Curb Appeal Before Entering the Front Porch

Don't tell me 'welcome' with letters on a sign or doormat, show me.

The curb appeal of this tiny frontyard says, "Yes, you want to see the porch, inside the home, and the rest of the garden."

And you're experiencing the potency of the garden's color trinity, without being aware.

Adore the smartness of cast stone urns filled with cast stone flowers & fruits.
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Get the color trinity?  Green, brown & white.  Trinity of the ages.  Low maintenance, serene, elegant.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics shot in Susanne Hudson's garden last month.  Girlfriend is serious!  Curb appeal + front porch fabulosity.  We are working on a book together and planning another spend-the-night this month.

Covershot Garden Design

Gardens must have rooms which includes halls, foyers, parlors, and the roundabout, below.

Leaning left, below, at the roundabout.

Leaning right at the roundabout, below.

In the roundabout, below, turned & shooting back.  What is this called?  Double Axis.

Same hydrangea, above/below, a few days apart.

Same roundabout, below, different axis.

See your garden thru the camera.  More, see your garden in February thru the camera.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics this month in Susanne Hudson's garden.
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Where today, in your garden, can you take covershot pics?  No?   Why live that way?  
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Yesterday, late afternoon, fuse to my Conservatory blew.  Tried all the breakers, no go.  Immediate call to 'my guys'.  One will be here today.  It is not too much to ask that Conservatory chandelier & lamps light my days & nites on view from every angle I live. 

Said Without Words

Simplicity, beauty, easy maintenance, and saying, "Welcome", without words on a stupid sign or flag or doormat.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Susanne Hudson's garden, pic taken earlier this month.

Garden Path: Before & After

Leading to our porch garden, below.  Iron gates roped to the trees.  

Yes, horrendous security gates reborn with grace.

After the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival, below.  Hard to imagine the gates were ever there.

Terra cotta pots, top pic, are Cinderella-after-the-ball, below.

In my garden, above, the pots are still where I unloaded them.
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"Scope for the imagination", as Anne of Green Gables would say.
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Garden & Be Well,        XO Tara
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More of the garden Susanne Hudson & I created for the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival.
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Taking down a display garden is quite depressing.  It feels like the killing of a soul.

Mosquito Position

Once established,

your garden shouldn't be in need of watering cans.

Pots, yes.  Shrubs/groundcovers/trees/bulbs?  No.
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Perfect reason to only have the Queens Pot.
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Pots so wonderful they remain empty.
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These watering cans have assumed the mosquito position in my potager.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pics taken in my garden last week.  

Ping Pong Garden Room

 "But of course!

 Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara

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Pic via internet, saved for a client, no provenance.

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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
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Details about online design services.
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Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
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Details about lecture titles here.
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I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Design Tools

Trinities are often a good template.

If you don't have matching pots, make sure the rims are each the same height.
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Of course this is also a marvelous display of repetition.  Your most important Garden Design tool.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic Janelle McCulloch, Country Estates of Australia.  Visit Janelle's Library of Design.
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Choosing the Best Urns

Urns that don't need planting are the best.

Rustic invitation leading to greater simplicity at the house.  My favorite template.
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What is the USA fascination with lawn to the street?
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pic via Old Long Island  
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Historic Template

Shelf-steps, terra cotta pots, topiaried evergreens.

Big impact in the garden & easy resource for your interior.  A historic template.
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Recognize her?  Bunny Mellon.  I adore everything this woman does in her gardens.
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Garden & Be Well,                XO Tara
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If you want a garden that is a moat of grace around your home & life, contact me.
.
Details about online design services.
.
Learn action steps to creating your best garden & home when you hire me to speak to your group.
.
Details about lecture titles here.
.
I've written several garden books available on Amazon.

Exterior Color: White on White

A client's yellow house is going white-on-white.  Cannot wait to see the results.

Pay no mind to the landscaping, above.   Totally subdivision, 1960's brick ranch let's make green foundation meatballs a la testosterone-on-wheels-mow-blow-go-commodify-all-I-touch.  And those pots?  Lipstick on a pig.
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Garden & Be Well,        XO Tara & Puppet Barbuda
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I adore Veranda, and subscribe, but know, too well, gardening is a pitiful stepchild to most editors.  Great exception was House & Garden magazine during the 80's.  See any at the junk shops buy-buy-buy.
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Pic via Veranda.

Large Pots

Something new to desire.

                           
                        And I don't mean man or child.  How did I miss these pots in Paris?

Desire, undervalued & counterintuitive.
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Garden & Be Well,        XO Tara
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Wonder which client past/future will have these in their garden.  Love Magic Man, I know he can make them!  Will have to tack on a pair to an order for me-me-me !
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pics via Paris Through My Lens.

High, and Large, Foyer Window

A good solution for the multi-story foyer with tall window over the front door.

A ridiculous space, it still needs attention.  Doing nothing looks undone.  Doing something looks forced, and dusty.
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From the garden most views into these windows look 'vacant'.
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Yes, this urn is 'just right'.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic via Belgian Pearls

How To Choose A Window Box

In addition to length & width properly scaled.....

