Antiques for Your Garden
Urns, Statuary and Architecturals Add Charm to Any Landscape
From cherubs to chimney pots, fountains to finials, garden décor can include fine antiques or well made reproductions, salvaged architectural elements, and lots more.
From leafy bowers to fields of flowers, antiques in your garden add interest and a comfy corner for quiet thought. Here are a variety of decorative and functional antiques that will add flair and function to your landscape.
Gardens as Outdoor Rooms
Almost as long as there have been humans seeking shelter, there have been gardens. While he earliest were for sustenance, gardens became an extension of living spaces, especially during the heat of summer in the days before conditioned air.
Garden Gates & Entrance Ways
Like the front door of a house, a garden gate is the entry way to the world within, and should give visitors a hint as to what they will find beyond. Gates can be formal, like the ornate and imposing wrought iron Victorians (which can cost anywhere from $3,000 -$12,000, depending on size, design and provenance) from the late 19th century, or more simple wooden gates, usually from the early part of the 20th century. While reproductions of the elaborate wrought iron favored by the Victorians are pretty expensive, a good millwork shop can fabricate a new wooden gate from an old pattern for a more moderate sum. Old or new, ornate or simple, the style of the gate should match the style of the garden within.
Urns & Finials
Although similar in looks, urns and finials are different and originally served two distinctive purposes. Urns resemble giant loving cups are hollow and easily filled with plant material. Finials, originally used to top the gate posts of great houses, resemble urns, but have closed triangular or cone shaped tops. Either one adds interest to a garden niche, and can be made of cast iron, stone, lead, composition stone, terracotta, or bronze. Urns have become popular garden ornaments, and antique versions as well as well crafted reproductions are readily available.
Architectural Ornaments
When old buildings are razed, architectural elements are salvaged by savvy dealers who resell the parts for use in homes and gardens. Useful and beautiful garden salvage includes stone columns with or without plinths (bases) or capitols (tops), bits of frieze, gargoyles, troughs, and chimney pots. Chimney pots are plentiful and have a variety of uses. Usually made of terracotta, they can be filled with plant material, used as a base for a statue or urn, or massed to create a wall or border, or back drop. These pots originally sat atop a chimney, and some have decorative patterns, especially those from the Victorian era.
Old Garden Tools and Implements
Nothing says garden more than. . . . gardening equipment! An old wheel or water barrow filled with flowers is an eye catching display, as is a garden roller artfully arranged against a backdrop of greenery. Vintage tools such as spades, scythes, edgers, hoes, rakes and even hand trowels often have interesting wooden handles, and a pleasing patina. A contemporary garden gate made of vintage hand and yard tools in a wood frame recently sold at auction for $600.
Imported European implements are pricier and harder to find, but their American counterparts are plentiful and inexpensive, with vintage wood handles trowels, for example bringing between $10- $20.
Source: Garden Antiques How to Source & Identify by Rupert Der Werf & Jackie Rees Miller’s 2003
