Front Porch Furniture Placement

Temps & humidity are at their extremes.

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Yesterday, after lunching with a friend in town, I had the good fortune of riding shotgun while my friend had to stop, below, for a few minutes.

Without words, tone poem, this front porch is a full class, How to Design Your Front Porch.

No incorrect note is played here.  Of course the Kimberly Queen ferns were showing off, but even the Christmas cactus was thriving.

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I don't know the owners, yet, but you know I will.  Their front porch looks/feels like a fine spring day.

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Will get the white they used for home/furniture, and sparkling gray on the floor.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO T

Garden: Foot Swing

This is the swing, below, I thought was hanging from our old pecan tree.



The wood seat on our swing, below, rotted long ago.

Wise teachers arrived yesterday, below.

 Their inner narrative was one of use, above/below.

My narrative, wildly wrong.

This is a foot swing.  Never had a 'seat'.  Paying attention to the knot, and height, it never had the intention of being a sitting swing.

This morning, above, Laskett's tail truly is this magnificent.  

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We think the pecan tree, above, in the sunbeam, is as old as the house, 115 years.  Maybe older.  

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Friends came to lunch yesterday.  Rather, friends brought a feast for lunch.  Homemade, the bounty arrived in baskets, including fresh tea, my 1st watermelon of the season, breads, cheeses, chicken, pimiento cheese, more/more/more, cotton table cloth & linen napkins.  How did they know, even my linen napkins are safely hid in a box amongst stacks of boxes?

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Our kitchen not functioning until painting and renovations completed in the pantry.

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Their arrival a great deadline to get many things done.  Their first time seeing our farmhouse, its land, and walking the grounds where the orchard will be, the new conservatory, where the gravel drives will curve, property pins, views, and dreams.

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And the girls on the swing.  Many clients, thru the years, with children even younger, I've drawn their children's gardens once they graduated college, married, bought their 1st home. 

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Seeing these girls on the swing, I'm excited for the right time, and drawing their 1st gardens.  Knowing, when I do, it will feel like 15 minutes ago they were teaching me about my own foot swing.

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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

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Top pic, Ben Pentreath.  Bottom pics mine.

Front Porch: Open Wide

Rich in sublime detail I'm curious about the front porch, at the drive way side.



Perhaps more shutters between arches?  A ceiling fan suggests moments of leisure.  Foundation hedge is a barrier between home & garden.  Forcing foot traffic to the front door.



Choices are good, this 'landscape' is good, adding choices makes it a good garden.
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Between the open arches, above, add choices.  How?  Take away foundation planting & add more brick steps across the front.  Then, you've made house & garden a vanishing threshold.  Significantly changing the use of the porch, and its 'feel'.  More, you've made a narrow'ish front porch entry luxuriant in scale, and tied the history of the home's architecture to the garden.
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I think of these gardens, above, as pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey gardens, one size fits all.  And this home is worthy of a garden matching its patina.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Pics here.
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Humorous how curious this home/garden make me.  And, perhaps reasons for the 'landscaping' would put me in agreement.  Without knowing more, it's all Cole Porter, don't-fence-me-in.

What Makes a Good Guest Room ?

Quirkiest delight of my career has been lecturing out-of-state for Garden venues.  Mostly, they have little money to spend, and I'm given the choice of a hotel or some one's home.
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Is there a better way to know a place than staying in a private home, and help a non-profit save money?
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On this path I've learned what I want/need in a guest room, host, and activities offered.
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The room?  Plenty of cleared surfaces, a chair, lamp by the bed, books/magazines, something to set my glass of water on at nite, easy access to electrical outlet.
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Because it's work, I need quality time alone to run thru my powerpoint & handout, one last time, ahead of a presentation that may be some one's one-and-only Garden presentation, or even more difficult, some one's 42nd and I must delight/educate their inner spirit to see their own garden new again.
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Inherent to the visit there is a walk with my host, thru their garden.  Adore seeing plants in new soils & zones.  Garden groups help the host, and there is a tour of several other local gardens, usually 1/2 day with lunch at a delightful cafe. Pride in their location, I feel as if my garden ladies are chamber of commerce emissaries.
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Then, dinner.  Now we get the husbands, and open bar.  Dinner is most often at someone's home.  Cocktails before dinner never disappoint, ever.  If it's Make Way For Lucia, hightum-tightum-scrub, E.F. Benson, we are all tightum, by today's standards.
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And the husbands, why-did-I-let-her-drag-me-here-'tude, does a 180 after the first round.
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Beyond this point, I will leave laughter, conversations, stories, to your imagination, but I know it's not close to these evenings.  Something about strangers, kindred spirits, I'll be gone by morning, souls splayed, safety in sharing, they can't tell on you, because you could tell on them.  Basic kindergarten rules.

