Landscape Design Zero Plants: Before & After

Landscapes take 3 + years to look good, on average. Most gardens get stuck in the '+'.

Unfinished, this garden is ready for showtime. Those pallets of stone, above, MAKE the garden, below. Ha, no plants, yet a garden is born. Why?

Landscape Design 'listens' to the site.
The biggest focal point in a garden? Your home. Vanishing Threshold.

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Consider: paint colors, light fixtures, shutters, doors, views into windows, turning windows into doors, getting rid of disgusting foundation plantings, pathways to move the eye + foot thru your garden, land stewardship, how to be in the garden for pleasure (tea-wine-canapes-luncheon-reading ipad-etc.), historical concepts of landscape design, thriftiness, no watering once established, no chemicals ever, no fertilizing once organically stabilized, groundcovers instead of mulch, succession planting, something coming into bloom throughout the year, canopy trees, understory trees, evergreen walls, & more.

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Consider all of the above & you won't wait 3 years, or 3 seconds, for a beautiful garden.

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Proof is in the pics above.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Look at the new frontdoor again. See what I did? Took out the transom, replaced with a taller door. Getting rid of that subdivisiony horrendous aspect, ca. 1970's, of windows/door at same height. Guess how we chose the color for the frontdoor? (Another post.)

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Eco Gardening is a SMALL concept. Vanishing Threshold is how I create a garden.

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(Puppet Barbuda has zero attitude, she's all PUPPET'ude !)

Blooms, Wicker, Toile

Bringing home blooms this week, below, in the back of Tess.Blooms - Wicker - Toile !!

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Puppet Barbuda delights in trinities.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Tess is my little van. She has 6 doors & is tricked-out for ALL things garden designing, lecturing, touring, shopping. Tess brakes for Open Gardens with Tea & Scones.

Outdoor Kitchen

Belgard does outdoor kitchens, below.All price points.
Myriad styles.
Landscaped PROPERLY each is unique.
Alas, Belgard's marketing pics, above/below, create an entirely new meaning for Bad To The Bone.
Please, overlook the landscapes (I am, even as they harm my profession) and consider Belgard's fabulous outdoor kitchen options in both configuration & materials.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Landscape design with fabulosity & Bad To The Bone means what it's supposed to! Pics via Belgard catalogue, which you can order online at their site.

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If you are handy Belgard outdoor kitchens are a DIY project.

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Puppet Barbuda has a theory about bad Landscape Design (poor darling Puppet Barbuda, offended at the least infraction to her profession) in landscape marketing materials. Testosterone-on-wheels-mow-blow-go does most of the purchasing & construction. Companies cater to who is at THEIR cash register.

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Puppet Barbuda wants companies to cater to who generates many of their sales. Why overlook the Landscape Designer? Why overlook women, typically age 50+, putting in fabulous landscapes? Do you think women don't do hardscape? Do you think they don't grill? It's already known women are the dominate purchasers at nurseries.

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Puppet Barbuda thinks it's odd to sell a product bashing an industry, Landscape Design, that will raise sales figures. Puppet Barbuda wants to know, Is There Anybody Out There?

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FYI, I spoke with the fabulous guys from Belgard while lecturing at the St. Louis, MO, Home/Garden show earlier this month. Was totally Puppet Barbuda with them. Guess what? They listened. Hmm, no worries, Puppet Barbuda will keep at it, ha, just in case they were placating her.

Landscape Views

"The aim of an artist is not to solve a problem irrefutably, but to make people love life in all its countless, inexhaustible manifestations." Leo Tolstoy The subdivision is tiny, my frontyard minuscule, above & below.

Ideas, field gathered in gardens across Europe, books, & friends gardens.My office ensorceled with a crenellated hedge, above.
View from my garage, above. Every window & door, the same choice; beauty. I didn't realize making a choice for beauty, from all views, would become a moat of grace around life. Affect how I design landscapes, interact with people, gain perspective.

