A guide to buying yard art

If you thought that ornamental outdoor art begins and ends with garden gnomes and fairy garden statues, then think again. In recent times, all manner of experts have been telling us that we should furnish our exteriors with as much care as we do for our interiors. Unfortunately, fashions are forever changing and it is not easy to keep up with the latest in yard art. Here follows a brief guide.

The budget

The first thing you will have to consider, of course, will be your budget. There are some pretty impressive garden sculpture available including life-sized statues made from stone or iron. However, as you can imagine, these will definitely not come cheap. Therefore, if you are looking to suitably deck-out your exteriors whilst sticking to a relatively tight budget, you might well have to do a little bit of shopping around.

Affordable ornaments

Beautiful accessories Fortunately, on the lower-end of the budget scale, there is no shortage of quality and beautiful accessories for creating your own garden art. Colourful gazing globes are often a popular choice and there are even those that, being solar powered, light up after sunset. In addition, there is a whole variety of hand-crafted stakes that can be arranged to make pretty impressive displays. However, on a more unusual note, many people are enjoying the idea of using non-garden related materials or objects including the ever increasing popularity for bowling-ball creations.

Fountains

Always popular and often surprisingly affordable, fountains of all styles and designs are a fantastic option for making your garden stand out. There are a huge and wide ranging number of options available, and a quick search on the internet will uncover a wealth of exciting choices. Colour All said, perhaps the most important aspect that you will have to carefully consider will be the variety and amount of colour that you will put in your designs. Nowadays, people are becoming more focused on placing an emphasis on colour. This not only applies to the flowerbeds - all of which will have to be regularly replanted if an all-year round colour is to be maintained - but also to the pots themselves. In addition, walls can also be painted using exterior latex house paint. As inside so outside A technique that many people are beginning to apply is that of integrating their exteriors with their interiors simply by extending the colour from inside to outside. For a really beautiful out-of-door effect however, a good technique is to gently rub the paint off your garden furniture and ornaments after it has set, giving a perfect 'weathered look'.