• Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

Dargan Landscape Architects

Create Nourishing Flourishing Home Utopias

  • Home
  • About
    • Vitae
  • Services
    • Dargan Landscape Architects
    • Consultations & Tune-Ups
  • Events
    • Events
    • Courses & Workshops
    • Need a Speaker?
  • The Toolbox
    • The Placemakers Academy Landscape Design Course
  • Blog
  • Press
  • Contact

Appearances, Lectures and Shows

Starting on Tricky Places : Gardens that Fit Your Lifestyle like a Glove.

December 31, 2016

rice-14-blogWhew. Its taken a summer like 2016 when friends and family had calamities, passed away or got really sick to make me appreciate my garden and health even more… and then the specter of scary local fires burning thousands of acres in our treasured Smoky Mountains which made me appreciate our fragile ecosystem.

This blog is a personal note is to myself to review everything in Dargan Landscape Architects book of work to help my friends, their home environments and interface with nature. Like holding hands with fragile yet resilient gloves that fit perfectly.

Hugh and I have been in practice as landscape architects for over four decades. Our client’s now lovely landscapes were tricky places to make behave: with thin soils, complicated topography, owners large wish list, zoning issues, too much or too little shade, too much or too little water, not enough space, too vast a canvas, weird parking, insufficient walkways…the list goes on!  We are blessed with the honor to coax, bend and collaborate with the owners to get the best designs built, and we thank them for sharing their private worlds.

My goal is to inspire homeowners to get the best out of their precious home environment. Design it to yield healthy wellbeing, inspire you to be your best and to provide nurturing spaces. Once we finish this work together, your garden will function like a well-oiled machine, which in itself is a stress-reducing factor.

Photographer, Sarah Valentine of Highlands NC,  shot beautiful dawn shots and late summer portraits of many of our local gardens.

Stay tuned as the book progresses!

Filed Under: Appearances, Lectures and Shows, Atlanta Garden Landscape Projects, Bloom Where you are Planted, Climate Change, Dovecote, Dovecote Garden Talk Salons, Fairy Gardens, General Landscape Commentary, Horticulture, Instagram, Landscape Architecture Projects, Landscape Design Tips, Mary's Events, Organic Gardening, PlaceMakers, Poppy's Environmental Tips, Poppy's Horticultural Tips, Poppy's Project, Uncategorized, Videos Tagged With: garden design, mary palmer dargan, sarah valentine photographer

Researching Heirloom Gardens in Western NC : The American Kitchen Garden

December 31, 2016

hodges-apple-closeup-blogThe prospect of saying yes…not a decision taken lightly.

The invitation extended to chair the Jan Wyatt Symposium 2017 for the Cashiers Historical Society, by Ann McKee Austin ( from whom it is impossible to decline a volunteer invitation) and president, Connie Haire, was a surprise.

Do I shoot myself after saying yes?  NO.  I’d promised my family not to take on more projects. But the tantalizing nudge to dust off a topic thoroughly covered in my first draft masters thesis is 1977 is impossible to resist. Rafts of info laying fallow in the storage unit, mildewed and unloved, has been slowly maturing…waiting for airtime.

One does not lightly throw something together that could impact a visitors perspective of history.

On the suggestion of Macon County Librarian,Karen Hawks, a spin and TRX buddy, I hired the wonderful librarian, Emily Crowell, to type, type, type.  YIKES! The old manuscript was a dot matrix printed, accordian-paged, non-digital manuscript. Emily DOVE IN with glee on her day off from work and is quickly modernizing the document.

WE HAVE A TITLE: The 2017 Jan Wyatt Symposium The Heirloom Gardener hosted by The Cashiers Historical Society.

WE HAVE A LOCATION: The Zachary Tolbert House Grounds c 1850.

WE SET A DATE: June 21 2017.

SPEAKERS SAID YES:

Eric Jackson of Old Salem to talk about historic plant materials

Ila Hatter, wildcrafter supreme, to demonstrate cooking methods of our forefathers

And me, to demonstrate what a garden might have looked like in 1850 when Alexander Zachary built the house in Cashiers, NC.

WE HAVE A STORYLINE and I meet with the tent man next week.

DIGITAL COPIES OF ALEXANDER ZACHARY’s journal appeared (primarily apple notes, but useful nonetheless!)

Whew…stay tuned for schedule and logo next!

jpegzachary_000

Filed Under: Appearances, Lectures and Shows, Atlanta Garden Landscape Projects, Bloom Where you are Planted, Climate Change, Dovecote, Dovecote Garden Talk Salons, Fairy Gardens, General Landscape Commentary, Horticulture, Instagram, Landscape Architecture Projects, Landscape Design Tips, Mary's Events, Organic Gardening, PlaceMakers, Poppy's Environmental Tips, Poppy's Horticultural Tips, Poppy's Project, Uncategorized, Videos

lighting lecture

September 8, 2015

Chris Wakefield POster small 2015lighting chris in cashiers

Filed Under: Appearances, Lectures and Shows, Uncategorized, Videos Tagged With: lighting

Join us in the Joy Garden Tour this weekend with Southern Botanic’s Doug Selph

July 13, 2015

Listen to Mary Palmer Dargan as she gives us all of this weekend’s jam-packed garden activities in Cashiers.

It’s important to note that this week’s Garden Talk Salon will be held on SATURDAY at 10 am, not Friday, at The Garden Talk Salon headquarters, 35 Flash Point Drive at Dovecote in Cashiers, North Carolina.

Screen Shot 2015-07-08 at 10.18.14 AM

Remember, this week’s Garden Talk Salon guest Doug Selph of Southern Botanics and Dovecote will also have booths during this weekend’s Joy Garden Tour at the Village Green Commons.

Hours:
Friday 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
Saturday 9 a.m.-3:30 p.m.

Click here to visit the Village Green’s website.

Please stop by and say hello!

MP Swings along Holdens large

Filed Under: Appearances, Lectures and Shows, Dovecote, Dovecote Garden Talk Salons, Uncategorized Tagged With: Doug Selph, Garden Talk Salon, joy garden tour, Village Green Commons

The Dancing Sculptor : Carl Peverall is at the Top on His Game and on Pointe!

June 29, 2015

When in the presence of a master, you learn how a visionary expresses passion about his craft. Observe Carl Peverall as he curates 10 pieces at his grand opening on this weekend. The films are in the works, so you can soon watch his narrative of each piece. For now, watch this ballet!

evolution father and son guardian Lucky source water spirit cleft water spirit cleft 2 artesia co-creation crest and calm

Filed Under: Appearances, Lectures and Shows, Uncategorized

  • Page 1
  • Page 2
  • Page 3
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Page 14
  • Go to Next Page »

Footer

Let’s Get Started on Your Project

Contact us to kick things off. This will be more fun than you think!
Get In Touch

Copyright © 2025 · Dargan Landscape Architects, All Rights Reserved