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Choosing beauty is choosing grace.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Helen Mirren is Tolstoy's wife here, loved this movie. Poor PUPPET BARBUDA driving about town, exhausted at the views of homes & gardens with the worst possible choice, keeping the landscape the builder put in. It's not about getting rid of everything and starting over in a landscape. Plants can be moved & bedlines changed. Yes, PUPPET BARBUDA knows this would be a fabulous TV garden show. Using What You Have, & Rescue, Landscape Design !!!

Sir Hardy Amies, Constance Spry, David Hicks

Constance Spry, below, of floral fame. A nice article about her in yesterday's NYTimes.With her, ca. 1960, Sir Hardy Amies.

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A decade (longer?) ago I visited a fabulous (you know, like, cool, shazam, wow, the best EVER) teeny garden in the Cotswolds; its owner absent. Leaving, my guide said, "The owner is couturier to the Queen." Yeah, whatever, I'm an American & you think I'll fall for anything.

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I bought, David Hicks, My Kind Of Garden, Edited by Ashley Hicks, last year, it includes Sir Hardy Amies garden. Bingo, my beloved little garden.

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In the pic, above, it lists Sir Hardy Amies as, "...the clothing designer..."

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When I can sweet-talk my way into using a SLIDE PROJECTOR in this dreadful PowerPoint era it's pure selfishness to see my dear, darling, perfect gardens in rich, soul satisfying colors. Sir Hardy Amies garden tops the list, of course there is Helen Dillon's garden too, and.....

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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My dream PowerPoint presentation? 4 machines, facing the 4 compass points, in a huge auditorium. You'll be sitting amongst the garden: looking forward-backward-left-right. Poppets, how many gardens do you think can be shown this way? It's exactly how I design gardens, every direction beautiful. Those preaching: sustainable, eco, green, organic, pollinator & etc.... set a very low bar and harm PUPPET BARBUDA'S beloved Landscape Design profession. Gardens must be all of these things and a Vanishing Threshold with the interiors of your home, and, low maintenance. Anything less than epiphanical and the giver of grace, well, Puppet Barbuda is sad for those 'poor unfortunate souls' living with such a landscape.

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Indeed, I asked my lecture venue in St. Louis, MO next year for 4 PowerPoint projectors, he laughed!!!!

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Pic taken from the NYTimes article.

Squire Mushroom vs Wine Bottle Girl

"James Gillray's etching 'Delicious Weather', 1808, mocks the middle-class villa owner, satirized elsewhere as the newly rich 'Squire Mushroom', for his attempts to make an elegant landscape in a 2-acre garden." J Fearnley-Whittingstall
Who caters to the man, above? TESTOSTERONE ON WHEELS MOW-BLOW-GO & COMMODIFY EVERYTHING I TOUCH IN YOUR LANDSCAPE PHILOSOPHY.

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Poppets, PUPPET BARBUDA, has been buying clothes, before reading/seeing the above, she declared her style: French, early 19th century, white wig, leggings, & dare I say, a bit of modest cleavage.
From the Dining Room, above. Seen only when standing near, not while seated. Solution? A floral arrangement of wine bottles & accouterments, softly lit from below. A cornucopia to Wine Bottle Girl's theme.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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How could I resist mixing these topics? The difference between 'Squire Mushroom' & 'Wine Bottle Girl' ? Wine Bottle Girl lives Cole Porter's, "It must be FUN". Poppets, she has zero time-energy-will to impress. PUPPET BARBUDA finds Squire Mushroom & his minions tiresome, to the point of harmful, to her beloved industry.

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Top pic & quote taken from, THE GARDEN An English Love Affair One Thousand Years of Gardening, by Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall.

NYTimes & Anne Raver: Backwards Design

30 years with a beautiful flower garden, Page Dickey, finally creates a fabulous Landscape Design. "We need an overall plan: more green architecture & less plants.", she says. How? "The first step is to replace perennials with shrubs & ground covers."Page has arrived. ATONEMENT.

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Anne Raver, yesterday's NYTimes, knew to lead her delicious garden column with these facts. It's human nature to garden backwards. Flowers are seductive.

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Magazines & nurseries pimp flowers.

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PUPPET BARBUDA is miffed her industry, Landscape Design, is tainted with the Flower Pimp industry.

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How many flowers do you see, above, in my conservatory?

