern.  Very careful.
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Many interior rooms look onto this view.  Without going inside I know it's an obvious Vanishing Threshold.  Without going inside I know the owners.
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How little can the landscape have and hold together?  Whoever 'tossed' out this much simplicity is good.  Very good.
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Low maintenance, weekly blow & trimming 2x/year. 
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Choose a color theme.  It should flow from the interiors. 
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic via Cote de Texas.  When I worked at a nursery one assistant manager was incredibly talented at displays.  BUT, we would always beg him to stop.  He would create the above, BUT keep going.  On his off day we would cleanse the abundance. 

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

A Slope In Italy: Drystack Stone

Olive trees sold long ago. These stones have retained this slope for centuries. No mortar.A new Drystack Stone wall begun by a recent DIY client.
Copy brilliance, I do.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Cannot wait for my client to finish their wall & send a pic.
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A previous contractor told me (with attitude), at a jobsite, this type of wall could not be built, "It has to be mortared." Should have quit using him with that job. But he was young & I thought I was mentoring. Alas. Months later 2 women clients (they don't know each other) called me in the same week, using the same word, misogynist, about this contractor. I'm sure he's missing my referrals.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Copy Landscapes

Resist the temptation to be UNIQUE in your landscape. It will slow you down, and fail. You & your landscape are inherently unique. It's already there. Lipstick-on-a-pig when you 'add' uniqueness.
I fell in love with Susanne Hudson's little cloche's, miniature tools & wood shelves, above.
All year I've been collecting, above/below,
old wood shelves, antique English lead garden pieces & little cloches. Soon, they will be in my new conservatory. Just like Susanne Hudson.
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Poppets, everything in my garden is copied from somewhere. EVERYTHING.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Every effort at uniqueness does not fail, obviously. Don't let me sway you from trying something deep in your passionate soul bursting to get out. Ironically, uniqueness arrives in my garden when I DON'T try.

Monday, November 29, 2010

Still Life: Creating Effortless Beauty With Your Ephemera

Arriving at Pecan Orchard's home/garden a couple of weeks ago, below.Carrying landscape design paraphernalia my goal was to simply unload it from my arms. You know, the chaos of arrival.
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The pic isn't styled but it could be a catalog shot for: the chair, the boots, umbrella, baskets or perhaps a brick manufacturer.
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It would be fun to see a series of pics, taken throughout the year, at Pecan Orchard's iron chair. Without words the story of a family's life.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Poppets, did you notice my fabulous umbrella? My dear girlfriend brought it back from Spain for me. Alas, beloved girlfriend is moving to London at New Years. Proud of her professional successes but it stinks having her move so far.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Garden Room: 101

Before construction, Susanne Hudson & I knew our Garden Room was fabulous. Understatement yes? We designed architecture & landscape, decorated & styled with only items junked, rescued, borrowed. (Well, we did buy tin roofing, gravel & a few pots.)
Tiny, potent. Peek thru, below, see our potting table?


Alone, or with girlfriends, this Garden Room is a life changer. Virginia Woolf territory.


Delightfully different views into each side.


Leftover pavers from edging the gravel. Voila, a table. And a meadow, does it get any better? Yes, hearing the crunch of gravel, smelling the fragrance of meadow & woodland, sound of rain on tin, seeing the chandelier & lamps on at nite. Knowing you have a bolt hole.
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My favorite part? Building the garden & Garden Room with Susanne. And this was work?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Built for the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival, on site at Le Jardin Blanc in Douglasville, GA. Poppets, I had to spend several nites with Susanne while we created this Garden Room. Attended a Gala 1 evening. Progressive dinner another nite. Behind the scenes for a huge wedding at Le Jardin Blanc another nite. Mexican & margaritas another nite. Garden tour & Thai food 1 nite. Oh my, FUN.
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Want a Garden Room? Susanne & I can create one for you, contact here.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

TUB: BEFORE & AFTER

23 years old, below, never used. Dahlings, I NEEDED a soak after gardening. Collecting affordable ideas from client bathrooms across the years. My new bath, below.
Clawfoot tub, circa 1910, was in my garden many years.
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Planned to paint the tub but its rust looked so sassy once inside it will remain.
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Easter afternoon I have grand plans. Gardening for hours then inside to SASSY. Epsom salts & a garden book by Beverley Nichols.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara


Wednesday, March 10, 2010

SIMPLICITY

This is my weakness: leaf litter mulch. No edging. Moss & lichens. Evergreen flowering shrubs. Petals on the ground. Patches of bare earth. Bench & bush. Low meadow leading to wildwood. Fragrance. Sound of wind thru leaves. Birds. Beauty.
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Do you know yours?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic from Castle Renswoude Utrecht, Netherlands via It's About Time.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

VANISHING THRESHOLD: Lighting

When it moves outside it's a trend. Fabulous lanterns. First Rules of Landscape Design: copy, simplicity, repetition.
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SENSUOUS, above. Crunch of gravel, trilling water, warmth of candle light, hearing refreshments poured from a pretty pitcher, feel of foliage upon your arm, repetition of color house-furniture-shutters-arbor-fountain-gravel, scale, flow, texture, vanishing threshold.
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Beauty w/Low Maintenance in the garden is sensuous & feng shui.
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Design, above, for yourself. Grace IS a destination.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic, Michael Partino via Brabourne Farms

Sunday, December 27, 2009

IT IS UNCOMPLICATED

This landscape had me at its gravel. Did you notice this landscape requires no skilled maintenance?
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Pillow? Already telling us something about the home's interior.
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Vines adding lushness without taking up space.
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Pot clusters created as still life's, art. Not some stupid notion of need-a-garden-idea-here.
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Do you feel the pots, bench, plantings, gravel leading you to the back door?
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Sense how this garden room can be as easily rearranged as an interior room?
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This tiny garden room gives a huge sense of the woman living here. Does your garden look like your inner self?
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Do you think this garden was professionally designed? Yes? Me too.
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If this were your garden room, and you didn't have it professionally designed would it look this good? More importantly would it have cost so little to implement? Of greater importance would it be as easy, cost effective, to maintain? Topping the importance list, would you have created a garden room inviting you to use it?
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PUPPET BARBUDA loves this Vanishing Threshold garden.
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Pic from the movie, It's Complicated.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara aka PUPPET BARBUDA

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

KISS: Keep It Simple Sweetie

How little can you do in your landscape and have it evoke in picaresque who you are? Splendiferous you.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Thank you Krystol for this pic