Showing posts with label Front Porch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Front Porch. Show all posts

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Front Porch: Long & Narrow

Placing table + chairs at the 'L' of a porch must be in the helix of our DNA.


The web has enough pictures to fill a seductive hardcover coffee table book.


 At the opposite end of the porch, above, more seduction, below.




Places to read, serve a meal, have conversation a basic trinity for your porch.
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics shot last month on Susanne Hudson's porch.  A field gathered collection of furniture with a tight trinity of color: green, brown, white.  Comfort oozes in her still life's.

Friday, July 5, 2013

Front Porch Plants

Choose pots, containers, plant stands so fabulous they can remain empty, if desired.


It's obvious, below, these plant stands can remain empty or filled easily for a party or whim.


Hydrangeas are in their black plastic container, hidden with erosion control fabric.
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This front porch is meant for reading, I'll give you something worthy: "Wendy (nothing to do with Peter Pan but short for Wendell) Howell was a grand American gone native (How yer dawgs?) whom I prized as a friend because she did not take to just anyone and made an exception for me.  She like whippets and whisky and had too many of both.  Lots of husbands (including a Roosevelt) had come and gone and she eventually settled with a lady vet in one of those Irish cottages which were rare then and now only happen on postcards.  It had an earth floor and stable doors and, in the sitting room, a vast opening for the fireplace where, if you bent down to look up the chimney, you could see a big patch of sky. At the entrance to the cottage was a sculpture of two whippets, old friends to me as they were an echo of a similar model by Gott at Chatsworth.  Wendy held a pilot's licence but luckily never offered to take me for a spin."  Debo Mitford.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Pics taken last month Susanne Hudson's front porch.

Thursday, July 4, 2013

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.

Monday, July 1, 2013

Hanging Hydrangea

"Hanging hydrangea", said Robin

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to Batman.

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How few choose to hang their 6" pots of hydrangea!
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics last month in Suzanne Hudson's garden.  Don't you still see people talking in their Batman/Robin cutouts?  No?  How boring.  I do.  Of course I thought they were the stupidest thing on the planet watching, enthralled, the first run episodes.

Monday, June 17, 2013

The Table You Want on Your Porch

Rescued: door, windows, stool.  


Love the sexy lines of this stool, we chose it first so more galvanized accouterments placed for balance.  
    



 Dinner table, floral arranging table, potting table, styled table.  Whatever, they're FREE.




During the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival we caught many pairs of friends sitting, visiting, enjoying the breeze, loving the views.
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Susanne Hudson & I sat in the chairs admiring our work.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken earlier this month at the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival.  The porch got bigger with the furniture added.  Why?  More function added along with the beautiful forms.   How did Susanne & I get the porch done, we schlepped everything you see into place.  
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No magic minions.
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Passion is the magic.

Friday, June 14, 2013

Trumeau on the Porch

Century old teller window, below.  Susanne Hudson saw it differently & made a trumeau.  Placed upside down, mirror installed,  a few inches cut off for scale & equally historic molding applied.


Kimberly Queen fern, below, tolerates blasting sun.  Vintage white baskets, below, $4 total, thrift store.


Faux bois table in the back corner?  Found in junk shop under $10 and it's made of resin.  Sprayed, who knows?
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Garden & Be Well,     XO Tara
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Pics taken earlier this month at my garden, created with Susanne Hudson, at the Penny McHenry Hydrangea Festival.
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Apologies for  vulgarities about filthy lucre, it's in defense of my profession.  How many more times must I hear, "I can't afford a garden."  Stool, old windows, door etc....were rescued, aka free.
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By good accident Susanne's reflection is in the mirror.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

How to Use Heads in Design

Got heads?



They're for


exterior, and


interior.
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Have you noticed a formula for your favorite interiors & exteriors?  Not into formulas?  No worries, formulas are nothing more than Shopping Lists!  Now, I have your attention.
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I've always been drawn to interiors with heads & ......
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In my garden is a decades old collection of broken heads.  Most were a $1.
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Top pic from same home/garden as previous post.  Bottom pics Nicky Haslam, via Cote de Texas article.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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More than heads, bodies too.  And urns with plinths.

Friday, May 10, 2013

Front Porch: Chain Rail

Lunch, below, this week.  Every home seen from the chair I sat in was a century old and white clapboard.  


Front porch columns each have iron rings, below, for chains lost to history, I've already designed their replacement.


With their 'swag' to mach the arch, below.


Will copy a pair of the columns, deeper into the garden, as entry to a garden room with enfilade from the front sidewalk.
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Repetition.
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Notice the power lines, bottom pics?  The bane of my existence for a mature camellia I wish to keep and limb-up into a tree.  They will contact the power company to see what can be done.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics same garden as yesterday's post.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

A Lawn Rule: Before & After


Came for the art show, a first visit, earlier this month.  He, we hadn't met before, asked a few garden questions.  Within moments, "Your lawn is in charge & you must be in charge of your lawn", I said.


I described a typical Victorian shape, for their Victorian home, rectangular with the corners worn away leaving an oval of turf.  Corners filled in with stone.


Earlier this week he sends me these pics, above/below.


I know, without asking, more pics will arrive.
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Loving what he's done and can't wait for the 'corners' to be filled.
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And I'm sure he remembers my comment about a focal point on axis with the front window, at right, above.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO Tara
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Top pic mine.  Is your lawn in charge?  

Saturday, March 16, 2013

On the Porch

Unused on an upstairs porch at the master bedroom, below, she brought the sofa downstairs near the kitchen and potager.  Much better, it's been used for a few naps.





My trugs are plastic, functional.  Hers look so good.


My favorite garden boots.  Ankle support, no dirt gets in, the boot works the shovel, not my foot.  Plastic clogs are great for most days but when it's digging & function it's my almost 30 year old Danners.
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Pics taken this month.  Same garden as several previous posts.  Graham Stuart Thomas is excellent on the garden boot.

Friday, March 8, 2013

Front Porch Views

Common once-upon-a-time the cabin.


Built on acreage outside Athens, GA this 1 room cabin was 'home' for many years as monies were saved to build the main house.


Keeping some views pristine from the cabin's front porch honors its past.


 View, above, sitting in the rocking chair, below.  Daffodils were planted last year to look 'as if' they had always been there.  Georgia red clay, above, isn't a problem it's Providence.


Keeping the original pilings, above, was paramount.


Not far away is the home, already a century old, the family in the cabin dreamed, worked & saved to build.
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This story was common, once-upon-a-time in USA.  Hard work, saving, doing without, no security net, fortitude.  Plan B when Plan A fizzled?  Hard work, saving, doing without, no security net, fortitude.
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And the man who built the cabin?  I would be proud to walk 'his' grounds and show him my work as he told me stories of its past.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken last week, same jobsite as previous several posts.  This project is using everything I've learned in 3 decades, and teaching new lessons.  Adoring the drama of directing the eye, foot, tire, spirit.