When it comes to making my garden a fun place, I keep my eye out for things that make me smile. I admit that my tastes are a little unusual; I steal logs from my husband’s well-guarded firewood stash and place them along our stairway. They look like faces, so it feels appropriate to put them to ornamental use. From time to time I find discarded things that seem to belong on a pillar or in a pot on the deck. Once I found a part of an old iron fence, reportedly from France, in a shop-closing sale. It just about killed me dragging it home, but a few coats of glossy red paint later, it stands between the white sage and curly willow in my garden. Holding the pot of red paint in my hand after finishing the gate, I spied a section of ugly metal railing that the previous owner had installed. Guess what? It became bright red, too. If you can’t hide it, flaunt it.
A friend let me salvage a splendid screen door from her side yard. This one was Victorian with little turned finials, so I disassembled it and now the Victorian part, bright red, hangs on the chimney outside and the rest, painted chartreuse, serves as my back screen door. Thank heavens it has that squeak that all the screen doors of my youth had, as I get to feel like a youngster every time I let it close with a little slam. Then there are the gates found in dumpsters, handmade and lovely. One is awaiting paint and, when complete, will sit in the middle of our back field. Since it will complicate my husband’s weed whacking, it will force me to clear the weedy grasses around it and put in something lovely against the red.
When a lot of trees came down at my sister’s home, she cut them into fireplace-sized logs and stood them up in a meandering line from one side of her property to the other. She draped them with long strings of miniature white lights so that at night a river of slithering lights twinkles across the land. And as you peer through double-glazed windows, you get the effect of many strands of lights.
One of her neighbors uses the fence around his field to display old and broken tools; I would take it a step further and spray them all the same brilliant color.
For years I have been collecting the rusted metal bands that encircle wine barrels, along with a few very heavy steel wheels that must have come from a huge wagon. One of these days I’ll figure out how to weld them together, as I have a great plan for them in the field. I won’t pull out the red paint, as the rust looks just fine on these industrial relics.
I have seen rock gardens embellished with old Tonka trucks and sand pails, the rusted bottoms allowing the toys to host small succulents and look totally in scale. Defunct wheelbarrows can be filled with compost and planted with lettuce or a succulent garden. All those little action figures and ceramic animals that are taking up space in your hall closet can be put outside; when the grandkids come to visit, just think what an adventure it will be to look for their mom’s toys in your garden, or to see Dad’s old metal headboard serving as a climbing support for beans or sweet peas.
Speaking of beans, string beans and scarlet runner beans are easy to grow and can make wonderful potted collections that will grow up your bamboo blind cord and wind their way across your eaves if you let them. Put up a few strings of lights for them to climb on and you’ll have a fun display out the window at night as the light will be enough to see the gorgeous yellow-green foliage. We did this in our tenth-floor apartment window boxes in Caracas. I don’t think the neighbors ever believed that we harvested beans every day for months.
I was enchanted with what I saw in one of the Venice, California, canals earlier this year: hanging from the branches of a substantial conifer was a random collection of old chandeliers. Some were from the 60’s, when amber glass was popular, and others were candelabra style. They all had glass parts. I searched around the base of the tree and did not find a single source of power, so I surmised these lights simply catch the sunlight to be interesting. Maybe the artist goes out some mornings to find the addition of a new chandelier hanging in the branches, as the tree might invite neighbors to make their own contributions.
A garden is many things: a place for the quiet contemplation of nature and a visual feast of color and design. Its basic mission is to provide beauty and celebrate nature; it’s an added bonus when it can also make you smile.
Kathy Hartzell is a self-taught gardener (with much to learn) and a proud grower and consumer of Brassica oleracea. She was the president of the Inverness Garden Club from 2011 to 2013.