Architectural Salvation
The Wrecker’s Trash could become a Gardener’s Treasure!
There aren’t nearly enough bits of high-class rubble in the World to suit us, and so anytime we manage to scour up several hundred pounds of beautiful building fragments, we are delighted.
Discarded metal window frames can be used to create new views within a garden. An antique plaque can add unique charm to an ivy-covered wall. The vestiges of a cornice, a length of windowsill, or the remains of a marble doorway surround: all of these character-rich survivors from a past time, when buildings were made to LAST, can be re-purposed to embellish our gardens, in unusual ways.
In the Great Comp Garden, located in Kent, England, we see masterful demonstrations of the ways in which scraps from demolished buildings can be used to create outdoor follies that surprise and delight. In 1976, Roderick and Joy Cameron began to build the garden’s “Ruins,” as they called them, using ironstone they’d dug on their property. Their stoneworks were then ornamented with a vast assortment of architectural fragments.
Great Comp Garden, Kent England. Courtesy of nanquick.com
The Secret Garden, at Groombridge Place, in Kent, was designed in 1662 by Philip Packer, who was a courtier to Charles II. Fragments of exquisite, stone window frames are propped up against the high, ivy-covered, brick walls. Courtesy of nanquick.com
On a far corner at The Pines, a 6-acre garden which overlooks the white cliffs of St.Margaret’s Bay, in Kent, we find a Virtuosic Demonstration of how architectural fragments can be given their second lives. Here, the entire façade of a building has been laid on its side, to form the fanciest raised garden beds ever! Courtesy of nanquick.com
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Architectural Antique Blocks
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Large Antique Stone Obelisks
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