Friday, September 5, 2014

The Best Garden Design Ideas

The best garden design ideas are simple.  And have been done for thousands of years.
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No worries, ever, about copying them.
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Each site is unique.
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Any garden design idea you choose to copy will be original and fresh in your garden.
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Focal point on axis with backdrop, below.
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With greater surprise as the garden is walked, there are more axis on this focal point, below.



Same table, above/below, as yesterday's post.
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Except shot from different axis.



Backdrop hedges are as important as the focal point and axis.
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Without the backdrop hedges you would see a mash-up of other garden rooms.
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Gardens must have mystery.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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I didn't want to copy pretty gardens when I got out of college.  I wanted to be unique.  Those unique efforts created cringe worthy gardens.  Aside from ugly, they cost money, and the worst loss, TIME.  No one can buy more time.
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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.


Thursday, September 4, 2014

Garden Design: Beautiful Gardens are in Trinities

Watching a TV cooking show, many years ago, one of my most important Garden Design epiphanies.
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Creating magic, the chef said, "I'm using the trinity of Cajun cooking."
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EXACTLY.
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Tara's Trinity of the Southern Garden: Azaleas, Camellias, Hydrangeas.  Tara's Trinity of _______, became a lecture title.  And great handout.
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Beware, this trinity, below, is not for amateurs.  Yet, one of the easiest Garden Design Trinities accomplished.
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Garden path flanked with an entryway pair leading to a backdrop, below.


Keeping my feet planted, below, I've turned the camera to the left 2 inches.  The pot, above, at left, is the same pot, below.


Still keeping my feet planted, I've turned my camera to the right 2 inches, below.  Potted plant, below, is the same plant, top pic, at the right.


What is this Garden Design Trinity?  Trinity Axis: Backdrop, Living Room, Dining Room.
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Literally, interior architecture & interior design turned into Garden Design.
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Creating entries, hallways, parlors, etc 'outside' is one of my favorite things to do during the walk/talk phase of Garden Design.  Watching  owner's faces, 'see'.  Especially if they've lived in their home a long time.
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Best Garden Design Trinity to know?  You must choose a color theme, green-brown-white, is the enduring winner.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Shot the pics last month.  Have another axis shot for you from this same spot, stay tuned.
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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.

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Garden Design Ideas: Double Axis

Garden Design is almost a features game.  A template of features show up in every good garden for over 10,000 years.  Literally.
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Focal point on axis, below.



Focal point on axis, below.


When the same focal point is viewed in 2 axis you have a Double Axis.
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You must have Double Axis with your Garden Design.
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At a minimum.
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But don't stop there.  Sissinghurst Castle has a male nude statue on axis from 5 main views.
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Do the math, that's 10 axis views.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Slow down, go back to the 10,000 year remark.  Why did I put it in?
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A little point made, you will not recreate the wheel.  Instead drive the known wheel, make it travel where you want.  That, alone, is enough to keep you occupied for a lifetime.  
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I shot the pics last month.  

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.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Front Porch: Remove the Rails

No rails.


Shutters are full length door scale, adding 'height'.  Screen door with long top panel, and a plain bottom panel, again adding height.
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Gravel to the house.  Yes.  Downspout is piped away, and round, very nice.
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To enlarge the space further, add step across entire front & side.  More flow/movement.  Cole Porter's, Don't Fence Me In.
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Wonder how the shutter color is being used inside, curious about the color on the ceiling.
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Ironically, everything is done with a sure hand except the pots.  They seem like mere filler (or magazine staging at its pinnacle of pots/pillows) until the correct pots are chosen/planted.
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Historically designed, low maintenance.  Unskilled labor could easily keep this in shape.
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Maria Killam had this pic recently & nailed it on the color.  Made me laugh, all I could see was the 'entire' excellent garden design, color included.  Of course I'm always happy seeing a front porch rail liberation. Would like an architect to do a post on this pic next !
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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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.

