The urge to decorate every inch of my environment (the proverbial nesting instinct) is still with me when I venture out into the garden. No matter where I work, I always try to create small vignettes, focal points, enticing vistas, and intimate seating areas for conversations, meals, and just plain relaxing.
I discovered long ago that sometimes the simplest container, tool, or rock stands out as beautifully in a landscape as a fancy, high-priced piece of garden sculpture. Now I experiment and try to create ephemeral arrangements of found, natural materials, such as leaves and flowers, or carefully considered clusters of pots, tools, and handmade willow-work trellises, tuteurs, and tepees.
Go outside today and find a small spot that needs a face-lift. Then look at what’s at hand with fresh eyes and an adventuresome spirit. You’ll be both surprised and satisfied with what you create for your garden. Happy nesting!
Search for old multi-paned windows to mount on uninteresting walls or expanses of fence. You can leave the windows unadorned or paint a scene behind the glass and add shutters and a window box.
Attach an iron or wooden gate or door to a solid wall or fence at the end of an axis line or pathway. The portico will become a beckoning focal point and hint at secret places beyond the boundaries of your garden.
Long Island gardener and artist Robert Dash uses color as one of the most important elements in his bold garden designs. He fearlessly paints gates, fences, and furniture to match the season or satisfy a whim.
To create a whimsical border, parade a matched line of small terra-cotta pots along your flower bed.
To repair a broken terra-cotta pot, moisten the breaks, squeeze carpenter’s glue onto the broken edges, and reset the pieces. Circle the pot with strips of masking tape to hold the pieces in place, and let the bond harden.
Create yard art from cast-offs. Extricate those old tools from your garage, and use heavy-gauge wire to fasten them together into a three-dimensional sculpture or a gardener’s coat-of-arms. Mount them on large L-shaped brackets screwed into a fence or wall. Or bunch the tools together, tie them loosely, and allow them to stand on their own as vertical assemblages in the garden.
Turn a birdbath into a work of ephemeral art. Float an array of blossoms and fronds on the water when you expect company or you’re hosting an outside celebration. I did this in our toilets, and it was a big hit with guests, until they wanted to flush!
Gather freshly fallen leaves or flowers and arrange them in whimsical designs on garden pathways and terraces.
Outfit a terra-cotta pot with an electrical wire and socket, and use it as a hanging lamp for a potting shed, garden room, porch, or greenhouse.
Pick up some old wire-handled canning jars at flea markets or antique shops and give them new life as outdoor lights. Pour 1 inch of sand or gravel into each jar, nestle a candle in the center, and hang them along porches and tree limbs or parade them up a drive or pathway.
If you have a crop of hard-shelled gourds, you can create your own lighting fixtures. Pick the gourds after the vines dry and store in a cool, well-ventilated and covered area. Hang-dry the gourds in panty hose or recycled mesh potato or onion bags. They’re dry when they feel light and rattle when shaken. Use a saw to remove the narrow top third of the gourd, and drill holes in patterns around the sides. Set a small glass holder and votive candle inside.
Amass a stash of quart and half-gallon cardboard drink containers to use as molds for magical winter lights. Remove the tops, and slide a quart container into a half-gallon carton. Drop rocks into the quart carton to hold it in place. Pour distilled water between the two cartons. Let freeze. Just before use, pour some warm water in the smaller container and lift out. Peel the outer carton from the ice block. Line a pathway or driveway and drop in tea lights or pillar candles. They’ll look like flickering fireflies.
Pull those worn-out gardening gloves from the trash can and use them as charming hanging planters on a wall or fence. Make sure there are drainage holes in the fingers, fill the gloves with soil, and plant them with lettuce, radishes, baby carrots, flowers, or small, trailing plants.
Snip your own plant labels out of 16-ounce (a thin weight that bends easily) sheets of copper. With an awl, poke a small hole in the end of the copper, and thread it with copper wire. Or cut out a T-shaped marker that can be poked into the soil. Write the names of your plants with a ballpoint pen or a grease pencil.
Highlight your favorite plants by moving them to center stage on a patio, porch, or frequently visited walkway. Turn two or three terra-cotta pots upside down and lay an old board across them to serve as a staging area.
Attach a series of three terra-cotta pots horizontally to a tall vertical post in your garden. Keep plant labels, markers, and twine inside. Although these look like totemic garden sculptures, they’re practical and will save you lots of steps.
Gather long branches or slender tree limbs to build a series of tepee-shaped trellises for your garden. These vertical structures are focal points, punctuation marks in a normally horizontal plane. Grow annual vines on the tepee, with shade-loving lettuces inside. The shade will also stop your lettuces from bolting.
