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Stand alone urns and planters are a wonderful accent to an outdoor space.  They offer a sense of continuity with the interior spaces we spend so much time in and can even serve as markers for a particular outdoor “room”.  When choosing an accent like this, that is both functional and aesthetic, it is important to consider a number of factors before making a decision.

Function or Aesthetic?  Which is more important?

This is a good place to start.  If you are a gardening enthusiast your choice of outdoor planter or

urn will likely be decided by its functionality.  The planter needs to have sufficient drainage.  This is essential to plant health.  In the ground water seeks the lowest elevation possible so roots systems are happiest with a water in/water out cycle.  Make sure your planter has sufficient drainage.  Something like this will provide a comfortable balance between form and function and would be a nice addition to any outdoor space.  Most planters will be built with drainage in mind so there will most certainly be a hole for water to escape somewhere on the bottom.  Be careful of planters with permanently attached pans, waterlogged roots can kill a plant.

Having it All

Of course, you shouldn’t ever really have to compromise form for function.  There are an almost limitless number of options for the combinations of textures and builds for outdoor urns and planters.  Something like this bamboo textured planter on the left comes in a wide range of colors and can be made to suit any outdoor space.

Don’t be afraid to explore your options either.  If you find one planter you really love go ahead and dig a little deeper, there is bound to be something you haven’t seen yet and you never know what you’ll discover.  This planter for instance is both functional and adds a really cool touch to an outdoor space by letting you wrap it around a lamp post, birdhouse stand, or support pillar without having to sacrifice any functionality or visual appeal.

Not only does this sort of planter provide a wonderful combination of form and function it also comes in a wide range of colors and textures so that it is sure to fit any outdoor room.

Vecchio

Patina

Foreste

Planning Planting Makes Perfect

Make sure to explore your options thoroughly before settling on a purchase.  Keep in mind the range of colors and textures you have at your disposal and what you want them to accent about your outdoor space.  Also remember the shipping benefits of ordering multiple concrete or stone items from the same manufacturer at the same time.  You can potentially save yourself a great deal of time and money ordering what you want in one go rather than a piece at a time.  Try to think ahead as much as possible and you’ll end up with an outdoor space you’ll enjoy for years to come!

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When spring set in and my wife and I started to reexamine our garden, to plan our summertime goals something stood out for me.  Rather, something seemed to be missing.  It kept bugging me for the first few weeks of cutting back the winter rot, until one day the problem finally dawned on me.  There was virtually nothing in the garden that hadn’t been somehow changed by the winter elements, except for the stone path that wound up the middle of the garden.

What was bothering me was the inpermenance of the whole thing.  Left on its own this garden I had worked so hard to bring to life would be altogether different after just a few growth cycles.  What I wanted was something unchangeable.  Something that would say ‘I was here’ until the earth itself gave way.  I needed something made of stone.

A bench was the first thing that came to mind initially (you can never have to many places to sit).  When I started looking into it I was impressed with the range of options available.  Our garden in particular needed a specific kind of stone bench to really mesh.

A Granite Bench…

Early on this granite bench caught my eye.  The smooth, slightly reflective surface spoke to the craftsmanship behind the bench and promised to stand out among the coneflowers and tulips.  If I had wanted a stone bench that would stand out starkly from the natural flow of the garden this would have been it.

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Lighting our Garden Pond

Being ardent DIYers my (now) wife and I built our garden pond from a deep(ish) whole in the ground and some creek rock from her family farm.  For the longest time our only concern with our garden pond was the water.  We spent untold hours researching and monitoring until we got the ecosystem just right.  We wanted it to be a little self-sustaining habitat for our turtle Ulysses.  When we finally finished, when Ulysses was happy and healthy and the pond murmured along, free from infestation by harmful algae or mosquitos we sort of rested on our laurels for a couple of years.  We didn’t really think about pond lighting until well after we were married and old Ulysses had moved on to greener pastures.

We had some experience lighting our garden with automatic low watt solar lights so we wanted to do something a little more involved for our pond.  Solar lights are nice and easy to use but they can be somewhat limited in their brightness.  Once we had decided to go with something hardwired into the house mains our plans began to take shape.

Which Lights?

Our first problem was figuring out what lights to pick.  We were pretty sure from the get go that we would need something quite a bit more robust than the spattering of solar stake lights we’d placed throughout the garden.  Lights designed to function underwater in your pond should be waterproof rather than water-resistant.  A waterproof light will have a really solid watertight housing and insulated wires to run to the mains.  Because we wanted to avoid ANY future problems with our pond lighting we went with the most solid light we could find.  This stainless steel light was every bit as powerful as we needed and was pretty easy to fix to the basin of the pond.

Lights in the Pond, Now What?

Once the light was in the pond we had to run the wiring.  (Consider hiring an electrician to run power from your house mains to your transformer/GFI.)  We found out the hard way that it is much easier to lay out your garden and pond light wiring once than it is to go back later and try to add new wiring.  There is a lot to consider but in brief just make sure the wiring is insulated and that you run everything through a proper transformer with a built in GFI like this one.

Waterfalls

For a lot of garden ponds the main event is a waterfall.  Big or small this feature is particularly fun to light.  A waterfall can be lit with waterproof lights set up around the pond and directed at the waterfall.  We went simple and directed one of our underwater lights so that the waterfall would empty into a glowing pool.

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When we got married my wife and I received a lot of gifts.  Not quite too many to count, dishes mostly, but one of my favorite things it turned out was a little solar powered garden light.  It was simple, small, not terribly bright or useful, but it quickly became the centerpiece in our garden, particularly because we rarely had any time during the day to spend in our garden.  Typically, if we were in the garden when we could actually SEE it we were working, weeding, grooming, planting.  So it was nice to have even just a tiny bit of light to shine on a bit of wormwood that would otherwise go unappreciated by moonlight.

That single little light made us realize a drastic flaw in our garden layout:  we couldn’t see it at night.  It seems like an afterthought initially but when you consider the reality of daily life it makes a huge amount of sense.  How often do any of us get to spend quality daylight time in our outdoor spaces?  For me the times I actually get the chance to take in my garden are at night.  As we’ve slowly started adding lights here and there through out our garden it has opened up into something we can enjoy throughout the evening.  As dusk passes into night we get a totally different experience.

Every new light we’re able to add teaches us something new about lighting and the layout of our garden.  Recently we started a small plot for our fountain (which was a ton of fun) and we came up with a few helpful tips.

1.  First you have to consider the position of your fountain.  Where is it in the garden?

Keep in mind that it will need to give off more or less light depending on what surrounds it.  What do you want your eye, or the eyes of your guests to be drawn to?  The lighting you choose and how you choose to direct it is going to have a huge effect in your garden at night.

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Decorative & Retaining Walls

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Patios / Pavers

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