Garden Statues: An Addictive HobbyGarden Statues: An Addictive Hobby Boris Johnson’s three life-size wooden elephants serve as a testament to the allure of garden statues. These statues can become addictive, enticing homeowners to expand their collections. Improvising sculptures is a cost-effective way to satisfy this desire. My husband, John, has created remarkable iron sculptures, such as a pagoda, urns, and a giant fantasy plant. These pieces add character and beauty to our outdoor space. Our collection also includes a two-ton Buddha from Cambodia, purchased unfinished and later completed by skilled stonemasons. The story of transporting it highlights the significant expenses associated with acquiring garden statues. We also acquired a life cast of an RSC employee, which we painted with resin and graphite to resemble bronze. After birds nested in its head, we filled it with fiberglass foam, resulting in a distinctive cauliflower ear. While some aspire to acquire sculptures by renowned artists, the cost often prohibits this. However, improvisation can provide a satisfying alternative, allowing us to create unique and meaningful pieces that enhance our gardens.
Boris Johnson has three life-size carved wooden elephants in his garden, given to him by his wife for his 60th birthday. But here’s a warning to them both, as they return from Sardinia to rejoin their elephants: garden statues are terribly addictive. Once you have one, you’ll want more – and most of the good ones are ridiculously expensive unless, like my husband and I, you improvise.
My husband John, who was a fashion designer and manufacturer, started making iron sculptures, although he is too modest to call himself a sculptor. I draw things, he says, and Sked (Malcolm Sked, the local blacksmith) makes them. So far, John has created a huge wrought-iron pagoda with an explosion of flowers on it and two urns, one of which contains a giant metal phormium whose rusty leaves glow red in the evening sun and flutter in the wind. There is also a giant fantasy plant with bract-like white flowers and enormous heart-shaped leaves growing from an old lorry wheel, embedded in a block of Cotswold stone. This was immortalized on film when we were making it Prue Leith’s Cotswold Kitchen. Two weeks later, a storm tore the 8-foot-long leaves from the wheel and sent them flying across the garden. “Ah,” said John, “I was going to concrete them. A bit of rush work for the camera.’
Even before John got into DIY art, our collection of garden sculptures was impressive.
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My Cambodian daughter and I bought a two-ton Buddha in Siem Reap. The Buddha was created by stonemasons who gradually replaced all the looted sculptures from Angkor Wat. When we first saw the statue, it was unfinished: the Buddha’s face and shoulder were beautifully carved, while the rest of him had yet to emerge from the stone. It was magical. We offered him full price, as it was, but they would hear nothing of such sacrilege. They had been making exactly such statues for 500 years. Hijacked, we bought the statue anyway and Mrs. Johnson will sympathize with the shipping costs.
In my garden there is also a life cast of an employee of the Royal Shakespeare Company, made as a background figure in a play set in a lunatic asylum. We bought him for £5 from the props department and as we carried him out to the car park, each holding an elbow, passers-by smiled sympathetically, thinking we were taking a drunkard home, face down, knees bent and feet dragging.
The man was white, and when we left him in our garden on the compost heap, visitors would be shocked and think he was a ghost. So I painted it all over with resin and graphite and now it looks like a bronze. A few summers ago, birds nested in a hole in his head and after the chicks fledged, I filled the head with fiberglass foam, which I piped through the ear hole. It swelled dramatically and bubbled out through the hole so that he now has one cauliflower ear. It still looks great.
I hope to one day have one of Emily Young’s enormous female heads with windblown hair, or Sophie Rider’s enormous Lady-Hares, or a water sculpture by William Pye. But until I win the lottery, I’ll have to make do with improvisation.