Still unpacking boxes for my new office, a dozen had engulfed the guest room, above, now the guest room is functional, though far from complete.  Office should be completed this afternoon.
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Hope I've hit every layer for my guest room.  Cannot wait to get the walls painted a creamy white, keeping the existing white trim.  Windows on 2 walls, am anticipating some power naps here too.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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Why would I stop lecturing for Garden venues?  They are my original base, truly have little money, and I learn so much seeing the private gardens.  Fun does have a price, it is Joseph Campbell's, 'Follow your bliss.'  
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It has been a privilege fiercely learning about Gardens traveling the globe for 2+ decades.  Gaining a heart's desire carries obligation.  Lecturing outside Garden venues, bringing Gardens to the People.  Corporate venues, women's wellness, trade shows, etc.  Places not normally associated with a garden, yet there is a hunger, a need to be filled, only a Garden answers.
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Secondary venues, not garden venues, pay well, I added a clause in my speaker's bureau contract 'allowing' me to continue with the Garden venue lectures.  They are content with the arrangement.  Happy this is true, but sad it is a truth about garden venues.
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Why are they so lacking in funds?  Partially, attitudes about Nature Wendell Berry writes much of.  Attitudes killing towns, supporting atrocious behavior toward livestock, annihilating soil, ourselves.  Further, our government is passing laws making elements of Nature commodities we no longer own upon our own property.  Each of these nuggets gleaned because I like to Garden !  Liking to Garden is political?        

Cottage Garden vs. American Farmhouse Garden

Moving from cottage garden to historic American Farmhouse architecture garden has, in less than 2 weeks, taught much.

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One lesson, after moving team finished near midnight, was apparent at first light.

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Cottage garden accouterments, though loved & used for decades, are not at home in their new garden.  In fact, they are cringe inducing.  Go me not knowing this, indeed.

Yesterday I had unexpected resources in Beloved's team of men & trucks.

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Pallets were loaded with 'keepers' and Beloved moved them with his Caterpillar under an old oak, no weeds/grass, near a fence line, trucks were loaded & driven to Goodwill.

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Wish I had not moved the cottage garden accouterments here.  Yet, if anyone had said at the front end, 'Don't take your entire cottage garden', I would have scoffed, and moved everything anyway.

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What a difference daylight makes.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Pic via Gil Schafer.

John Adams Celebrated July 2, the True Anniversary of Breaking from England

John & Abigail Adams, at each turn, humble.  

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David McCullough wrote a Pulitzer prize winning biography of John.  

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McCullough's book trumpets for the same treatment of Abigail.  With her, I want to know every layer of her successful farm management.  In minute detail.  The same treatment given to Washington & Jefferson and their farms.

"On this day in 1776, the Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence, and the United States officially broke from the rule of England. The document was approved and signed on July 2, and was formally adopted on July 4. John Adams always felt that the Second of July was America's true birthday, and he refused to appear at Fourth of July celebrations for the rest of his life in protest.", from The Writer's Almanac, listen to Garrison Keillor read this passage, here.

These flags, above, have moved from their tiny cottage garden I adored for 3 decades.  Good change can hurt deeply, this grieving is from a new angle yet grief has not been unknown before, it will be managed.

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Joy in our new home/garden, profound.  It was imperative I leave my garden on my own terms, and I did.  More, I have a new garden needing me, as badly as I need it.

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Better, is having Beloved.  Last night, late getting home after dinner, we had our inaugural ride in the golf cart by moonlight with wine.  Destination, known, unspoken.  Our pond, about 1/2 acre.  A rough ride, Beloved still clearing invasives, we spilled as much wine as we drank.

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Eyes acclimated, moonlight crested its angle across the tops of the trees, and what felt too fast, finally a spotlight on all of the trees and water coated in duckweed & frogs, our chorus.  Then, our chorus stopped, and the lake next door at the dairy farm blared its music.  Made me laugh, learning a new language.  Who knew there was a tempo to a pond & lake across acreage?

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Then the epiphany hit deep, and rich.  We own this.  

