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Part of Loving Houses is seeing what unique housing ideas are out there.

This week's HomebyDesign article is about re-using an old church for town homes with fascinating history and design.   It is never bad to imagine what are the possibilities.

If ever wondering about the possibilities of a new home, let me know.

For now, relax and enjoy!

New Weekly Articles - Breaking Bread || Home By Design Weekly Article

Beauty in the Gardn

But the accomplishment that makes his fascinating life worth remembering is the garden he created at his home, Pleasant Valley Farm, in Monkton, Maryland. From the fields and pastures that came up to the house, he carved out twenty-two acres to be his garden. A novice in garden planning, he drew upon what he had observed in the great gardens of Europe, creating a garden informed by the influences of Gertrude Jekyll and other great early-20th-century English gardeners as well as by the garden masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance.  To provide for long vistas, he designed two cross axes. At the intersection, in the center of the Great Bowl, is Ladew’s oval swimming pool. Fifteen garden rooms, each with a different theme, are arranged off the axes. There is the yellow garden, featuring plants with golden foliage; a white garden dazzling for its purity; and an iris garden overlooked from an Italianate balcony. Ladew dubbed his apple orchard his “Garden of Eden” and added a statue of Adam and Eve in which Eve offers an apple to Adam, who already has two hidden in his hand behind his back. The “sculpture” garden is packed with topiaries of mythical birds atop spiral-clipped pedestals, fanciful lyres, Winston Churchill’s bowler hat, and Churchill’s “V” for victory sign. The terrace garden is hedged with hemlock and yew embellished with pruned garlands and pyramid finials. Another hedge features a flock of swans swimming along the top.  The art of topiary was virtually unknown in the United States before Ladew began creating his garden. He loved telling the story of the time he was stopped by a woman who said to him, “I saw your lovely garden in Maryland. Those wonderful hedges and all that beautiful Tipperary.”

“It was hard to keep from laughing,” Ladew related in The Life and Gardens of Harvey Ladew, by Christopher Weeks, “and I thought I would never again hear anything as funny about my garden, but when I reached Palm Beach, a man said to me, ‘Mr. Ladew, your name came up the other night at a dinner party. I understand you are the authority on Utopia.’”  Ladew’s fascination with topiary began when he was foxhunting in England and came across a hedge with a pack of topiary hounds running across the top after a fox. Vowing to create the scene in his own garden, he went further, creating a tableau that features two mounted horses, one jumping over a gate in a hedge, chasing after a pack of hounds that are in hot pursuit of the fox out in front. This scene has become the iconic symbol of Ladew Topiary Gardens.  Today, the house and gardens are open to the public seven days a week between April 1 and October 31. As Ladew himself was wont to say, it’s all “perfectly delightful.”

Beautiful Landscape Improves Home Values

Charlottesville Garden Undergoes a Massive Transformation That Results in a Geometric Layout of Clipped Hedges 

 and a Terrace for Entertaining

WRITTEN BY CATRIONA TUDOR ERLER

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CATRIONA TUDOR ERLER

Green is the color of the garden created by Frank Byers and Jerry Northcutt. It’s a peaceful place where they can entertain graciously and where the geometry of shape and form creates a restful, visually pleasing composition. What looks so “right” today began eleven years ago as a blank slate. Dotted on the property around the newly built house were a few mature cedars, but otherwise the land was bare. “We started from the base,” says Byers. “We knew we wanted a large terrace for entertaining, but we had to wait several years for the fill dirt to settle.” 

 While they waited, they planted cherry trees around the perimeter of the planned terrace. The only suitable place for this patio was on the west side of the house. With that exposure, it would be particularly hot on summer afternoons and evenings when it was most likely to be used. The cherry trees were to provide much-needed shade for the patio-to-be. Planning ahead paid off: the young trees got a good start on their growth during the years before the brick terrace was laid, so they were ready for service when everything was in place.

 The terrace became the central hub of the design from which all else radiates. Gravel paths lead off opposite sides of the patio, one wrapping around the side of the house to the front driveway and parking court. The other forms a straight axis parallel to the house, drawing the eye down the length to a beautiful armillary raised on a plinth. Clipped boxwoods line both paths, which are backed by evenly spaced cherry trees.

Read the rest of the this wonderful transformation via the attached link!!!  Ideas are always great to have!

http://http://www.homebydesign.com/pages/article/HBD_APR_11_08/43859/index.html

Thoughts????

What Good Movies Have You Seen??

Oh, there are so many flicks that I would love to see....was your summer so busy that a few had to be left to DVD or Netflix download? Unfortunately, mine was so busy with helping buyers and sellers that I seldom got to the movies.

Yet, the Labor Day weekend provided time to see "Bourne Ultimatum"
Anyone familiar with this series of movies knows this is the third in the series. Normally a formula for a destructive rendition of the original we all loved(seen the latest Pirates of the Caribbean...exactly!)

But with Bourne it is different. You HAVE TO watch "Bourne Identity" and "Bourne Supremacy" to understand what Jason Bourne is up to. Though he is the "professional hitman" with secret covert government training, you find a character that you grows and changes as the series continues.

The movies has action aplenty with wild chase scenes, brutal hand to hand combat and uncanny tension. Yet, it see Bourne learn finally who he is and why he is. In addition, we learn how deep the "govt. scandal" goes(a favorite evil for action films).

This is the type of action movie that the guys like to watch but can hook any lady that loves a great story.

Love to hear your thoughts on the movie or your favorite of the summer.