Embellishments

by Barb Henny

Every woman has a little black dress. She can fancy it up by accessorizing with a diamond necklace and high heels. Or by choosing flat shoes and trendy beads, she gets a casual style.

Garden accessories work the same way. They can provide a dramatic focal point, coax a whimsical smile or make a classical statement. Ever since Egyptians put palms in pots, decorative features have embellished our garden designs. Ancient Italian garden designers used cement, that quintessential Roman invention, as a substitute for stone. More customers could afford cement than carved stone.

After the Romans conquered Egypt, garden builders provided clients with popular concrete sculptured obelisks, pyramids and cubes, to evoke the mysterious foreign new territory. Roman gardens also featured concrete troughs that served not only as water features, but supplied irrigation to boot.

When it comes to finding unique pieces of concrete statuary for your Florida garden, check out Tony’s Garden Patch in Tallahassee. They advertise offerings of landscape plants, sod, hay and firewood, but their genius is the concrete statuary.

Employee Steve was hard at work on the day I visited, but took time to tell me that Tony’s Garden Patch owners had bought molds from concrete cast companies going out of business anywhere across Florida and the Southeast. He said Tony’s may have collected as many as 400 unique molds. Large or small, comic or stately, religious, patriotic or animal form, vases, urns, boxes and troughs; if you want it in concrete, this is the place to look.

Tony’s Garden Patch will deliver and install concrete pieces in Leon County, but otherwise bring your own truck or trailer. (Check your tire pressure first; concrete is heavy.) Be sure you have adequate help for unloading and securing your concrete forms when you get them home.

When Victorians took up gardening, their technology influenced their garden embellishments too. Gar-
den benches became elaborate focal points beckoning ladies and gentlemen strolling garden paths to take a seat. Benches were carved in wood in popular Windsor, Lutyens and Japanese styles. Chippendale and Edwardian and fern-frond benches were modeled in wood, then cast in iron. Wood and cast iron pieces were often painted. Paint was a newly popularized technology in the 1800s.

Victorians sitting in their gardens enjoyed elaborately constructed birdhouses, gazing balls and sundials. Coade stone, a mixture of clay, ground stone and glass, was invented during this era and was a precursor to today’s resin molded statuary.

Garden accessories in wood, metal and resin are plentiful at Barberville Roadside Yard Art and Produce Company, located in Barberville in western Volusia County. Benches, birdbaths, wall art and gazing balls abound. You’ll find not only cast iron bistro sets in the Victorian style, but also rustic table sets, primitive whirligigs, locally-crafted planters and garden gnomes. Brightly painted Talavera pottery from Mexico in all forms and colors makes a cheerful garden impact.

On a recent milestone birthday, I selected a 4-foot tall, resin Tyrannosaurus Rex statue from Barberville Roadside. I applied several coats of Helmsman® urethane sealer before installing it in the front yard. It gives everybody a chuckle.

For an ageless and classic garden accessory, terracotta is without compare. Terracotta has been in use since fertility cult goddess statues were planted into corn fields in the Indus Valley in India, 3000 years ago. Pre-Columbian terracotta figurines date from 2000 years ago. Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Greek potters and sculptors all found expression in the earthenware, hard baked clay.

Most garden centers carry a nice selection of small glazed and unglazed terracotta pots, but for something more ornate or a little larger, a trip to DecoGallery on U.S. Highway 441 in Plymouth (northwest of Orlando), may provide just the embellishment you’re seeking. They’ve got  ropework, scalloped, garlanded, swagged and basketweave pots, troughs and bowls in terracotta, plain and/or glazed in every color of the rainbow. Some terracotta pots on their lot are very large and sure to make a statement in any garden.

Barb Henny would fill her Tavares garden with statuary, but her husband keeps her addiction in check.

© 2014 Barb Henny. Originally published in Florida Gardening, Apr / May 2014. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor’s note: this article was originally published in 2014, and some of the places described may now be part of Florida’s past.

Tony’s Garden Patch
4580 Thomasville Road, Tallahassee
(850)668-4310

Barberville Roadside Yard Art and Produce
140 W. State Road 40, Barberville
(386)749-3562

DecoGallery
2640 W. Orange Blossom Trail Highway 441, Apopka
(407)410-0888