Garden Ornaments… Make Them Personal

Garden ornaments and accessories appeal to the imagination and while they appear whimsical they are used with purpose. For example, they provide an opportunity to introduce a color note, to provide needed contrast and to help unify two very different garden areas.

A carefully chosen accessory will create mood or atmosphere, and can be set up as a temporary focal point in a border which has reached its flowering peak. If you want to pinpoint attention on some choice planting that visitors might otherwise overlook, it is quite conceivable to turn to a garden accessory for help.

Generally, accessories are selected to blend with the character of the garden in which they are to be used. but you can be dramatic and, for an attention-getter, select some object which is completely off-beat. If you don’t like the result, try something different. No great investment need be involved, so you can experiment to your heart’s content. The only thing to avoid is using too many accessories at one time. A woman never wears all her jewelry at once, nor does an interior decorator proceed without exercising restraint when he introduces accessory items to give character to a room.

Garden Accessories Not Always Permanent

Some locations need an accessory to round out a composition at all times, but more frequently accessories are needed for only a short while and when they have fulfilled their function are returned to the garden storage room. The nice thing about accessories is that we don’t have to live with them constantly but can bring them out when the need presents itself or when the spirit moves us.

Cellars and attics often contain many items that with imagination can be converted to garden use. Antique shops offer possibilities, and garden specialty stores show new decorative items each season designed especially for use out of doors. Nature herself offers appropriate material curiously shaped stones, a sea-worn piece of driftwood, or a moss-covered log to add a touch of realism to a wild flower garden. When selecting accessories, they must have some distinguishing quality and they must be appropriate for use in an outdoor setting.

Show Your Personality

Besides being appropriate for garden use, the things we select as accessories can tell a great deal about our personalities and interests. People who like antiques see nothing unusual in standing an old wagon wheel against the garage to call attention to marigolds in bloom in front of it. A gardener who appreciates modern art may try his hand at a piece of wire sculpture or devise a composition of cylinders and cubes for contrast beside the forms of nature found in his garden.

A traveler who duplicates a wayside shrine seen in some foreign land enjoys it for its power of recall as well as for the religious note which to him is not alien to a garden setting.

Most of the qualities desirable in a garden accessory also apply to major garden features such as birdbaths, pools, benches and arbors around which entire gardens are designed. Accessories are never as important as these major features and are rarely included in the original garden plan. They are “after thoughts” used to generate local interest and add garnish to our gardens.

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