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My little cottage garden, and Beloved's garden, he sold his too, have been turned into a ca. 1900 American Farmhouse, 4.5 acres, open/wooded, pond.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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I staged both homes, and each sold within 24 hours of being listed on MLS.  Another instance of good change being stressful.  Who is ready for 2 homes selling so quick?  Earlier this year I staged/shot/listed by owner on Zillow Beloved's cabin, it sold.  Chose to use a realtor for our 2 homes for several reasons, and know it was the right choice.  Realtor for our new home is equally amazing.  Oh the horror stories I was told about realtors !  These 2 realtors will stay in my phone.  They are now friends, and part of our lives.  

Design: Creating Flow

How will you get from point A to point B ?

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Flow.

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Flow is at the front end of my Garden Design Equation.

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When I was in college, SMU, someone mentioned the sidewalks in front of Dallas Hall were poured, AFTER, they saw where students tread dirt paths thru low meadow.

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(Privately, off topic, in person, you may wish to ask me about the tunnels under those sidewalks.  That was a crazy fun date.)

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Architecture, interior design, color, materials, scale, below, are sublime.  In addition, flow is the unseen subliminal element.  So good it's taken for granted.

At our ca. 1900 American Farmhouse architecture home, below.  We haven't lived here a week, how can we possibly know where to put paths, parking courts, drives, terraces, pole barn, and links throughout all?

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Overflow parking, below, from my office view.  My little van, Tess, is in front of the house, and another truck with long open bed trailer are in the drive along the opposite side of the house.

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The golf cart has yet to be brought from the house we sold, nor 2 tractors and 2 more work trucks.

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None of the above traffic/parking issues includes guest vehicles.

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I adore this.

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Creating flow/parking in our own garden.

Foot traffic, below.  Tractor Supply had a single boot choice for my new home, below.  Work shoes from my former cottage garden, not sufficient in the least.
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Drive, front parking court, overflow parking, a path, hugging the house are speaking.  Good news.
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Further from the house, the flow has no voice.

At the back of the house, 2 out buildings, at left & at right, must be moved, due to flow.
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Building at left is impeding vehicles, and building at right is blocking the deck we're building around the back of the house.

Both buildings a century old, clad in metal more recently.  We'll reuse the wood in our new shed I want built in the orchard, to be planted.
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Hope you sense the best element in creating flow.  Anticipation.
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Every layer of a garden is exciting.  Never tiresome.
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More than anything I want several dump trucks arriving with our gravel.  Too soon, don't know exactly where to place it.  Patience.  This is where G*d taught me patience, in a garden.  We all get life lessons, yet they arrive in their own time and have different teachers.  If we don't 'get' the bigger life lessons, they keep arriving until we do.
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Patience.  Your impatience is why I have a career.  Every client, just like I was at the front end of gardening, thinking they can put in a garden, do, and it's horrendous.  After my first garden making, vile of course, it was off to years of Extension Service courses, symposiums, then another college degree, in horticulture, finally touring historic gardens across Europe for 2+ decades.  Now, I know a few things about gardening, and thrill at the new lessons still arriving, every day.
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Moving into this new home/garden it is clear, I am an experienced gardener but a new farmer.  Adoring a new learning curve.  And living Thomas Jefferson's, " but tho' an old man, I am but a young gardener.   ", backwards.  G*d has a sense of humor in this new lesson, which feels like a gift, not a lesson.  Great segue into Joseph Campbell's, "

When you follow your bliss... doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors; and where there wouldn't be a door for anyone else.

When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.

You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don't know what was in the newspapers that morning... a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be."

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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Top pic, Wendy Posard, bottom pics taken yesterday in our new home/garden.

Designing to Solve Problems: Maintenance & Snakes

From the 1st visit with the realtor to our new home, I KNEW the garden around the house would be gravel with meandering paths & terraces of gravel further from the house.  And, siting of large pots with HYDRANGEA, drip irrigation of course, were paramount.



Leaving a cottage garden of 3 decades, our new garden is American Farmhouse, ca. 1900.  More importantly, its design will be for our 80 year old selves.  I must be 80 years old, have a gorgeous garden with zero worries about maintaining it.  A garden must leverage life, not the reverse.
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This garden, above/below, I shot late last summer.  Limelight hydrangeas in the same situation as my new garden.  Loving, to the center of my DNA, this garden, I had zero clue I would soon be owning similar.  Alas, it's owned by a man, greatly talented, and strong.  My garden must be smarter, my strength not as great.  Game on.