A window box must be so fabulous it can remain empty.
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Give yourself this choice.  Window boxes are high maintenance.
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You will need it.  Guaranteed.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Of course no one reading this blog EVER puts fake flowers in their window box.  Good window boxes are hard to find in stores.  Pic via Egypt Gift Shops

Rule for Pots

After seeing the Queen mother's pots at Glamis Castle I knew the Rule-For-Pots.

Pots in a garden must be so fabulous they can remain empty.
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These pass the test.
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Do yours?
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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When I lived on 50 acres in a 3 bay carriage house I saw my first Tulip Magnolia, Magnolia soulangiana, it was larger than this, above.  I walked to its trunk, wrapped my arms around it, held on, and stared up.  That was over 30 years ago.  It was obliterated years ago for a Wal-Mart parking lot.
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pic via Quintessence Lifestyle

Pot Planting

A bit of clipping, drip irrigation, enjoy.

                               Oh my, the dappled light.
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I haven't put an annual in my pots for decades.  Magazines & nurseries push-push-push annuals.  And I listen to what I'm asked for EVERY design, 'my landscape must be low maintenance & not expensive.'
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Gravel to the house, bushes in pots, necessity furnishings for meals, entertaining, relaxing.  Why are so many Americans afraid, above, of this?  "Let's build a deck, make it too small, add built-in seating with the rail which won't ever see use......"  "We'll pour a cement patio barely big enough for a mop, Weber grill, round table + 4 chairs."
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Pic via Desde My Ventana

Vanishing Threshold with Color Theme

Modern addition with classic architecture, as if THAT is often successful.  More deeply sublime are the accouterments.  Garden focal points placed on perfect axis with interior doors, secondary focal points placed on angled axis.  A perfect square with the planters & a circle in stone.  

Layers of green, lean-green-serene.  Statuary & planters color themed to echo house.
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It's obvious this is a tight collaboration between owner & landscape designer.
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Vanishing threshold is magnificent here.
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Garden & Be Well,         XO Tara
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pic via Pinterest.  Which part of your vanishing threshold is 'magnificent'?

Bruce Barone Shot Queens Pot

Pots must be so fabulous

they can remain empty.
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The Queen's Pot!
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Sustainable before Christ was born.  Been doing it myself for decades.
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Touring the grounds of Glamis Castle I saw a huge urn in the distance.  It beckoned my name.  The urn grew larger the closer I got.  Upon discovery it was sentinel to an arboretum over a century old.
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What garden center advocates empty urns?
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pic by Bruce Barone.  Love & adore inventing garden concepts & The Queen's Pot is mine....!

Front Porch

A disintegrating brick, too small, front stoop when I arrived.

Covered, lighting, doors, stone terrace, new paint colors, columns, iron rail, ceiling fans, furniture.

   The view, below, has been there, ignored, for over 3 decades.

Now it's honored, and lived in.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics taken this week at a past client.  Her house & garden the most perfect HORRENDOUS before.  Of course she's going to be a before/after story.  Best part is how it's changed their lives.  Literally.  House is amongst many in a subdivision near town, yet it lives like Piedmont forest. 

Simplicity

Dare you?  This simple?
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Yes.
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Gravel to the walls, color theme, mix of stone-wood-iron, vine-on-house, evergreen cones in pots, round downspouts, beautiful views into the home, finials on the roof, custom shutters, 3-d lite over door.
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If you like it, break down the reasons.  Beauty in one spot can be translated into yours.
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House is the focal point.  House is the backdrop to the landscape.  Specifically, the front door.
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It's brutal to be this simple.  But POTENT.
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And low maintenance.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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pic via Things That Inspire .  Even a disastrous brick ranch ca. 1963 can be turned into a historic caretakers cottage.  This house , above, tells you how.  Have fun.  If you, indeed, live in the disaster.  Of course I can be this blunt.  Living in a brick 1986 box.

Blossom Boxes By Steve Eaton

She needed something at her gravel parking court.  (Tara Dillard's, Queen's Pot, of course.  A pot so fabulous it can remain empty.  Do all of your pots pass this test?)

Mostly, she has Steve Eaton of Blossom Boxes plant her urns.

 She wanted a gate leading into her woodland, fabulous.  But it needed another Queen's Pot, this time on a taller plinth, above.  And, it's on double axis.  More another time, (miss priss) forgot to get the other axis pic.

 No sun reaches her front door, Blossom Boxes keeps her pots always lush & green. 

Another pot, in her backyard, above.  Blossom Boxes stayed true to his name: pansies, violas & dwarf snapdragons.
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Met Steve Eaton over 20 years ago.  Have seen him in gardens & flower shows ever since.  Had him in an episode on my TV show. 
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I thought you should know such a man, Steve Eaton of Blossom Boxes, exists.  That there is a world where men plant flowers & girls design gardens for their daily bread.  A world, they know, is their own Camelot.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pics taken in a client garden last week.  Steve Eaton, Blossom Boxes,  770-337-8840, sceaton3@yahoo.com.