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Poppets, did you see the pic of Page Dickey? I want to look like her when I'm 70, sexy gorgeous !!

Building Your Garden Room: 10 Steps

Think, cha-ching, this isn't for you? Poppets, PUPPET BARBUDA will not let you off easy. That measly excuse of no money? HOW TO build your new GARDEN ROOM:

1. Make decision to build a GARDEN ROOM. (Odd, this is the most important step)

2. Get envelope, label it, GARDEN ROOM. (Leftover paper money 2-3/week goes here.)

3. Tell all your friends, "I'm building a GARDEN ROOM."

4. Look at everything in your path with RESCUE eyes.

5. Bring it home. Old fencing, stone, brick, concrete, wood, house parts.

6. Get paint from the rejects at hardware store.

7. Accessorize from thrift store & sale items: TJMAXX, Marshall's, Ross.

8. Pots/urns from garage sales, big box store sales.

9. Put the right man in your project. (Alas, difficult.)

10. Hire man, & the same day, invite girlfriends to your Garden Tea Party.

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Take step #1 and your GARDEN ROOM will appear.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Charlotte Moss, pic, above. OMG, wonderful, & doable! This pic has come across my path at least a zillion times.

Tables: Square or Rectangle

Still life, pot collection, flagstone terrace in dirt, groundcovers, vines, conifers, meadow, high & low density for maximum pollinator habitat, contrasting textures & colors(foliage), color of window trim, timelessness, Vanishing Threshold, rectangular table, & which continent is this..... (Did you really know so much was in this gorgeous pic?)Puppet Barbuda cannot abide round tables for terrace/patio/deck.
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Puppet Barbuda loves square or rectangular tables; they are so flexible. Pushed next to your home, a rail, edge of terrace, behind a bench.
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Puppet Barbuda loves the flexibility of 2 square tables; used separately or pushed together.
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Imagine the pic, above, with a round table. Ick.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Tara Question: Pic of your patio/deck should answer, "Is this so wonderful I must see the garden & is this so wonderful I must go inside & see the interiors?"
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Pic from Dana Gallagher. Puppet Barbuda knows there are exceptions to her round-table-disdain.

Fabulous Green

Puppet Barbuda discovered Vertical Lawns, below, in Italy. Vertical Lawns are over 2,000 years old. Modern interpretation of Vertical Lawn, below.

DISGUSTING.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Top pic via La Dolfina.

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Puppet Barbuda is incredulous a wall of 'green': involving 18 wheeler trucks, greenhouses, soil with peat moss & etc, attractive to weeds, needs watering, will die if it becomes shaded, containers made from an oil base, labor/expense to attach containers to wall... is shown off as desirable.

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Who is Puppet Barbuda? Landscape Design critic of course. If movies, books, paintings, music, clothes, perfumes, video games, & etc, have loving critics, shouldn't landscape design?

Overdose Your Theme

Contemporary home? Contemporary rails.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Atlanta numbers few contemporary style homes, yet can claim to be the capital of contemporary homes with colonial rails. PUPPET BARBUDA wonders, is that disgusting, embarrassing, or both?

Repetition

Puppet Barbuda took awhile to trust repetition, a landscape design tool. Wasted years. Puppet Barbuda was stubborn. Still is.

Puppet Barbuda was too smart to COPY !!!!!

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Alas, years in the wilderness, and Puppet Barbuda DID NOT recreate a new wheel.

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REPETITION, if it works in one landscape it will work in your landscape. Each time repetition repeats....................IT'S NEW & UNIQUE at each repeat.

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Of course poppets you must adjust for plant zone, money, maintenance, & time. Ironically, copying $$$ landscapes rewards you, often, with better results than the original.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics from Susanne Hudson's garden last month.

Landscape Design: Pollinators

Vanishing Threshold increases pollinator habitat. 1 in 3 mouthfuls of food are the result of insect pollination.
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Circa 1996, the USDA wrote, "...impending pollination crisis."
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Ha, not in my garden!! Why? Mix of plants, mix of heights, mix of density, ponds, composting, no chemicals, no fertilizer, . Everything pollinators need.
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Major cause of pollinator decline? Loss of habitat. Subdivisions across USA with traditional lawn/foundation plantings & their maintenance. Not opinion, scientific fact.
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Testosterone On Wheels Landscaping vs. Matriarchal Landscaping.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Huge topic, more info at POLLINATOR.org

Foundation Plantings are Ridiculous

Why a stupid row of evergreen meatballs when you, below, can have this? Why give away your real estate? Foundation plantings are a tired concept.

