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George Toomer’s How-To Guide To Yard Art

Yes, you too can be a front yard artist
By D Magazine |

Whether you’re a beginner hobbyist, with only a ceramic cat on your roof and a single burro-cart full of your favorite blooming flowers, or whether you’re a Leve1-3 stylist, with as many as a hundred objects arranged in an intriguing desert scene, here are a few simple how-to’s that will make your front yard fun.

Pre-planning is the great decorator’s secret. Before you buy one piece of art-plaster, measure your area with a steel rule. Break each foot into a scale of one inch. On a piece of butcher paper, draw out the area into a one-inch grid. Now you’re ready to design your display. For best effect, pick a focal point of interest, that area which will be the base for your decoration. Many enthusiasts pick the exact center as a beginning and work geometrically out from there: if you put two wagon wheels on the left, then put two wagon wheels on the right. An occasional plaster piece, such as a duck or a swan, will create a secondary object point. Be careful to choose colors that complement each other – a pink flamingo with a brown deer will not have near the impact of a pink flamingo with a bright green frog or a yellow sombrero.

There are two basic categories of front yard scenes.

Sans Grass/The Weedless Wonder: This category requires a great deal of work in the beginning, but will render a stunning low-care lawn that requires only an occasional raking or sweeping, depending on whether you have used crushed rock or Astroturf. Here is the Big Secret of yard scenes: They work, they are ultimately desirable, because they have no weeds. Weeds will never look authentic, for example, in a desert scene. The trick is to cover the soil where weeds live with a layer of tar paper and industrial plastic covering, available at most building supply stores. You have the option of removing the present grass. I suggest removing about two inches of grass and topsoil so you will have a natural bed effect, using your sidewalk and driveway as a natural picture frame. Then lay down the tar paper and plastic, being careful not to leave cracks or open areas where ugly weeds may peek through. Consult your drawn grid to determine where you are going to have living plants, if any. Cut out a sufficient hole for each plant and place plants in position. Now you’re ready for your base covering of white rock, green gravel, or pure sand. Note: if you use sand, you will have to watch out for weeds on top of the plastic.

Nature’s Carpel of Green: This category requires an investment in golf-course type grass, with tight growing pattern and small blades. The grass forms a natural carpet, enhanced by unique borders, such as hand-painted rocks, white chain, or colored cement retaining walls. Carefully placed flower gardens of gladiolas or bright plastic flowers create a wonderland of color. Cannons, flagpoles, and life-sized animals add realism to the scene. The Nature’s Carpet requires a great deal more care than the Sans Grass, but the effort is worth it. Who could resist sitting in the summer sun, with a glass of iced tea set on a painted metal daisy next to your brilliant wrought iron lawn group, with the gentle bubbling sound of a three-tiered plastic fountain carrying you away to paradise?

The most important element of front yard artistry is picking your theme. There are three elemental theme designs.

Florida Plush: If you select this theme, stay with flamingos, frogs, alligators, and moss enhanced by banana plants, palm bush, and gladiolas. Remember: Most fresh flowers come from Florida, so you can use any color.

El Paso Flash: This theme lends itself to yucca, cactus of any kind, flower stands with chipped mirrors, and any plaster pieces from south-of-the-border-sombreros, burros, life-sized herdsmen, and decorator pots. (You can buy these items at many major intersections on Sunday afternoons.) You may wish to buy these items in raw plaster so that you can paint them in colors that work with your scheme. If you travel to Mexico often, you will enjoy collecting these items as living souvenirs.

Palm Springs Posh is a combination of western themes. Yucca, palms, desert species, and cactus bring the desert to your doorstep. An interesting variation on this theme is to use gravel dipped in green all-weather paint in place of white rock. Or you may choose to use pure sand. Mining tools and rusty machinery add a fine touch, as do those gripping reminders of frontier peril, cow skulls. Rock collections and limestone work well with this theme.

Now you’re ready to create your very own front yard designs. Good luck!

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