Statuary — Is it acceptable to have statuary in a garden? People have strong feelings. By statuary I mean any non-growing, decorative object in the garden. There are garden-type folks who are pretty scornful of statuary. The garden writer Hugh Jackson in general does not approve — though he does talk about his adventures putting up a giant stone, sort of like one of the stones at Stonehenge in his garden.
I, myself, am pro-statuary. I feel a little stung by Jackson’s derisive comments about Green Man sculptures in gardens. I have a cement Green Man of just the type he describes. It was given to us by our neighbours when they moved. They also had a David statue in their backyard, so they were even more pro-statue than me.
Photo: Courtesy Jeremy Wexler
The Green Man must weigh 50lbs, which is, I suppose, why they didn’t take it with them. Every year I drag it out of the basement to the garden, scraping up my knuckles as I lever it into position and set up a pump, so water flows out of his mouth. He occupies a corner with an assortment of bric-a-brac, including a small propeller, a steel speed square that we dug up in the garden and a swag of heavy rope left behind by some firemen. It may sound like a junk pile, and I suppose that is how it looks when there is nothing growing, but when they become partially submerged in the grape leaves, blueberry flowers and ferns, I find the effect quite lovely.
I like seeing garden gnomes in people’s gardens, saints, assemblages of found objects. They aren’t always tasteful, but they give a sense of a garden that gets some love and attention.
Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage garden in Dungeness, England has all sorts of odds and bobs that Jarman found on the beach. A lot of driftwood in gnarled shapes, but also an old rowboat. I wish a rowboat would somehow wash up on the shores of NDG. I would definitely put it in my garden though I hardly have the space Jarman did.
Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage garden.
Photo: tripadvisor.ca
My wife is used to me dragging home some odd found thing, like an old milk jug or a bird cage. “For the garden?” she says, and I nod and drag it back behind the house to take its place.
I love the green metal lion at the entrance to the rose garden at Montreal’s botanical garden though it does not seem fair to put something so climbable in a public place and then tell us not to climb on it. If you go past the lilacs on the way to the Leslie Hancock garden, you can find the brutalist beauty, Rectangle by Armand Vaillancourt, which also beckons climbers, and which I have definitely never, ever climbed on. It looks like a found object, a part of a bridge or an overpass or set of found objects, glass, rebar set in poured concrete. It is funny how well it compliments (or perhaps sets off) the warm, rolling meadow of the part of the garden.
Rectangle, 1965, Armand Vaillancourt / CARCC Ottawa 2026
Photo: Guy L’heureux
The Chinese and Japanese gardens at the botanical garden statuary to great effect. The main entrance to the Chinese garden is guarded by good-natured foo dogs. My touch of Chinese statuary is less spectacular; I have a footlong green and red plastic dragon from New York’s Chinatown I acquired many years ago who sits on an old stump, his toothy mouth open in a silent roar. A few of his spines have been gnawed and he is regularly overthrown by the squirrels.
Everybody is a critic.
Jeremy Wexler lives and gardens in Montreal. He also loves reading great garden writing. Do you have a question, a tale of woe or a favourite plant you are waiting to see emerge from the snow? Jeremy will read everything you send.
jeremywexler9@gmail.com
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