Amy lived next door to the weekend house owned by the Hoffeinz, the fine
family that brought the Astrodome to the city of Houston. Amy had discovered
she could infiltrate their gated sanctuary by crawling out a second-story
window of her house onto the brittle branches of a pear tree and dropping over
the fence. She invited my sister and me along on one of her capers, promising
us we’d see things we’d never seen before.
The year was 1969. Rampant fantasy was unknown in America outside The Magic
Kingdom — except at the Hoffeinz house. Giant plaster tigers and elephants
leaped from hedges of boxwood and oleander. Plaster alligators guarded the
swimming pool. The Hoffeinz had even smuggled in one of those lion water
fountains where you stick your head in its mouth to get a drink. A herd of
carousel horses were set atop stiff springs and when we tired of bouncing
around on those steeds, we moved onto the trampoline. We peeked through the
windows of the house to see an interior nearly as wild as the landscape: zebra
print sofas and huge palms and rattan thrones, set against colors and patterns
that would have curled the tasteful toes of devotees of Ladies Home Journal
and Southern Living. But it was the yard art that captured my
imagination and made the trespassing worthwhile despite catching hell from my
parents. (Amy’s mom saw us spring in and out of sight over the fence when we
were jumping on the trampoline.)
Thanks to an energetic husband — some might say frenetic — I now have my own
eclectic yard art. A home-made cement baboon lurks by our front gate. Steel
fish hover in the trees. There’s a huge frog by the driveway and several
lizards scattered in the grass. Thanks to my friend Trex, my yard is also
dotted with her ceramic pieces, like garden stools with bas relief hand prints,
a naked odalisque lounging by the tomatoes, and clay squashes and sea shells. I
even have a few pre-fab ceramic elves and gnomes tucked in the fig ivy,
heirlooms from the days when my mom did ceramics.
I’m sure our “art” irritates some of our neighbors, especially those with
buzz-cut lawns and an unhealthy attachment to their weedeaters. But our yard
reeks of military precision when compared to the creations featured in Jennifer
Isaac’s book, Quirky Gardens. I’ve always admired the regional whimsy
behind yard art: the Madonnas in the bathtubs in West Virginia, the concrete
deer in East Texas, the shell mosaics along the coasts, and the whirligigs that
seem particular to Northern California. But judging from the gardens in Isaacs’
book, Australia hosts the highest concentration of wildly creative yard art in
the universe. Our neighbors ought to get a look at Iris Howe’s “spectacular
fantasy shell garden” in Millicent, South Australia or Arthur Hancock’s
“amazing installation of recycled machinery, fairground paraphernalia, and
figures” at Dungog in New South Wales and they’d be sending us cakes and pies
and thank you notes for our subtle eccentricities.
Amo Grotjahn “great wall of history” is embedded with sewing machines, miners’
pit helmets, car engines and lawn mowers. Tony D’Addona’s garden is inhabited
by dozens of topiary forms: a wolf, a kangaroo, a “dago woman with a big bum.”
Ivan Romanov has filled his yard with 50 wind mobiles made from detergent
bottles, tea trays, pie tins, and even air conditioning units. The spirited
obsession behind each of the quirky gardens, the sheer joy of creating for
creation’s sake, is uplifting in way no expanse of sheared grass and boxed
hedges can ever be. Or as Isaac’s puts it, “With a flourish, and a great deal
of hard and painstaking work, they are doing away with the conformity and
anonymity of their own suburban or country street.”
Suzy gets sentimental: Although I fear my mother might have stuffed the
ballot box, if anyone else happened to cast a vote for me for best columnist, I
sincerely thank you (and I am seldom sincere). I was stunned and even squealed
a little when I heard I came in third. It means a lot to me to know somebody
out there is slogging through this column with me.
This article appears in September 27 • 1996 and September 27 • 1996 (Cover).