Add Fun and Whimsy to Your Garden With Art

Find ideas for adding a little quirky personality to your yard.

By: Michelle Reynolds

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Metal Flowers

Don't be afraid to make a statement in your landscape. A fun method for expression is to incorporate art into the garden. Create a sense of place and extend a welcome to visitors by choosing objects that reflect your personality and evoke fond memories. Use your favorite colors. Be resourceful and make your own art. Match the art to your existing plants and planters. Combine art with other design elements, functional pieces and garden essentials, and pull it all together for a look unique to you.

Unconventional Planter

Unusual containers, whatever they may, are always the perfect containers for succulent plants. Variegated heartleaf ice plant (Aptenia cordifolia 'Variegata') and Angelina stonecrop (Sedum rupestre 'Angelina') overflow from this antique urinal.

Resident Toad

A garden toad sits nestled in a carpet of plantain-leaved pussytoes (Atennaria plantaginifolia), the host plant to American lady butterflies. Not only does the grey toad look great with the silver leaves, it plays a function in keeping people from stepping on the patch of these special plants.

Brother Bright

Emory Bright made this marvelous metal sculpture out of old rusty parts from the collection he keeps behind the family shed. The family jokes about the hole in Brother Bright’s tummy, "It is always hungry like the rest of the Brights," says Emory’s mother, Sara.

Fiddler

Kelly Davis has a habit of collecting treasures he finds to be unique, and he eventually makes art from the salvaged pieces to adorn the home and garden. He made this fiddler out of a glass lens, wire and an apothecary bottle.

The Watchman

An iron owl lantern hangs over a wildflower garden from a wrought-iron hook. Dangling columbine flowers and bottle trees are lit up like lanterns by the golden afternoon sun.

Sitting Buddha

A concrete Buddha statue sits in a meditation pose among the irises and spring-blooming spiderwort and daisy fleabane, reminding visitors to relax and enjoy the peace of the garden.

Millstone

Originally for grinding grain, antique millstones can be used as pavers, fountains, stepping stones, and garden focal points as this one anchored beneath the Japanese maple tree.

Stacked Animals

Alabama artist, Frank Fleming, combined mythical, folkloric, and whimsical details in his bronze sculptures. His work often depicts his deep connection to nature and living creatures.

Magic Mirror

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? A female yellow-bellied sapsucker admires herself in the reflection of a mirror of hypertufa and inlaid tile made by the artist, Melanie Colvin. Hypertufa is an artificial rock made from combining cement and various aggregates.

Learn More: How to Make a Hypertufa Pot

Who’s There?

An owl, cut out of metal, and rusted over time, is perched in a crepe myrtle tree along with multi-colored glass lanterns.

Butterflies

Colorful metal butterflies brighten up the deep shade of the garden filled with dense plantings of prized hostas and ferns.

Bee House

Sculptural and functional, these bee houses provide refuge and nesting cavities for mason and leafcutter bees in the habitat gardens of a nature preserve.

Add Fun and Whimsy to Your Garden With Art

Related To:

Shop This Look

Metal Flowers

Unconventional Planter

Resident Toad

Brother Bright

Fiddler

The Watchman

Sitting Buddha

Millstone

Stacked Animals

Magic Mirror

Who’s There?

Butterflies

Bee House

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