The warm, sunny days that have blessed the Pacific Northwest this winter have everyone daydreaming about long, hot summer evenings on the patio, overlooking glorious backyard gardens.
It may be too early to start planting those flower beds or dining outside, but it’s never too early to spruce up your patio and garden areas with a few well-placed pieces of outdoor art.
To find out what’s hot in patio and garden decór this year, we asked Anthony E. Sharrah, owner of The Trellis, a home and garden shop in downtown La Center.
Here are a few of Sharrah’s top picks:
Fair-trade Art
One of the first things that catches customers’ attention inside The Trellis’ garden section is a large, round Tree of Life piece of art crafted entirely of metal.
“These are fair trade and made from recycled oil drums,” Sharrah explains, lifting the Tree of Life to show how lightweight it actually is. “They’re good for indoor or outdoor.”
The artform known as Haitian metal art started in the late 1950s, after a blacksmith from Haiti, Georges Liataud, began turning old steel drums into beautiful creations. Generations of Haitian artists have followed his lead, and now offer a fair-trade, upcycled art form for American customers.
The artists draw their designs on flattened pieces of steel – made from old oil drums – and then use a mallet and chisel to craft intricate works of art. Human figures, crosses and the Tree of Life are all popular designs, and the art makes a great addition to any outdoor patio or garden. Spraying the pieces with a clear gloss every year will help them withstand the elements.
Glass
Glass pieces that catch the light and add spots of color to your outdoor patio or garden remain popular, Sharrah says. This year, he’s stocked his La Center shop with a variety of glass art, including boldly colored, twisting glass art that you stick in the garden or maybe place inside a potted evergreen to give it a pop of electric blue or vermillion red color.
Sharrah says he gravitates toward the larger, hand-blown glass art in his shop. Sharrah picks up one piece in particular – a round glass piece reminiscent of the hand-blown glass floats that greet visitors to the coast, attached to a 5-foot stake that you secure into the ground.
“These are statement pieces,” Sharrah says of the hand-blown glass art that catches the sunlight and reflects a hundred shades of blue and green. Use them to show off your favorite garden bed or as a centerpiece near your patio.
Wind Chimes
When Sharrah talks about wind chimes, he’s not talking about the tinny sounding things that drive people nuts on a windy day. Instead, he’s stocked The Trellis with wind chimes that have rich, deep, melodic sounds.
“These have a rich sound and are hand-tuned,” explains Sharrah, demonstrating a blue wind chime perfectly tuned to the scale of A.
Made by QMT Windchimes, a Virginia-based company that sources its raw supplies from American lumber and aluminum suppliers, the Corinthian Bells® Windchimes are available in a range of colors and sizes, and feature heavy-walled aluminum tubes that are powder coated to match the rounded dome at the top of the wind chime as well as the round wind sail at the bottom for a sophisticated look.
Hidden speakers
Using the garden or backyard as an entertainment space is much easier when you have a decent sound system set up outside.
But the days of bulky speakers are long gone. Instead, Sharrah says, people want to hide their sound systems and keep everything contained. He gestures to a statue of a frog playing the saxophone.
“It has bluetooth speakers inside of it and is safe for the outdoors,” Sharrah explains. “As long as your phone (or iPod, electronic device, etc.) is within 15 feet, you can play music off of it.”
Made from cast aluminum and powder coated, the frog – and other hidden speaker art – can safely weather the elements and keep the patio party going this summer.
Kinetics
“Kinetics are huge,” Sharrah says, reaching for a giant metal flower that has two separate pieces moving independently, spinning in opposite directions. “People love the kinetic garden art.”
If you’ve ever visited Orcas Island in the San Juan Island chain, you’ve probably seen some famous examples of kinetic wind art. Eastsound, Wash., artist Anthony Howe has set up several gigantic kinetic sculptures with many moving parts that catch the wind and then move in a frenzy of whirls, swirls and swoops.
“They’re just a lot of fun,” Sharrah says of the swirling, twirling kinetic sculptures he carries at The Trellis. “They’re always popular.”
Gnomes
Garden gnomes aren’t exactly a new concept – the first images of the iconic, red pointy hat wearing garden gnomes appeared in 19th-century German gardens, where they were called Gartenzwerge (garden dwarfs) – but, c’mon, who doesn’t want to have an impish prankster to protect the garden?
Sharrah carries several varieties of garden gnomes, including a sturdy looking stone-colored gnome and a colorful, pipe-smoking gnome that comes with his own thermometer.
To really impress your friends, read up on the controversial history of garden gnomes (bet you didn’t see that one coming, did you?): In England, the little fellas have been a source of contention at the prestigious Chelsea Flower Show. Flower show organizers banned the gnomes, saying they distracted visitors from the garden designs. Gnome defenders took offense and accused the flower show organizers of being complete snobs. As a compromise, the Chelsea Flower Show allowed the garden gnomes to enter the sacred garden grounds in 2013 for the show’s 100th birthday. But, in 2014, the poor guys were back on the forbidden-fruit list. Only time will tell if they can sneak their way back inside and steal the show again.
Want to see more of The Trellis’ garden and home decór? The La Center shop is located at 103 E. 4th St., La Center. For more information, call (360) 904-5876 or visit the shop’s Facebook site.
