Walking the Line with Garden Ornaments

I've always been skeptical about garden ornaments.   Maybe I've  seen too many florescent whirlies,  plywood cut-outs showing  gardening grannies' underwear  and {gasp},  the garden g-nome!  Then there's the "no sucess like excess" approach of a neighbor - at last count there were 47 "decorations" in one small garden.

It's a slippery slope - too many doo-dads, or tacky doo-dads and POOF- you're in line with the crazy cat-ladies, and your once -lovely garden looks like sale-day at Big Lots.  But I went on a pocket garden tour recently and was struck by how the creative use of interesting ornaments really punched up the garden's impact.  I loved the use of "found" stuff - parts of old machinery,  little piles of glass or pottery,  beautiful ceramics (although even tasteful little statues of bunnies seem perilously close to going over the edge- just my opinion)!

I looked around my gardens and decided to embrace the decoration:

Terra cotta AND numbers - what's not to love?

My tea-cup garden.  I saw something similar in a garden last year and made my version using old stair spindles and thrift-store cups.

 These are all pieces from a broken  cast-iron chiminea.

Terrarium, minus the glass sides

A final word about the gnome .  When your two-year old granddaughter gives you a little-bitty gnome, you put in where you can see it every day and everytime you see it you smile!