Recently I read on another bulletin board quite a lot of people were derisive about people who put up gazing balls and other such decorations in their gardens. Any thoughts on things like gazing balls or those copper garden stakes with beads or glass balls on them in gardens? How about solar powered gazing ball / light combinations or other lights in the garden? Just wondering what the general feeling is about these things. I'm not talking about plastic pink flamingos or plastic deer or even garden gnomes. I do think some of this stuff looks good and some of the deer and gnomes are cute.
I have put some copper garden stakes in my small garden and hung a solar powered gazing ball light as well as put one of those solar powered path lights in. Personally I think the path light is pretty neat since it has settings for red, green, amber light and a setting for all three colors to flash. And of course my pvc fence is there to keep the lawn guys from mowing or weed whacking my plants.
Hmmm...I would have to agree with the geese and bears dressed up. But I have seen some beautiful geardens with all sorts of things in them from huge gazing balls and garden gnomes to planters made from old shoes.
Hi I am doing what I like in my garden...well with some compromise with the other occupants of the house who also have to live wioth it. I try to get something everyone likes there. I was just wondering how other people decorate (or not) their gardens, just for conversation :)
Decorating gardens should be a haphazard affair. Things that bring back memories, childrens or friends " artistic" efforts, make do items, your own "eurecas" and the things you fell in love with in a thrift store and "converted" . My garden decorations are made up of such things. Plastic foxes and racoons that my deceased mother-in-law left ot my daughter; painted rocks that look like bees, ladybugs and a T-Rex head that my ten year old daughter made for me; an old wooden ladder that I painted to use as a trellis; driftwood from trips to the river; old wooden ariondac chairs that I rescued from my neighbours house after the fire that totalled it, and painted to match the rest of my odds and ends patio furniture. When I look around, it all has a certain charm and holds lots of memories to ponder on warm summer evenings.
Garden statuary, big time, has been a feature of formal gardens for centuries, so it's certainly not tatty-by-definition. You *are* kidding/trolling with regard to flashing colored lights, aren't you?
Did you see 'Twister' and the metal kinetic sculptures Aunt Whatsis crafted? I wouldn't mind having one of *those* in a nice big garden.
Even examples of collossal 'bad taste' lawn decor is often fun to see, 'though I wouldn't want to live next door to it.
Nope not kidding :) Actually I have it set so the green light comes on at dark. Though the flashing setting would be neat to use when having a party or something like that.
Saw that :) I would love to have something like that, especially if it made windchime like sound
The only truly bad taste I can think of is a totally out of control yard full of weeds and junk like a rusted car or the like and lots of garbage around. Wouldn't want to live next to that either :)
I have a lot of junk sitting out in my gardens or attached to trellises, but I tend to avoid anything plastic or TOO tacky, though a brick with a rat carved in it might look less ideal to some than to me. Apart from rocks & logs & limbs that contribute to an artful chaos, such human-manufactured stuff as this rusty old broken millstone meets my ideal for garden knicknackery, & it was just something found in the sub-basement when we bought the house:
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last sentence on that page addresses plastic flamingos.
I think gazing balls have gotten pompously cliche; there's nothing inherently tasteless about something being round, but when everyone & their dog has a gazing ball, plus they keep calling them gazing balls, it can seem awfully unimaginative at the least. The best ones I've seen were actually glittery bowling balls! Had all the "plusses" of cloyingly named "Gazing Balls," yet editorialized on the absurdity of fads. 99% of the gazing balls I've seen for sale were gawdy crap that'd look perfect in trailer court gardens, but a few I thought were quite nice & probably only the cliche of it keeps them out of my yard.
On the other hand I do have a couple of glass floats picked up along the Olympic coast, & they are floating in an oak barrel. To some these would appear no different from the commercial "gazing balls" but to me they have a more personal feeling because I've lived in this area since childhood & always thrilled to spot one of these floats on coastal beaches after autumn storms, knowing many of them have been months, years, or decades floating out in the Pacific getting here from Asia.
Gnomes & flamingos can certainly seem to be the low-end of a lot of either junky or kitschy stuff, but if they have some emotional appeal, I wouldn't avoid them just cuz OTHER people think they're trashy. My great-grandma had a couple super ugly hanging pots on her front porch, & if I had those today, I'd love them because they were hers, but not likely anyone but me would think they were nice. If garden gnomes touch your soul, don't criticize your own soul, just be happy to have one.