Collect sculptural, twisted lengths of driftwood or wind-fall branches to construct wall trellises and arbors. Predrill the holes to avoid splitting the wood, then fasten the branches to each other or to a wall with galvanized deck screws.
Assemble a whimsical collection of old pieces of galvanized metal (chicken feeders and waterers, buckets, coal hods, watering cans, florist’s buckets, and so on). The pewter patina is a perfect foil for the colors and foliage of plants. For greater impact, mass the pieces closely together.
Turn a coal hod into a planter.
Display an array of empty containers for impact.
A bouquet of tools.
Seaside gardeners, or anyone with access to seafood processing plants, can use the shells of mussels and clams as a design element of a decorative parterre. When crushed, the shells make a handsome and long-lasting surface for pathways.
Collect old mirrors (even the grungiest glass looks great outdoors) and hang in dark or shaded areas in your garden to reflect light, create the illusion of more space, and evoke a sense of mystery.
A trip to the junkyard may turn up some fabulous finds that will give pizzazz to your garden. Line an old hay rack with moss and mount it on a wall. Fill it with soil and nestle show-stopping specimen plants inside. Or cut a piece of exterior plywood slightly larger than the top of the rack, paint or marbleize it, and mount it against a wall or fence to use as a demilune garden table.
Chicken feeder drawer before and after.
A battalion of buckets for every use.
Turn a large terra-cotta pot upside down for an outdoor table base, and top the pot with a large, upside-down saucer. This makes a handsome occasional table near a bench or a pedestal for potted plants. Or turn it right side up and use as a birdbath.
“What is necessary is that we be content with little.”
—St. Teresa of Ávila
Terra-cotta colored chimney flue and sewer tiles make large, handsome, and versatile planters. These bottomless containers are great for large specimens, such as trees, shrubs, and artichokes. Check out construction sites. Contractors are often glad to give away slightly damaged pieces.
Set 2- to 4-foot sections of chimney flue, terra-cotta sewer pipe, or copper or galvanized pipe 1 foot vertically into the ground. As you move among your beds and borders, rest your unused spades, shovels, hoes, or rakes standing up, with the handle slipped into the pipes.
Mount mailboxes on walls, fences, and posts throughout your garden. Stow extra work tools, twine, gloves, seed packets, labels, and a small first-aid kit inside. You’ll save lots of time and extra steps with these handy mini storage sheds.
Stack a graduated set of soil-filled terra-cotta pots to form a tower. Leave a 2- to 3-inch border of soil visible around each level. Plant strawberries in the borders; they’ll cascade over the sides.
Cut a “window” through a hedge and suspend an old multipaned casement window inside to frame a view. To create a circular opening, hang a large willow or grapevine wreath or an oval or round picture frame inside the hedge.
Create rustic, outdoor furniture for your kids. Cut a tree trunk into a 2-foot-tall section for a table, and shorter lengths for seats. Sand the tops to prevent splintering.
Dress up your garden gates and the potting shed door with handles and pulls made from worn-out trowels, spades, or small digging forks. Protect them with a coat of pure paste wax.
Adorn your door with a cluster of old gardening hand tools wired together and hung from a hook. Add sprigs of herbs and affix a copper label with a “Welcome” greeting.
Transform a large, terra-cotta saucer into a living sundial. Drill drainage holes in the bottom, lay screen over the holes to exclude slugs and bugs, and fill the saucer with good potting soil. Plant wedges of different species of thyme.
Use a piece of wood as the sundial gnomon. Cut a right triangle with the angle at the same degree as the latitude where you live—for example, if you live at 40 degrees latitude, make a 40-degree cut. Set the saucer on a raised pedestal or a rock. Position the gnomon so that it runs north-south in the center of the saucer, with the tallest portion aimed at true north,* the twelve o’clock setting. Accurate for telling you when it’s lunch-time, and beautiful all the time.
*Hint: When the shadow of a vertical rod is at its shortest, it’s pointing true north.
Compose a handsome and simple Zen-like garden sculpture. Make a shallow wooden box, fill it with sand, and set a few of your favorite rocks in place. Use a garden fork to rake a fresh pattern into the sand every day. Or plant the box (make sure you have drainage holes) with a ground cover such as fescue, baby’s tears, thyme, or blue star creeper, and nestle a small sculpture or a grouping of handsome rocks into the plants. The ground cover will carpet the soil, and the rocks or sculpture will look as though they’re growing from the lush green.
Holey or damaged metal (especially copper and zinc) downspouts and gutters make great planters. Mix trailing specimens along with annuals in the downspouts, and plant small herbs in the gutters. (Remember to cover the drainage holes with screen.)
Don’t throw away that large, rim-chipped terra-cotta pot; turn it upside-down. To keep your hose from kinking, wind it around the base of the pot and stick the nozzle through the drainage hole.
