Garden Ornaments

I find that choosing and placing ornaments in a garden is interesting, but rather difficult. There are all sorts of ornaments from the reproductions of formal statuary to decorative scarecrows or urns or pots, all the way to garden gnomes. Some work quite well (that is to say, they improve the garden), but many don't. Why does some ornamentation seem attractive, while other ornamentation doesn't?

Plant supports as ornaments (Government House garden, Victoria B.C.)

First of all, I think in most gardens, ornaments are like jewellery: a little goes a long way. I think also that you have to be able to relate in some personal way to the ornament. For instance, it may something you made yourself or someone close to you made. Perhaps it is something you brought back from a holiday with which you have an emotional connection or something that has a connection with the past in your region or area. A concrete shepherd from the garden center does not cut it, because it has no connection to you.

A connection with the past, a stone grinding wheel

Ornaments must also feel like they belong to your garden. They cannot stick out but must become an integral component of your design. I think ornaments often work well when they become a focal point, when they organize the view by bringing together various unrelated elements. Empty pots or bird baths often work very well that way. From whichever side you see the same pot in the three pictures below, it seems to gather together the various elements around it into a whole and create an attractive picture.

Abkhazi Garden (Victoria B.C.)

I think that pot illustrates what the great American poet Wallace Stevens meant when he wrote:

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.

Métis Garden, Québec

The two birdbaths above also work like Stevens' jar. By creating a focal point, they hold together the surrounding plants and create a whole.

Abkhazi Garden, Victoria B.C.

This third birdbath above works on a different scale. It becomes a focal point for the whole clearing that surrounds it. However somehow it does not seem to work quite as well as the previous two. Perhaps the scale is wrong?

A focal point for the whole clearing might need to be slightly larger. What do you think? The bench however provide a beautiful example of the practical being ornamental.

A Buddhist stele

Whimsical ornaments are a class apart as they are meant to make you smile or laugh, and whether you do or you don't has a lot to do with your taste. Garden gnomes fall into that category. I rather like some of the humorous ornaments. Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures, but if you do a search for pictures of garden ornaments, you will see that some can be very attractive.

Herb garden, Roche Fleurie

 These two posts in our herb garden above are decorative, but they also organize the space. Each herb is grown in a triangular section divided up by boards sunk in the ground. These triangles, which we don't see in the picture, all radiate from the posts and give them a certain purpose. Ornamentation always works better when it is also functional. The Japanese stone lantern below seems well placed  in part because it could be functional (to light the path next to it).

Government House Garden, Victoria B.C.

I think ornamentation is usually easier to place when it is not given centre stage. As I mentioned above, it works well as a focal point but is much more difficult to integrate into the garden when it is placed front and centre or alone in a prominent spot. This approach can work with very formal objects (as in the picture below), but then the whole area around it becomes a stage for this one ornament and has to be organised as such.

Roche Fleurie Garden

Métis Garden, Québec

As I said before, I think the ideal ornament is also useful.  It is hard to say if the fence above is more useful than decorative. Gates, garden furniture, bird baths, pots, plant supports, mailboxes, even watering cans, can become ornaments as well as being useful. But functionality, even when not readily obvious as in the picture below, helps make sense of the ornamentation. The concrete balls are placed to make sure wheelbarrows or people do not trample the small plants on the edge of the path or hit the pot and so they are not only decorative but functional as well.

Roche Fleurie

 What would you say makes ornamentation work?