One espaliered shrub adds a lushness legions of sheared green meatballs will never approach.

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In your mind, at this moment, take away your foundation plantings. Good, have fun destroying a landscape and creating your garden. One matching your interiors, architecture, intellect & spirit.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken when I was in England. Got rid of my foundation plantings over 15 years ago, la-ti-da.

SASSY ATTRACTION

PUPPET BARBUDA adores sassy. Especially these poodle-puff-on-a-tail topiaries. Though plinths would be nice. Antique cobblestones, dear ones? The evergreen hedge? ODG. Improper pruning & voila a scraggly hideous dreadful ugly ridiculous base.
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Perhaps the pruner wears a polyester white leisure suit, a lightening bolt & TCB symbol on its back? PUPPET BARBUDA hears Elvis...."we're caught in a trap...." Exactly, the hedge is trapping this gorgous home.
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PUPPET BARBUDA would keep the hedge, moving it of course, pruning it properly creating dense evergreen lushness top to bottom.
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It's one thing to prune your own hedge, and screw it up, but PUPPET BARBUDA holds great contempt for anyone paid to prune this badly. It harms the reputation of her BELOVED LANDSCAPE INDUSTRY.
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Of course more but gotta go, PUPPET BARBUDA is busy this morning.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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ODG? Unbidden from the soul. PUPPET BARBUDA loves this house, in fact wants to live in it, yet the hedge, oh dear God.

POT WORK

Why plant when the pots

look this good?

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Choose wisely & never plant, water, fertilize pots again.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken during an Italian study tour of gardens, yes, a warm sunny summer afternoon.

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Note from PUPPET BARBUDA: Sustainability of annuals? Not. Wholesale greenhouses with heaters, swamp coolers, irrigation, manual labor, trucking of soil, containers, fertilizers, & more. Then, trucking of annuals to retail sites, more labor, watering, losses, then driven home to final user, more watering, potting soil, fertilizer, labor. Hmm.

A LITTLE WEED PLEASE

Where are the weeds? Gorgeous? Yes, in a Stepford Wife banality (honestly, remove the 'b' from the previous word). Ha, not even garlic chives or marigolds at the edges to repel bugs. PUPPET BARBUDA contemplated deeply about this garden. Conclusion? It lacks ROMANCE. Yet, PUPPET BARBUDA adored the romance of the settings in the rest of the movie, It's Complicated.

Susanne Hudson is using true landscape bamboo fencing for my new window treatments, above. A soft burlap for dust ruffle & chair cushions.

My garden tub, above,

is coming inside, above.

The strength of girlfriends, above. My 2 new gravel terraces? (5 tons, $410) Specifically for more girlfriend action!

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PUPPET BARBUDA has added Hollywood movie garden stylist to her dream job resume. It looks, top pic, like a vegetable garden in a CHEMICAL COMPANY ad circa 1962. Even butterflies, honey bees & lady bugs knew this was a no fly zone. Ugh.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics from the movie, It's Complicated.

