Sunday • August 29, 1999

 


GARDENING KNOW-HOW: Well-placed ornaments set garden stage
Annie Calovich - Knight Ridder Newspapers
Thursday, August 26, 1999

If you can walk past all the gazing balls and obelisks and sculptural sprinklers on your way to the greenhouse and the tomato plants when you visit a garden center these days, you're a simpler soul than I am.

As a writer in The New York Times recently put it: ''The craze for picture windows and patios during the 1950s and '60s that became the gardening renaissance of the '80s that became the boom in casual outdoor living in the early 1990s has found its endgame: outdoor interior decoration.''

A slew of new ways to spend money can leave a gardener's head spinning like a whirligig, especially when the budget and the yard can only (and should only) hold so many ornaments.

Some gardeners insists that all the options add to a gardener's fun and, like a gazing ball reflecting flowers, can become part of the fabric of nature. Here are a few guidelines for adding art and ornamentation tastefully, while allowing for the occasional eccentricity.

A matched set?

Make sure the art matches the style or the theme of the garden. A formal garden, for example, needs a classic statue.

Make sure the size of the art matches the scale of the garden. You don't want it to be cramped in too small a space or lost in one too large.

The right place

At the end of a vista (the most popular spot).

At a pivot point between two spaces in the garden.

In an unexpected spot that offers the element of surprise.

Trends

People are buying all sizes of fountains, depending on where it is to be placed. How close is it to the house? If it's far away, you'll want it to be bigger. If it's to be on a deck or patio, it can be an indoor-outdoor fountain that can be moved inside for the winter.

Wind ornaments are not just chimes. They are wind sculptures that surf currents of air atop tall or short stakes that can be stuck in among the flowers of a garden bed or a large container garden or even submerged in ponds.

If you come across a garden ornament that you like but don't quite know how to use, it's best to wait before buying. The trend will either evolve until it's more accessible, or it will disappear and you'll be glad you didn't get on board.

Gazing balls, for example, used to come just in fragile mirrored glass but now are rendered in stainless steel so that they won't break if they fall or get dented in a hailstorm and can even be floated in a pond. The globe theme also can now be seen in colorful handblown glass balls or teardrop shapes attached to copper stakes or with a loop on the top for hanging.

The spheres on stakes add a vertical element to a grouping of flowers, something that's often missing in the garden. Height can be achieved with many other things as well, such as obelisks, sculpture or wind ornaments.

 

FOR THE FUN OF IT
If you really want to judge the tastefulness of your own yard, here are some of the questions from a cool Web site, www.suite101.com/category.cfm/gardening, which is in the midst of its third annual Tacky Lawn Art Celebration and Contest.

We won't tell you how you rate from this sampling, but in case you don't pick up the clues, the lower your score, the tackier you tend to be. But it's all for fun.

1.When you look at any part of your garden, how many ornaments can you see in a single glance?

  1. A thing or two: 3 points
  2. Enough for a barbershop quartet: 2 points
  3. Enough for the quartet's audience: 1 point

2. Of your yard ornaments, what percentage are natural-colored (stone, wood, marble, bronze or reasonable facsimiles thereof)?

  1. Mother Nature could have made them all herself: 3 points
  2. Mother Nature definitely had a hand in most of them: 2 points
  3. Uh --- maybe Andy Warhol dropped by for a haunting?: 1 point

3. How many of your ornaments need to be hunted for, or are likely to surprise a garden visitor?

  1. You know they've found them when they do a double-take: 3 points
  2. Folks comment on the big piece and are surprised to find more: 2 points
  3. Folks keep tripping on them: 1 point
  4. I know they're there but haven't seen them in a few years: 0 points

4. How many of your ornaments pretend to have a function but don't? (Example: wishing wells with no water.)

  1. If it's not Holland, there's no excuse for a windmill: 3 points
  2. Hey --- it's romantic and it looks good there: 2 points
  3. "Thunk'' is good --- easier for me to collect the coins: 1 point
  4. You mean you weren't fooled?: 0 points

5. Do you have any yard art that is standing alone, with no surrounding plant life (other than crab grass)?

  1. I love that look of ornaments with green, leafy feet: 3 points
  2. Absolutely nothing will grow there and it needed something: 2 points
  3. Hey --- they beat mowing the lawn!: 1 point

6. How many of your ornaments are there because you have a special love for them, your kids do, or they came from someone you love, whether you like them or not?

  1. I would miss any one of these if the yard police confiscated them: 3 points
  2. Well --- I'm training ivy over a couple of them: 2 points
  3. You see, I had all these blank spaces to fill: 1 point


--- Knight Ridder News Service

 

The Magical Garden is located outside Atlanta, Georgia. If you have any questions please email us at info@magicalgarden.com.

glass gazing globes - steel gazing globes - globe stands - downspouters
sculptures - garden stakes - stepping stones - wall plaques
hand crafted copper - flora - butterflies - dragonflies - snakes
moon - raindrop - spirals - helix - chandeliers
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