Fearless, gravel will go to the house, similarly, below.



Not wanting formality, gravel will lap at our century old pecan trees, Tara Turf will lap at some pecan trees too.



As time passes, stone will be added to the gravel as needed.  Stone, below, added for rain issues.  And, I will site wisteria 'Amethyst Falls' at my front porch.  Vines or espaliered trees/shrubs add lush without space.



Knowing gravel terraces will be included, below, great anticipation in wondering 'exactly' where.


Transitioning to meadow, I will add checkerboard squares, below.



Furlow Gatewood has smashed a bottle of champagne upon thousands of ships, below, with his allee of hydrangeas in pots.  Copy, it's the 1st rule of garden design.



Wildly, without knowing the deeper truths of our new garden, my initial thoughts for design are more than suitable at age 80.  Even life saving, for any age.  Snakes, the indigenous timber rattler.  Luckily have already interrupted a long king snake under the house.  Lucky, yet totally scared when I saw him.
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Gravel is the best solution, trying to be safe, in defense of snakes near the house.  I got the memo, go me.
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Sourcing pots now, I think I've found them !
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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Top 2 pics mine, the rest from my Pinterest Board, Stone.

Design: Use What You Have

In our office/guest cottage, Yellow Belle, below.  She had cast offs from my home/garden and Beloved's.
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Ca. 1945, on an acre, she is an elegant simple home, the type to leverage a life better.  Wise architecture seeps into a soul.
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In the front parlor, below, capturing light, yet total privacy.  Sourced the shutters, perched not attached, at a favorite junking haunt.  A light blue, and dirty from being stored in a garage for decades, I always meant to clean/paint, never did.  But you knew that.



In our new home, ca. 1900 American Farmhouse, below, for less than a week, boxes/chaos reign.  Had to create a pocket of calm, somewhere.  Guest bath, below.  Grab & place design.  The bathroom retains its Skyland Camp for Girls-shower-ca. 1944, and window looking onto the second kitchen. (Wicked humor having 2 kitchens, I can't operate one.)

Good to see my old friends, supporting our new lives.

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Cannot believe I'm still needing the shutters, and they're still dirty years later.  I should clear coat them, say they are faux and call it a day.

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Soon the window, above, will become a door, creating a Jack/Jill bathroom.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Keeping the 2nd kitchen at the back of the house, turning another window into a door, creating a garden entry with our filthy clothes/boots.  The 'kitchen' will have the laundry, household supplies, and flower arranging island.  A dream to strip by the laundry and walk into the shower.  For the price of 2 windows into doors.  

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2nd kitchen?  Added decades ago for a grown son/his wife to live in the house & caretake his mother.

Creating Flow: Garden Design Equation

With an engineering degree, and horticulture, you know I've invented a Garden Design Equation, moons ago.  Yes, good gardens are math.
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Will do a long post about the Garden Design Equation, but not today.  Promise, you will love the Garden Design Equation, and totally 'get' it.  Have taught it in my college classes and seminars losing no one yet.
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Living in our new American Farmhouse Architecture home, ca. 1900, for a total of 3 nites, the Garden Design Equation beckons.
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Blessedly no gardening has been done here for decades, Poverty is a Great Preserver, indeed.  Why is this good?  Not a lot to 'undo'.
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Focal point on axis, below.  Vanishing Threshold.



Focal points must be sited as focal points from more than a single direction.  This type of focal point, urn above, is one of the best.  Do you know why?  Needs no planting.  Low maintenance.  Let your garden leverage your life.  Your garden works for you, not the reverse.
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From the outside, below, first impression, your garden must tell me who you are, this garden does.
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But my narrative, above, has skipped some of the 1st elements of the Garden Design Formula.
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Focal point siting is often 'obvious' but must wait until 'flow' around the property is managed.  Flow for cars, and walking, maintenance, and larger spaces, a gator/golf cart.
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Do you see what else is obvious when creating flow?  Turf is included in 'flow' equal to a gravel path-drive-terrace.
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This garden, below, is designed for low maintenance too.  Did you already spot that?  The tractor can easily do its job, and the evergreens need once/year attention, no irrigation needed, no chemicals, no fertilizers.
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Had to laugh when I saw this pic, it's exactly where my Garden Design Equation is percolating at our new home.  Flow.
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Drive & Parking Court, below.
 