I've a friend in Oregon who had something like a hundred pink flamingos in her front yard -- all of them stolen from around Eugene over a great many years. Though no one ever proved they were stolen, everyone had to have realized it was something of a mania, she'd see one & she had to steal it. For the most part, people seemed to regard it as a perverse honor that her flock included a bird that had once lived in their yard. Sometimes a worn-out old flamingo would be left near her porch by secret gift-givers apparently wanting a nice way to get rid of an unwanted plastic pet. And she'd often look outside & see strangers & tourists standing amidst her flamingos, taking pictures of each other.
Then one morning she woke up to discover ALL HER PLASTIC FLAMINGOS WERE GONE, & in their place was one plastic blue heron. Over time, she'd get pictures of the flock in the mail, postmarked from all around North America, as though her flock was actually flying from place to place & seeing the sites. Then about two years later, she got up one morning, & the flamingos had come home!
Whoever pulled this stunt remains unknown to this day, but C. still has attached to her refrigerator a collection of photographs documenting the flock's travels.
If you find it pretty, it's probably pretty, & if it serves as a garden light, I wouldn't even qualify that as a tacky gazing ball, but as a light. Now it doesn't sound like something i would personally want in my garden, but a garden should appeal to each gardener's own tastes, not to some uptown designer's idea of what would be better.
One of the most tasteless yards I ever saw was crammed full of whirligigs & windmills & weatherveins, anything the wind could move. There were also colored plastic ribbons & tape & triangle flags woven through a chainlink fence, & the lawn was never mowed, the windmills & stuff being too closely packed to even let a mower through. Yet to any child's eyes, it was great. The old couple's grandkids & great grandkids gave them most of that junk. I'm sure the first couple windmills & propellered things looked fine, but when an extended family's population of grandkids & cousins decided they'd all & always continuously give whirly garden junk to the family patriarch & matriarch, it was bound to look awfully silly after a few years. But it was all for love, & if any neighbors hated it, f*ck 'em.
I think at first glance people would not see much knickknackery in my garden because it's pretty much all hidden among greenery, & is pretty much of earthy colors; but in fact I have quite a lot of stuff sitting here & there. I even select my gardening tools in part on the basis of how attractive they look if I leave them in the yard, like this wooden bucket:
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BEST garden decorations are rocks & limbs, though.
Sounds a bit like my next door neighbors who hate my hedges. The one between the yards was well on the way to being trees, beautiful and healthy. They asked if they could cut it back some and thinking they meant trim it on their side of the yard my dad said yes. They cut it back from nearly 8 feet tall to about 2 1/2 feet tall, almost totally denuding it of leaves and nearly killing it. They have complained about the front holly being over the sidewalk and called the city to tell us to have it cut, and have coplained about not being able to see when they back out of their driveway. Strangely enough the huge tree they have planted in the sidewalk easement doesn't block their view and the holly only bothered them when we made them move their security light which came on and shined right in my parents' bedroom window (cars on the cross-street set the thing off). They also put their heavy trash out in front of our holly well onto our side of the sidewalk easement. And I won't go into the open sewer line the still haven't managed to get fixed (it has a rubbermaid tub turned over it and semi burried).
I plan on putting up one of those pretty decorative fences around the front yard. The nice vinyl ones that look like painted wood :) Should really tick them off :D
Mine looks like green carnival glass (which I collect) and has a solar light in it. I hung it from the soffet between the front door and front window. Its not getting enough light though so I need to move it. I think maybe to the back yard near the birdbath which is a large drip tray bolted to a 4x4 fence post. The birdbaths in the stores were all too shallow and not big enough around. The blue jays love it and won't let any other birds use it when they're out there.
I remember hearing about this on the news :) and while I don't condone breaking the law I think its pretty neat. Its especially neat your friend seems to have taken the whole thing in the spirit it seems to have been done in.
corner from my house. They have a nicely cut and trimmed yard which is very neat and ordinary looking. They have one of those concrete fake wells in the yard, a small one sitting all by itself with nothing around it. It just looks unfinished.
Don't listen to what other people say. This question will draw tons of different answers and leave you right were you are now. Wondering if it is acceptable or not. Who cares. As long as you like it, that is what is most important.
Yep, the only people I listen to about the yard are my family. I did manage to talk them out of a pond in the back, we've got enough snakes in the yard and more than enough mosquitos :)
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