How to bring some class to your garden

Answer: add some statuary.

It never fails, to raise the tone of the garden.

 

Statuary can be whimsical, like this Orange cat:

Not my personal favourite, because I am not particularly impressed with the expression on his face.

But he looks nice, sitting in the long grass, enjoying the sunshine.

Or it can be more contemporary, like this glass on metal sculpture:

This one needs the occasional wash and scrub with hot soapy water, which really improves it.

The artist chose to make the outside of the glass section frosted, rather than clear, so it doesn't shine rainbows across the garden... it's still nice, though.

If you think that "contemporary" is a bit stark, then it can be surrounded by herbaceous perennials, to soften it: here we have an ultra-modern hard stone and metal piece, nicely softened by Acanthus spinosa on this side, and Euphorbia on the other.

(Don't ask me which Euphorbia, they are all "horrible" in my opinion, and deserve to be ripped out of gardens and burned wherever they are found.)

(Just my opinion.)

 

 

Then we have the more "casual" sort of statuary - this one is what I believe is called "found art" because it's made out of stuff that someone "found" lying around.

I used to call it the Brick Stack of Damocles.

Then we move on to more "natural" statues - in both senses of the word, because this one is made of wood, and it is of the female form.

It was known as the Pear Lady, because it was made out of pear wood.

By the time I took this photo, she had started to deteriorate, poor thing, and had already lost her head.

You can see how big she was, even headless, by looking at my fork, stuck in the ground to her left.

So wooden statues, despite yearly oiling, anti-woodworm treatment, more oiling, varnishing, you name it, we tried it: despite all of that, they eventually rot down to nothing. 

 

 

 

She obviously took an artist a long time to create, but sometimes nature takes a hand, and - going back to the "found art" - a piece of art just presents itself.

 

 

 

 

Such as this rather Rodin-like torso, which appeared out of the blue, while dismembering a conifer...

Rodin, with a touch of Dali, perhaps.

Classy, eh?!

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