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Furnishing an Intimate Garden
by C. Colston Burrell
It takes more than a hammer and nails to make a home, and more than trees and shrubs, albeit beautiful ones, to make a garden. An intimate garden requires furniture and ornaments, the personal and perhaps even whimsical touches that make the garden uniquely yours.
Herbaceous Plants
Living ornaments, herbaceous plants such as tall colorful hollyhocks make an appearance at their allotted time, then retreat into the background for the remainder of the season.
Herbaceous perennials and groundcovers can be considered like living ornaments in the garden. Others make cameo appearances, then retreat into the background or disappear entirely for the remainder of the season. To keep your garden interesting, choose a combination of one-shot wonders like bulbs and spring ephemerals, as well as season-long beauties such as hostas and bears breeches (Acanthus). Annuals and tender perennials such as cannas provide color and texture through most of the growing season, too. Attractive seed heads, berries, and dried foliage will add to the show in winter.
The hues of flowers and foliage help set the mood of the garden. Purples, blues, and greens as well as pale pinks and pale yellows are known as cool colors. Cool-colored flowers seem to meld with their background. Visually, they soothe the eye. In contrast, the hot colors, such as bright yellows, oranges, reds, and deep magenta are visually very exciting: They seem to leap at you from the garden. Hot-color gardens are like a sultry breeze on a summer afternoon. They are riveting and sensual. Foliage color, whether green, red, yellow, or gray will also play a major role in creating your garden's ambience and entice you into the garden after the flowers are gone.
Garden Furniture
Tables, chairs, and benches, whether permanent or portable, are decorative as well as functional. A single chair is a piece of sculpture when not in use and a welcome place to sit and read or to admire the garden when it's needed. A bench placed at the end of a vista or allée stops the eye and helps to focus it on a spot that merits attention. A seat hidden behind a bend in a path adds the element of surprise. A dining ensemble creates a functional focal point in the garden.
Versatile Containers
Sending a warm welcome, the potted rose is a lovely focal point that sets the tone for the entrance area.
Planted pots, urns, washtubs, and other vessels are decorative elements that not only expand the space for growing plants but also serve various other design purposes. Containers can be planted with annuals, bulbs, and perennials for a shifting seasonal display or with an ornamental shrub or small tree for an elegant focal point. They can be dropped into a bed or spot in the garden wherever a bit of seasonal color or special drama is needed; when a spectacular plant finishes flowering or goes dormant, a carefully chosen potted specimen can easily carry the spot for the remainder of the growing season. Containers made of concrete, iron, lead, and plastic offer year-round durability outdoors.
Water Features
Water adds a unique dimension to the garden. It reflects the warmth of the sun and the world around it, and brings the color of the sky and the patterns of clouds to earth. It also adds an audible dimension as it trickles, spouts, or cascades from a fountain or other water feature. Water features can be placed as focal points in beds and borders, on a terrace or deck, or wherever else you need to make a major statement. Iron kettles, urns, and glazed pots all make great containers for small water gardens. Try a simple basin, floating glass balls in still water, or add a bubbler. You can also fill a pot with decorative water plants like sweet flag (Acorus calamus) and zebra rush (Scirpus zebrinus). A single lotus (Nelumbo) is enough to fill a glazed urn in a sunny spot.
Whether smooth, as in this pond, trickling, spouting, or cascading, water is universally appealing. To make a major statement, water features don't have to be large: Waterproof containers such as iron kettles, urns, and glazed pots make wonderful water gardens—they also attract thirsty birds and other wildlife.
Serious water gardeners will want more space than a container can offer. Basins, pools, and ponds create opportunities for gardening with aquatics on a larger scale. Floating plants like water-lilies (Nymphaea), emergents like pickerel weed (Pontederia), and bog plants such as elephant ears (Alocasia) and blue flag iris (Iris versicolor) lend a diversity of forms to the water garden.
Wildlife also benefits from water. Give birds a safe drinking place with water less than two inches deep. If your water basin or birdbath is deeper, place a brick in the center for birds to stand on, or place a potted water plant just below the surface.
Playful Ornaments
In gardening, as in fashion, accessories make the ensemble. Many gardeners find ornamentation one of the hardest things to do. To accessorize your garden, all you need is a little imagination and a sense of adventure. Ornaments may be focal points or may be subtly woven into the garden fabric.
After all the hard work of designing and installing your garden, it's time to accessorize it. All you need is a sense of fun and a little imagination: The possibilities for ornamentation are endless.
Traditional pieces such as statues, large vases, and sundials make a statement in a lawn or incorporated into a garden bed, and they also work well at the end of a vista or in the center of an open space. Urns, vases, and planters can combine plants and ornaments or stand alone. A single, unplanted container adds a dramatic focus to a bed of fine-textured plants.
Gazing balls made their debut as fancy Victorian trifles and have been drifting in and out of favor for a century. The wonder of gazing balls is that they offer the gardener unique vantage points. They mirror the garden, enabling you to see yourself within your garden. Resist the temptation to mount a gazing ball on a pedestal meant for a bird bath and banished to the center of a lawn. Instead, place one or more gazing balls within the heart of the garden room, surrounded by plants but easily viewed from a path or gathering space. Each time you pass, you can watch yourself move through the garden and see yourself reflected among your plants.
Architectural artifacts such as columns from old houses and discarded pavers make enchanting decorations. They link the past with the present. Utilitarian objects such as rakes can be reassigned new roles in the modern garden as trellises or plant stakes. The most vernacular ornaments can be charming in the right setting. Tractor seats, plows, old reel mowers, even rusted tractors can be incorporated to appealing effect. Even plaster gnomes, plastic geese, and plywood cutouts of gardeners' derrieres with lace knickers have a place for those who appreciate them. When it comes to accessorizing your garden, your own taste or sense of humor are the only constraints.
C. Colston Burrell is a garden designer, photographer, naturalist, and award-winning author. A certified chlorophyll addict, Cole is an avid and lifelong plantsman, gardener, and birdwatcher. He gardens on ten acres in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Charlottesville, Virginia, and is principal of Native Landscape Design and Restoration, which specializes in blending nature and culture through artistic design. Cole has published several books on gardening and writes regularly for such publications as Fine Gardening, Horticulture, Landscape Architecture, and American Gardener. He has edited or contributed to 13 BBG handbooks, including most recently Spring-Blooming Bulbs (2002), The Sunny Border (2002), and Summer-Blooming Bulbs (2001).