Saturday, August 30, 2014

Learn to Love Garden Design Styles You Dislike


Didn't like these types of gardens, when I began.
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Didn't understand them.
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Decades, and continents, of study later.
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I understand.
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Love these types of gardens.
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Garden & Be Well,      XO Tara
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Pic lost provenance.
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Historic Garden Design, not ignoring answers for you.  Use your own brain.  That is the gift in this method of learning.  Do you already 'get' these gardens?  What do you 'get' ?  I had the joy of learning this way.  Why take that joy from you?
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Garden Design overlaps much with interior design.  And goes beyond.  As it must, Providence is on the team.
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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.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

Garden Design: Hydrangeas in Pots

Ripe. 
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 Notice, below, the color echo?  Wonder where the axis leads from the paired entry?  Garden design tenants are rife: spikes with rounds, all layers accounted for sky-canopy-walls-floor, contrasting textures, mystery, repetition, copied, color theme, change thru the seasons, low maintenance, maximum pollinator habitat, no chemicals needed, a historical template.
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Does your garden tell me who you are?  This one does, as all good gardens must.
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Under the Tuscan Sun, Frances Mayes, her sister asked, "Have you seen her house."  Frances knew, she's asking, "Who is she, what is she like?"
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Hydrangeas do great in pots.  Choose mopheads, PeeGee, Tardiva, Limelight, etc.
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Worried about hydrangea's brown sticks in winter?  Move on from that chapter, it's too shallow for you.  Good Garden Design backdrops normal changes thru the seasons in beauty.
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Focal points change by the day.


Tara Turf, above/below.  Garden Design is fierce in this garden.
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Fierce?   Simplicity is hard, keeping elements of the poverty cycle is hard, good Garden Design is hard.
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 Getting to this iteration of his garden, I know the gardener grew through, and blew through, many life chapters.  Many.
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 Self -will ended.  Gardenese is spoken here.  A life language.  More, the language of Providence.


Garden Design's status symbols, above, are now gravel drives, no edging.  Tara Turf.


At the front end of studying the best historic Garden Design across Europe I 'got' that.
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If you want this type of Garden Design, I can do that for you.
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If you want a Garden Design to meet HOA requirements, and no more, I will not do that, anymore.
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If you wish to push your HOA rules to the max, and have to ask for approval, I will be happy to do your Garden Design.
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Understand, I've blown thru chapters and books, and continents, to get here with Garden Design.
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Ripe.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken this month.  Top pic best shows the humidity in the air.  Was with Susanne Hudson, Liz Tedder, and poor Martha Tate (we missed yo) had to zip in/out ahead of us.
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Think you can do Hydrangeas in Pots like this?
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Takes the full arsenal of Garden Design.
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Which is either simple or will take you a life time.
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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.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Gathering Pears: Safety

Their mom wanted to move, the house was for sale.
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Her friends thought otherwise & connived an invitation for me, to come with them, to her luncheon.
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Since then, their home is off the market, we have become bosom friends sharing tears, laughter, grace.


Her husband is now one-of-my-husbands.  He's handy.  Their old deck obliterated, enlarged, improved, a game 'chancha' for their home.  All done with his intellect, heart, muscle.


The helmets were his idea, they had to shake the pear trees to get the last of them down.
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As the layers of my Garden Design arrive, these 2 sprouts, above, are always, as they should be, the focal point of the garden.
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Received these pics a few days ago.  Without words, they tell me I've done my job well.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Last winter's freeze caused pipe damage & flooding inside their home.  The entire downstairs affected.  Lost this husband to his interior work.  Now complete, we've got him back in the garden.  And, when it was time to put furnishings/art back after new floors, walls, painting etc. she did things so differently it was obvious she's entered a new chapter of life.  Simply from how the art has gone back up, the original lunch group 'saw'.
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Pics from client.  Thank you for permission.  Won't begin to tell you more about these girls, aside from how smart they are with common sense and lovely deep streaks of creativity, kindness, humor & wide ranging interests.  Manners, athletic.......and.
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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.

Saturday, August 23, 2014

Be the Designer Families Pass to Children & Grandchildren

Why women hire me, below.