PUPPET BARBUDA GARDEN CENTER SHOPPING

PUPPET BARBUDA, landscape critic, was invited by a dear friend to a soiree at a bonafide retail garden center this week. PUPPET was sooooooooooo excited. In PUPPET's world plants are wholesale & arrive in trucks with vigorous helpful men. Retail garden center experiences are rare. (Yes, PUPPET purchases from big box hardware store plant departments 3-4x's/yr. Are they garden centers?) PUPPET BARBUDA's mental math, "What is my spending cap at the garden center today?"
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Instead, a preening tragedy. The garden center, inside, was dramatically static, by a decade, or more. Garden merchandise is more tempting at TJMaxx or Marshall's or Ross. (PUPPET shops those places for her garden many times/year!)
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How to fix this? PUPPET BARBUDA wishes Atlanta interior design blogger, Things That Inspire, would be invited to decorate/merchandise inside the garden center. In exchange? Promotion of her work & blog. The garden center is tight on money in a tight economy, understandably.
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PETERSHAM NURSERIES in England is where PUPPET BARBUDA vicariously shops. PUPPET is on PETERSHAM's email list & adores each missive. Their pics (they're on Flickr too) have her smitten. At least the distance to PETERSHAM's saves PUPPET money.
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PUPPET BARBUDA is horrified a new gardener, or non-gardener, would enter the Garden-Center-of-Preening-Tragedy and think, "This is what gardening is about?" Though a fabulous remnant remained from another era, CUSTOMER SERVICE. Oh, the poor dears had not much to sell.
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When PUPPET BARBUDA saw the pic, above, via Dust Jacket Attic, she thought it had more to sell to gardeners than the garden center stuffed with merchandise she visited this week. PUPPET BARBUDA's heart is on her sleeve about gardening & wants each element of the profession, & you the gardener, to prosper.
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It should be easy to have a sustainable, eco, organic, low-maintenance, spirit filling, beautiful garden. PUPPET BARBUDA would survive without hers but she wouldn't THRIVE.
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Life is short, thrive.
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Garden & Be Well, XO PUPPET BARBUDA aka Tara
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(Mental math? Thrifty PUPPET BARBUDA was willing to go $200 max, instead, ZERO)

IS YOUR HOA DOA?

PUPPET BARBUDA, this blog's favorite landscape critic, sniffed delightedly reading a review of the film "The Lovely Bones." A.O. Scott is one of her favorite film critics. "The novel is conceived with enough audacity to make this gimmick intriguing, and executed with enough art to make it effective." A.O.Scott
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PUPPET BARBUDA reads, "The landscape is conceived with enough audacity to make this gimmick intriguing, and executed with enough art to make it effective."
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A.O.Scott is a garden designer! PUPPET BARBUDA loves his trinity of questions a good landscape answers.
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Is the landscape audacious?
Is the landscape intriguing?
Is the landscape art?
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PUPPET BARBUDA is disgusted with typical homeowner association rules pertaining to landscapes.
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Older HOA's, especially, devalue property. How? Keeping landscapes in a timewarp of SHAG CARPET, AVOCADO GREEN APPLIANCES, POPCORN CEILINGS & ETC.
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Interior decorating is allowed to move forward why aren't landscapes?
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Outdated trim colors, foundation plantings pruned, for decades, into malicious, cruel shapes, and turf guzzling labor, water, toxic chemicals. Too many homeowners are bound by law to the uglies listed above. And losing money.
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PUPPET BARBUDA kicking dollars at words.
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Neighborhood of 350 homes, with outdated Home Owner Association rules.
Average home price, $425,000.00
Landscaping worth 5% of sales price.
$21,250.00 loss for each home.
Total neighborhood loss: $7,437,500.00
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Is your HOA DOA? Please, forward this humble post to your HOA president. Start a dialogue. Money is on the table. Don't you want more?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara aka PUPPET BARBUDA
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Pic of lunch this week in my office

PRANCING THRU OLD LONG ISLAND

PUPPET BARBUDA adores prancing thru Old Long Island. Not worth her effort, above. A beer taste - champagne budget landscape.

Above, PUPPET BARBUDA is prancing the landscape & peering into windows. She likes.

OMG, get serious, PUPPET BARBUDA thinks as she ignores this wretched landscape, above.

Not bad at all dear ones, above. PUPPET BARBUDA is delighted with the steps, vine & espaliered shrub. And is that gravel leading to the steps? Delicious!!

PUPPET'S kicking up the gravel, above. Wondering, are they French or was it just French travel giving inspiration?

PUPPET BARBUDA knows well the bones of this garden, above. Time has taken its owner and most flowering shrubs. But the design was so fabulous (axis-double axis-focal points-enfilades-rooms-contrasts-scale-line-form-flow) it remains. And, the structure of this landscape design can be maintained by the least skilled worker. Trees, hedges, meadow, focal point.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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House pics via Old Long Island