Dargan Landscape Architects

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Tricky Places: Design Your Mountain Garden to Fit your Lifestyle like a Glove!

Tricky Places cover blogMay 25 at 4 pm, Mary Palmer Dargan share the tricks of her trade at the Albert Carlton Library in Cashiers. http://fontanalib.org/cashiers

Trick Places refers to landscapes that are fragile, steep, complicated – but never boring! Do you have problems with your Parking, Terraces, Outdoor Dining & Pavilions, Captured Views, Steps & Walkways, Art & Sculpture, Seating Areas, Water & Basins, Gardens, FirePits, Service Areas, Pots and Planters, Parties or Lighting? Come pick her mind with your lifestyle conundrum!

The lecture is hosted by The Albert Carlton Friends of the Library.

Afterwards, you are invited to join the Dargans for a 5:30-7:30 ” Evening Light” reception at Dovecote to honor Carl & Ethan Peverall, father and son sculptors, who create atmospheric works of art that grace many of our clients’ gardens, and museums like Penland School of Art. The Peveralls speak also on Friday at 10 am about ” Morning Light”  the installation of Contemporary Stonehenge 

Peverall sculpture opening 2017

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

for more info on our garden talk salons, please visit 

https://dargan.com/dovecote-events

contemporary stonehenge Carl peverall sculpture

Garden Talk Salon Opens with Carl Peverall May 25 reception

We’re delighted to have Carl and Ethan Peverall with us at the Garden Talk Salon. The Grand Opening of Contemporary Stonehenge is upon us May 25 at 5:30 pm at Dovecote

 

Peverall sculpture opening 2017

35 Flash Point Drive Cashiers, NC ( next to Cornucopia off hwy 107s) 828-743-0307

Meet Carl at the party and join us also on Friday, May 26 at 10 am, for an interpretation of the atmospheric works of art. Carl and Ethan, a father and son team, are internationally applauded sculptors and this is their 4th showing in Cashiers. Many of their works grace our clients’ beautiful gardens!

 

 

 

For more on the Garden Talk Salon please visit our dovecote-events page: 

https://dargan.com/dovecote-events/

contemporary stonehenge Carl peverall sculpture

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

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!

Researching Heirloom Gardens in Western NC : The American Kitchen Garden

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

Drink Your Own Garden Live FB at 3 today!

Drink Your Own Garden Demonstration at Cashiers Historical Society’s fabulous Burt Farm Showhouse 3 pm TODAY

Mary Palmer Dargan demonstrates handcrafted bitters techniques and shares recipes you can use to harvest the best flavors and healthy drinks from your own garden, or even forage from the roadsides! ( note: I picked the elderberries pictured below just this weekend.)

Join is at 2502 Norton Road (off of Hwy 64) and follow the event signs. Tickets to the fabulous Burt Farm Showhouse are available at the door, by contacting Cashiers Historical Society or calling 828-743-7710


August 23 BITTERS MAKING at the BURT FARM Cashiers Historical Society 
showhouse website here.
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 Magical Mushrooms: Cancelled Aug 26. Rescheduled for October

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Join us for a feast on August 30, with wildcraft expert, Ila Hatter
will speak at the Village Green on Mother Nature’s Secret Kitchen

Dargan is sponsoring the foraging tasting which follows her lecture. Also known as Wildcrafting, it means you use locally sourced and harvested elements from nature in your meal preparation. It might be elderflowers for a frisky drink, or sour grapes to perk up your palette!
Please include me in Ila Hatter’s foraging tasting event! 

Hugh and I look forward to seeing you soon.

Cheers,


Dovecote painted by Sarah Sneeden July 14Cashiers Plein Air Festival ( below)

 

IMG_7776 mp best bitters 2015 PR