The Romance of Garden Follies

All these years I thought garden 'follies' were those odd projects left behind by previous owners: outdoor bar-b-ques of haphazard brick work, cracked and dry fish ponds, aviaries with torn screens, odd out-of-the-way patios stranded somewhere in the yard. The kind of thing that makes you wonder what were they thinking!

I have been corrected. Garden Follies were popular on the grand estates in Europe back in the 18th and 19th centuries. More romantic caves, meandering streams, sunny copses and romantic 'ruins' than the crackpot do-it-yourself schemes found throughout American suburbia, the English, French and Italian follies were build on vast estates and featured everything from Roman ruins to New World swamps and even peasant villages, all decidedly decrepid or romantically so, depending on your point of view.

However I have decided I was right in the first place and if not right then, I am right now. We should consider those old brick bar-b-ques, delapidated gazeboes and crack slabs of concrete, brick and stone as American follies and truly romantic in the sense of lost worlds, the fleeting nature of time and individuals long gone (more or less).

Which leads naturally to the question of what to do with them. Destroy, demolish, and remove are logical suggestions but expensive and troublesome as well. I think we can take a cue from the Europeans and decorate them. An old bar-b-que festooned with pots and plants, trailing petunias or impatiens (depending on the light) or a leaking fish pond filled with bog plants can be beautiful if done right and, done right or wrong, it's cheap and, if not cheerful, with the right approach, can at least be romantic and wistful.

I tried it with an old spa built into my patio. My plans were to turn it into a pond with a fountain and perhaps some koi. After a few hundred dollars in pond sealers, goop and waterproofing, I gave up, torn it out and turned it in a lovely mid-century planter. But it could have been fabulous - and romantic if it had worked.