Of course I'm hired for many reasons but this is the best, grandchildren.
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Singleness of mission, driven by love.
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Of course they want to be the coolest grandma on the list, more, they want an enchanting garden to inspire & delight growing minds.
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This is a particular sweet spot, my grandma remains the best relationship of my life.  Understand 'grandma think' because mine nailed it.
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Have already designed dozens of gardens for clients, now grown, children.  Don't know when, but it's coming, I will design my first garden for a client's grown grandchild.
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Who knew this would happen, being the garden designer families pass thru  generations?
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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pic The Lime Walk.  The greatest shocker?  Time.  Doesn't seem possible for this to happen.  Designing gardens is fresher, a greater desire, now, than when I first began.
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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.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Place Focal Points Like Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst

You must see the table + 2 chairs the way I first saw them, below.  Hidden amongst the boxwood parterre.



Walking a bit further, along the front garden's main central axis, below, a hint.


Walking toward this wickedly sited subsidiary focal point, below.



  Walking toward the home and old millstone table, below.


 Walking away from the home, the impromptu trinity of furniture in the garden, below.


Here's the deal with well sited focal  focal points.
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The more axis a focal point has, the better the focal point.
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There is more detail about this in one of my books.
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This isn't something you learn in school or a symposium lecture.
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You learn it studying the best historic gardens across the globe.
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For decades.
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I have a favorite, easy, multiple axis design.
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Works every time.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken this week.  Same garden as previous post.   Remember, the more axis a focal point has the better the focal point.
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Sissinghurst has a naked man statue, on plinth, with 5 axis.
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Hello, I was awake & got the epiphany.
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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.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Warning: Strawberry House

Viewed from the front of the house, below, the Strawberry House sits calmly at the side of his antebellum home.


Viewed from the back of his antebellum home, below.




When told it is his 'Strawberry House' the game changed.
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My life must include being able to say, "Let's walk to the Strawberry House."
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Until yesterday I was clueless about the lack of a Strawberry House in my garden & vocabulary.
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Adore anyone forcing me to up my game.  
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These are the moments keeping me in gardens across the globe.  
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The hunt. For delight.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pics taken yesterday in the same garden as previous post.
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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.


Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Pinterest: Furniture in the Garden

Still glowing & fragrant, Southern for sweaty-from-the-day, 48 hr whirlwind with Susanne Hudson in good gardens.
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Had to share at least 1 pic from our jaunts, below.
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Acreage, antebellum, private home of _____________.
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How have I not known/met this man, or heard his name?
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Unavailable, he gave us access to his gardens & barns.
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A garden design class is in this pic, above, but for now it is merely enough to know Furniture in the Garden.
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Pinterest, at present, is a joy to eye & intellect.  Adore intuitive learning from good pics.  Since childhood I've been attracted to British shows on PBS and furniture-in-the-garden.  OF COURSE I titled one of my Pinterest boards, Furniture in the Garden.  Click, here, to see it.
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Local interest, Martha Tate owner of HGTV's Gardener's Diary, and Liz Tedder, 19 times (so far) in Southern Living magazine were with Susanne/me.  Met Martha in my early 20's professionally and sadly only recently met Liz Tedder, she came to the Conservatory Susanne & I built for a Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival display 3 years ago, which is now fronting editor's letter of Better Home's Gardens magazine this month.  1st time in Tedder's garden.  How does that possibly happen, should have been 76th time.  Best news?  Liz is writing a book.  And, I was demanding of what it should have.  Don't you do that?  Why not ask for what you want to see pics of and know about?  This doesn't begin to cover spending the nite in Susanne's world famous garden, again.  Luff, luff Susanne's mom.  Asked her if I could call her, MiMi, today, she's 80's & I'm 50's.  Hugs & kisses in both directions.
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Drawing a garden for a Federal style home tomorrow.  Life is rushed, and good.
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Notice Tara Turf, above?  How could I not adore this 'new' friend?  Will post more pics, and his name/link once I meet him and get permission.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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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.