When you introduce (and use) mobile elements in your garden, it’s going to look and feel revitalized.

SWITCH IT UP | In his garden in Herefordshire in England, the late interior and garden designer David Hicks manufactured more than a few outdoor surprises. One of the cleverest was a giant pyramid that rolled around the site on wheels. I have visited this garden a number of times and on each occasion I have spotted this pyramid in a different place.

Because so many elements of a garden’s design are fixed I sometimes like to put on my Hicks’ hat and introduce objects that can be repositioned according to the season or to whim. I have two wooden obelisks that have at one time or another bunked in every quarter of my suburban lot. It costs nothing to switch things up in this way and doing so can make a garden feel refreshed, as if something new had been added.

So, outside of obelisks and pyramids, what kinds of elements are best for rearranging? Smalls for sure, and by that I don’t mean underwear. I’m thinking more along the lines of interesting plants in little pots. A friend of mine in New York has a primrose collection he sets out on table on his terrace. He is forever adding and subtracting plants, and always shuffling up whatever pots happen to be on display like a thief working shells in a con game. His table looks different everyday.

Bowling For Revitalization

The last time I visited Valerie Murray’s garden in Victoria, which is a few years ago, I was struck by her bowling balls. Not literally, of course, but struck with surprise to find resin balls used for 10-pin bowling set out randomly among her perennial beds. Reflective, decorative balls were a common garden ornament in Victorian England, and Murray’s substitution of bowling balls is a refreshing variation on this theme. Old bowling balls can be found in thrift shops for next to nothing and, when used in the garden, can be relocated perpetually. Right now, I’m partial to bowling balls in swirly Katy Perry colours—neon orange, lime green, candy cane red—because jolts of incongruous colour are unexpected and fun.

Speaking of spheres, If I were a rich man, I would purchase one or several of Martha Sturdy’s huge steel wire balls for my garden. They make me think of giant tumbleweeds or balls of twine that have had their insides removed so only the outer layers are visible. I would love to have these steel sculptures to roll around in my landscape.

Moveables—planters, sculpture, eccentric chairs, whatever— don’t have to be expensive, but they do have to be dramatic or the results won’t show, which would make the effort pointless. “There is not excuse for a garden to be boring,” my late gardener friend Rosemary Verey once told. Small or large, high impact moveables are an easy response to that. —Ron Rule

Ron Rule is a well-known residential garden designer in Vancouver. He is the founder and head of the Certificate In Garden Design program at the University of B.C.

Photo: C. Phaisalakani