Mary Palmer Dargan believes in Lifelong Landscape Design so much that on Sunday, March 17 she was promoting her new book about it to the attendees of the 2013 Southeastern Flower Show as they stopped by her landscaping booth exhibit.
Dargan really doesn’t have to promote her book or her learning system, however, since it will promote itself given that she has earned her reputation as one of the most talented landscape design experts in the field. And that’s likely due to the process she follows, or rather the one she teaches others to follow., which she calls PLACE.
My mission is to heal the earth one garden at a time, and improve the quality of life one home at a time for homeowners,” she told this Examiner. “And I do it with a system called PLACE (potentials, layers, agenda, create and enjoy). And it’s a home virtual learning system.”
Using the PLACE system, Mary Palmer Dargan provides home owners and others with the tools they need to “create an oasis landscape” for their home surroundings. But she is also mindful of the need for those same people to interact with her one-on-one, or in a public venue, which is why she can be found giving lectures on landscape design, like the one she gave during the Southeastern Horticultural Society’s flower show this March.
We talked about unlocking the genetic code of your property, learning the secret of layers, and the eight key components to a lifelong landscape design for starter or lifelong landscapes,” Palmer said about her most recent public presentation.
Mary Palmer Dargan was joined at the 2013 Southeastern Flower Show this year by Curt Jackson and Andrew Mullins, two UGA design graduates who have been with her Dargan Landscape Architects firm for four years and one year, respectively. And it was a good thing, as they were definitely needed to help field questions from interested booth visitors over the weekend event.
It was evident that Dargan was in her element during the three-day horticultural event, surrounded by an audience of avid learners. Her years in the education field, including a stint as a visiting professor at Clemson University, appears to have helped her to hone her teaching skills to perfection, which also appear to be a natural outgrowth of her personality.
And that is partially why she and her husband Hugh dominated media coverage at CNN and Home and Garden Television (HGTV) when they first came to Atlanta in the 90s. Mary's personality coupled with their before and after landscaping project photos helped propel them into the landscape design limelight.
So it isn’t surprising that Mary’s landscaping booth at the 2013 Southeastern Flower Show would draw a crowd of continuous visitors this past weekend. And it isn’t surprising that she continues to give of her time to educate the general public about how to create that oasis for the soul in the landscape.
Thus Dargan’s latest book, Lifelong Landscape Design, is just one more effort on her part to provide the public with the tools they need in order to create a backyard and neighborhood environment that positively impacts all five senses.
Fans can catch up with her next at The Garden Club of Palm Beach in early April, where she will use her horticultural skills to serve as one of the event judges.
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