Daffodils & Daydreams: Details in the Garden

I like adding little details to the garden that you might not see at first. I have many more ideas that I haven’t implemented yet, but here’s a few that are in place now.

I have this old wrought iron café-style table and chairs that were a dirty brownish green from years of neglect. I spray-painted them a bright cobalt blue this summer and put them under a tree by the Kitchen Garden. I found this plant saucer I had spray-painted gold for a Christmas project years ago and put some shells in it from my trip to the Oregon coast. I happened to have tiny garden tools that resemble a fork and spoon when put with the plate. I love how the blue table brings out the bluish tint in the seashells.

Here’s some more shells from the Oregon coast. I must admit that I like collecting shells when I go to the beach, which isn’t very often. This collection of shells are in a secluded little spot in the front yard.

My mom gave me this cute mobile that looks like mini watering cans and pails. It’s hanging on a tree next to the blue café table.

We get lots of pine cones in the area between our house and the left-side neighbor’s house. They have a pine tree on the other side of their yard and when some of the pine cones fall they slide down the roof into our yard. I like it because I use the pine cones in fresh-green Christmas wreaths that I make for our front door each year. I also put pine cones in containers in the house and in the yard. Here’s some that I keep in an old rusted colander on the steps of my back porch.

This is one of my favorite pots. It’s really heavy, but I love the ornate medieval style of the carvings on it. I’ve had this Sedum in it for several years now.

This is another favorite pot, even though it’s just made of some sort of plastic. It has different faces on four sides. I keep it on a pedestal in the area in front of the shed. If you were going from the front yard through the gate to the back yard you would see it.

I can’t show special garden details without showing Mr. Wiggles! Mr. Wiggles is my pet pig. Ok, as much as a real piggie would be AWESOME, he’s just a cute statue. He hangs out in the Kitchen Garden. Good thing he’s not real or he probably would eat all my veggies.

I love cool tiles. This is one I got from a Celtic store many years ago. I move it around each year. Right now it’s in front of my pot of water plants. Pretend you don’t see the weeds next to it.

This is another cool tile. I got this handmade tile at the Moravian Tile Works in Doylestown, PA. An extremely cool place right next to Fonthill, which is even more awesome. Fonthill was the home of tile maker Henry Mercer. He made it out of concrete specifically so he could showcase his handmade tiles and his collection of tiles he had collected from around the world. It’s this maze of rooms with tiles on the walls in every room. Truly amazing and definitely worth a visit. He had built the Moravian Tile Works next door to produce his beautiful decorative tiles using old traditional methods. This was during the Arts and Crafts movement, of course. But I digress. Here is a sweet little tile of a bee that I got at the Tile Works.

A candle lantern hanging from the wisteria by the greenhouse and shed.

And here’s my fairy garden. Yep. My younger sister thinks I’m a complete dork for having a fairy garden, but I think it’s WHIMSICAL, not dorky. There’s my little fairy with her blue and white “reflecting pool,” a mirror behind her, a toadstool, a turtle coming out of a small pot, and a bunny sitting on a small rock.