I've never been a fan of garden art. I get a kick out of it in other people's gardens—twee fairy abodes, a face attached to an oak tree like a huge Mr. Potato Head—but in my own garden, plants are serious business and there is no time for whirly birds or bunnies sporting blazers. However, shortly after we moved into our home and I began to dig around in the backyard, I started discovering small treasures left behind from the previous owner—iridescent glass pebbles, a strange ceramic face with wire and beads for hair, an abstract glass elephant. I started gradually adding these art pieces to my herb bed. When we trimmed back the boxwoods, we discovered a stone Buddha frog. When we cut back the 30-year-old honeysuckle, we found a smiling sun attached to the fence. A metal turtle with a stained glass shell was hiding under piled up debris by the fence. I kept adding all these objects to my garden because it felt more like honoring the history of the property rather than me turning into a “garden-art person.”

Sun. photos by Joy Humphrey.

But then I kept seeing bicycle sculptures in my local garden center. Well, I thought, I do live in Davis. However, they were all too brightly colored and decorated with balloons and sunflowers, and various other gewgaws. Not for me. I wanted something classier, more like real art, not something akin to a pink plastic flamingo or, God forbid, gnomes. It took a while but I found an understated, suitably weathered bike sculpture at a nursery in Loomis. No bright colors, just rust. Very classy. One piece of purchased garden art was not too bad. Although, there was a plain white bike sculpture at a boutique in Sutter Creek that wasn't too obvious so I also bought that. Two bike sculptures. Kind of a theme, so that was okay.  

But then some weird switch got flipped when my husband and I were at a pottery store, and I saw a statue of a dragon eating gnomes. It was a bright green dragon with bulging white eyes, and clenched in his pointy teeth was a blue and red attired gnome. He held two more struggling gnomes in his hands and another he pinned to the ground with his foot. It was the most garish piece of garden art I'd ever seen. It wasn't rusty, it wasn't understated, it wasn't classy. And I thought it was awesome, so I bought it.  My husband suggested we not feature it front and center in our garden. Fair enough. It is currently peeking out of the rosemary in the herb garden along with Buddha Frog.

Dragon

Frog

After the gnome-eating dragon, I decided that I was done buying anymore garden art. What could I possibly add to my collection that would top that? One day recently I received a long box delivered to my front porch from my sister. “What is that?” my husband asked. I opened the box. “It's garden art,” I said. I pulled out a sign that said, “Choose Joy.” Well, one more piece would not hurt. Especially since it was so suitably finished in an understated rust. Very classy.