Had already told Beloved I will design a gravel drive, gravel parking court, gravel paths, with boxwoods and Tara Turf.
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The Garden Design Equation formula at work.  Historic too.  In the greatest of ironies, I studied historic gardens across Europe for 2+ decades learning how to design a garden with 'plants'.   What was truly learned is flow, repetition, rooms, axis, max pollinator habitat......etc.




Oddly, too, I've had this idea, below, in mind for the area with my above ground propane tank.  Cannot wait for the before/after shots of my propane tank.  Who knew such delights could be had?  Adore taking the worst a garden offers and turning it into use and beauty.



Big effect, below, little input.  Been done thousands of times across the centuries, and will be done again at our new home.  Copy.  NEVER worry about copying.  Each site is unique, making each iteration new/fresh.  Again, the Garden Design Equation, and why it works.  Your garden is unique, and the brain cells you apply enhance every effect.



Gratuitous, below, if you know anything about Historic Garden Design.
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And, of course, I will copy it too.  Daffodils
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Notice something else about all these pics?  Deer proof.



Luckily my new bathroom needs a 'tweak'.  And, there is a window overlooking the new orchard/rose arbor.  This is exactly how my tub will site, at its window.





Single story, our American Farmhouse, is quite long.  3 days here, I know for sure, both front/back doors will have their own set of work shoes/shovels/pruners/wheelbarrow/hats.
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A garden must leverage your time.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics via Cote De Texas, from Elle Decor. 

Framing a Kitchen View into the Landscape

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Framing a Kitchen View into the Landscape

Framing the view, below.  Literally, upside down.  Beautiful vista & sky, hidden with valence.
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Showing off the art, a storage shed.  Perfect example of why I must go inside a home or ask for pictures from inside to outside, when doing online design.
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Have you guessed already?  This is the kitchen in my new home, ca. 1900, 11' ceilings.  Moving, with men, next week.  
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Named my company, A Garden View, in the mid-80's.  A take on E.M.Forster's recent film, A Room With A View.  Little knowing its propitiousness, or what was already set within my DNA as non-negotiable.  Went with Jenny, my mother-in-law, to the movie and it was my introduction to Forster.  Don't know him yet?  Go to Amazon and order his books.  Jenny long gone of breast cancer, age 57, theater gone too.  E.M.Forster remains.
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Now, my house.

Valence gone, below.

 A pecan grove, below, is around my house, some of the trees seem ca. 1900 too.

No worries about the storage shed, will add a fence, below.

To the animal mesh, above, 'X' will be added, below.

Don't want to use ivy, below, but probably will.  Few worries about a mature green cover, and freeze death.  And starting over, ugh.

Will add lighting, below,  on some of the posts, with dimmer switches.

Cannot imagine, not having a beautiful view from inside to outside.

A view I've had the joy of creating.

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(Off topic, I think I've found a spot on the property for a pair of tall columns, below.)

Cannot wait till I'm in the garden and considering how to design the interiors for incredible views as backdrop to the garden.

A garden view, again.

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Beauty travels 2 directions in a garden.  

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Anticipation, designing a garden, as enriching as the doing, then the having.

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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

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Top 3 pics mine, bottom pics Pinterest.  Hard leaving my home of 30 years.  My kitchen is walls of windows, new kitchen, 1 window, but it has an incredible walk-in pantry with window too.

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Tom Jones, Tower of Song, streaming thru my head with this new garden.

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He sings he's crazy for love, I'm crazy for views, a garden, orchard, gravel paths/drive, potager.....crazy for it NOW.   "I was born like this, I had no choice."

Removing Foundation Plantings

A few times across the decades I've designed a garden with existing foundation plantings so wrong from inception, by the builder of course, they had to be removed.  Hollies were the culprit, and damaging to foundation, sidewalk, driveway, and monetary damage to the home's value.
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Each time all foundation plantings were removed there was a husband squawking.
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Each time I said, "Trust me."
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Each time, once the plantings were gone, the husbands said, "Why didn't I do this sooner?"  They liked seeing how pretty their home was, finally, after living in it for years.
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Huge lesson in this.  Removing ugly improves a garden.  Ironic, human intuition says, "I'll keep the ugly, better than nothing."
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This, below, is sublime.  A delightful narrative in all sorts of directions via the pic.



What the home looked like, below, before foundation plantings were removed.  Narrative is rather narrow.



More about this home, the Enos Kellogg Homestead, ca. 1784, here.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara