{"id":2316,"date":"2008-07-04T12:09:30","date_gmt":"2008-07-04T17:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/gardenlog\/?p=2316"},"modified":"2017-01-06T14:24:39","modified_gmt":"2017-01-06T14:24:39","slug":"yard-art-and-handmade-places-extraordinary-expressions-of-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/garden-book-reviews\/yard-art-and-handmade-places-extraordinary-expressions-of-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Yard Art and Handmade Places: Extraordinary Expressions of Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update: 2008-07-04<\/h3>\n

Jill Nokes’s wonderful Yard Art and Handmade Places<\/a> has proven so popular that a second printing is out reports Carolyn Lindell in the Austin American-Statesman<\/a>. I missed the June 14th article but about the same time Jill emailed me to say that she had updated her website<\/a> to tell what became of the some of the gardens featured in her book and it’s taken me this long to pass the message along. The most depressing story, for me, because it’s happened just around the corner, is Paul Schleising’s<\/a> garden. Yes, this is what’s becoming of my beloved neighborhood<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jill’s book makes good Independence Day reading. Every person featured displays a unique vision.<\/p>\n

Dateline: 2007-12-09<\/h3>\n

For years the highlight of a stroll through my south Austin neighborhood was a visit to the stone sculpture garden on South 3rd Street. Paul Schleising stacked rocks, not into simple cairns but into evocative sculptures. They were not glued or held together with a rod. The rocks were perfectly balanced and frequently tumbled at the touch of a curious stranger, wily squirrels, or a strong wind. Thus the garden was always evolving as old pieces fell and new found objects were worked into the design.<\/p>\n

\"Paul's<\/a>
\n
\nLast January I walked by the garden on the way to the park and all the sculptures were gone. Paul had moved away and his home and garden have since been bulldozed to be replaced by an upmarket duplex. However, before the garden was destroyed, Austin landscape designer and author, Jill Nokes<\/a>, interviewed and photographed Paul’s garden for her latest book, Yard Art and Handmade Places: Extraordinary Expressions of Home<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For those of you who live under the watchful eye of neighborhood associations that arrest old ladies for not mowing their lawns or that won’t let you grow vegetables in your front yard or hang laundry in out back, Jill’s book is a tonic. Although, I suppose, those same neighborhood associations could wave the book in the air as a cautionary tale of what might happen if they didn’t keep a lid on peoples’ natural exuberance in their desire to create and decorate. Why, things might get a bit crazy. Bottle trees. Replicas of the Statue of Liberty and the Sphinx (I always wanted to know the story behind that garden on the way to Austin’s old airport). Elaborate birdhouses made of aluminum siding. Cathedrals made of old cars and hubcaps. Giant flower sculptures made out of old water heaters. Harold<\/a>, we aren’t in Sissinghurst anymore. No, folks. Welcome to Texas.<\/p>\n

\"Paul's<\/a><\/p>\n

Don’t dismiss these gardens as the work of mere eccentrics. All are passionate, true, but which of us, as gardeners, can deny some form of obsession? Some might consider these gardeners poor, tacky or trashy because many work with found objects, with whatever can be gleaned at flea markets, along the road, and even the dumpster. What they lack in money they make up for in the richness of their visions and their desire to bring a bit of beauty to their piece of ground. These are gardens of ordinary people who do not hire designers to create a landscape for them. Rather these gardens are an extension of self. Each garden is an “extraordinary expression of home” and an example of what it means to make a place one’s own.<\/p>\n

The gardens are as different as the gardeners. Jill describes the gardens but the stories focus on the people who made them–what inspired them, what drove them, what they’re trying to communicate, and how the garden connects them to something beyond the garden. Most of the gardeners have a strong sense of spiritual communion, a feeling of creating sacred space.<\/p>\n

I loved reading every one of the incredible stories from the urban garden of the Flower Man in Houston to the grove of trees planted on the flat, dusty plains of west Texas to the slice of jungle created in the Rio Grande Valley. If I have a quibble it is that the book itself is too small. I wish it were coffee table book size so that the photos of the gardens were larger and more numerous.<\/p>\n

Yard Art and Handmade Places<\/i> was an early Christmas present to myself. I’ve been enjoying it immensely. If you cultivate a love of the unique, the unusual, or the whimsical–or if you simply desire a peek into worlds beyond the American suburban lawn-scape–I think you’d like it, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Paul's<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[202,210,267],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2316"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2316"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5052,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2316\/revisions\/5052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}