Looking for a Few Good Gnomes

Ziggy on guard under a Rosa gallica complicata. This old fashioned rose only blooms once a year, but it’s a beauty and very resistant to disease.

 So what if I’m a vulgarian? Having bad taste isn’t like having no taste at all. Besides, we’re not talking “Pink Flamingos” level bad taste here. But enough apologizing….I first met Ziggy, the Gnome, at a Nursery in Saratoga. He had clearly been passed over by the public and demoted by the store manager to a dusty corner in the back, next to a half pallet of 30 lbs plastic sacks of composted steer manure that had started to split and spill their contents. Ziggy’s once prominent spot on the sales floor, right by a bright display of bedding plants, had been taken up by a rainbow tribe of colored, cherry faced, hollow, plastic garden gnomes that exuded a sugary, Disney vibe. Ziggy may have been placed in a dark, dusty corner, and one corner of his concrete pedestal was broken, but he maintained his erect poise and projected the stern but benevolent gravitas that the younger, lighter, brighter gnomes could only aspire to achieve. I hired Ziggy immediately and installed him near our garden gate, where he stands as our 24 hour sentinel, shaded from the sun and moon by a large Gallica rose and an arching Nopal cactus.

A tasteful, larger than life, marble garden nymph, complete with snake, like this one at Villa Montalvo in Saratoga, will set you back a few dollars.

Garden gnomes weren’t always considered as kitsch by the sophisticated. The earliest Gnomes that we have records of date back to Central Europe in the 1600s, and they were like totems, carved from logs, painted, and situated by property owners to keep an eye on their lands. Some people say that the word “Gnome,” comes to us from Latin and they quote Paracelsus, the Medieval Swiss Alchemist, doctor, theologian, philosopher and wordsmith, who created the word “gnomus” as a synonym for “pygmy.” The ancient world had been populated by many magical, humanoid races  like fairies and cherubs, but the Catholic Church had largely re-categorized these spirits as evil demons. In his magnum opus, “A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, and on Other Spirits,” Paracelsus redefined nature spirits to make them more compatible with Christianity and he wrote that gnomes were elemental creatures that moved through earth as a fish moves through water. Perhaps the word “gnomus” came to Paracelsus from the Greek “genomos,” meaning “from the earth.”

Armadillos lined up at a gift shop in Fredricksburg, a German colomny in Texas, just waiting to move to a garden. Your’s?

It’s worth noting that “Paracelsus” was not Paracelsus’s true name; by birth, the namer of the gnome was named Phillippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim. That’s pretty German! Germany is where the first high volume manufacture of garden gnomes began too. In Dresden, the Baehr and Maresch Company began making ceramic gnomes for export as early as the 1840s. Some of these very expensive garden sculptures were imported to Great Britain by Sir Charles Isham to decorate the grounds of his mansion, Lamport Hall. For his time, Sir Charles was considered an eccentric; he was a socialist, vegetarian teetotaler who believed in gnomes and fairies. But he was rich, so a lot of people copied him. Sir Charles ignited a gnome trend among wealthy English landowners, and in time manufacturers began to produce more down-market gnomes for the masses too. Naturally, as more and more middle class gardens began to feature these newer “knock-off” gnomes lolling about the tulips in the suburbs, the fad came to be seen by the tastemakers as regrettable and vulgar, and people moved on to other motifs in garden art, like plastic flamingos or metal armadillos.

Tastes always change and styles must evolve and mutate just as viruses do, so ceramic garden gnomes could have completed a downward skid from the glare of popularity to the oblivion of the passe if it hadn’t of been for another wealthy eccentric, the English lawyer and microscopist, Sir Frank Crisp. In the late 19th century Sir Frank bought Friar Park, an expansive estate, and created a vast and spectacular garden with a scale model of the Matterhorn, and he populated the grounds with large, classic, ceramic garden gnomes from Baehr and Maresch. A new generation of gardeners copied him too, keeping the garden gnome culture back to life for another sales cycle. The two world wars were not kind to garden gnomes because they were perceived to be Germanic, like the Kaiser or the Fuhrer, and not so much benevolent and mysterious elemental creatures of the earth a la Paracelsus. Garden Gnomes could have been canceled again by the zeitgeist and the fashion fates except for….Meet The Beatles!

Sir George surrounded by the OG Gnomes of Friar Park that were brought from Germany by Sir Frank Crisp.

John, Paul, George, and Ringo- the Fab Four- made a lot of music and a lot of money for a lot of people in the 1960s. And as their roller-coaster ride of fabulosity came to an end, George Harrison, the Beatles’ lead guitar player, purchased and refurbished Sir Frank Crisp’s decaying Friar Park mansion with its expansive grounds and luxurious gardens. Harrison came to love gardening, and in time he came to think of himself as a gardener who played the guitar and “had a few hits” rather than as a rock and roll star.  On his first solo album, All Things Must Pass, Sir George chose a photograph of himself on the lawn at Friar’s Park, surrounded by Crisp’s classic Maresch garden gnomes for the cover art. As a kid I was a Beatles freak, and Harrison’s record was how I first became aware of garden gnomes. In time I’d become a farmer and gardener who plays a little guitar, and it only seemed natural to give a nod to my musical hero by finding a home in the garden for a gnome. Ziggy is a concrete gnome, not an expensive ceramic medieval gnome, and we got him for half price because he had a cracked footing, but he still fulfills the traditional role of casting a protective eye over the garden. I have not achieved the alchemical perception that allows me to see gnomes moving through the earth as fish through water, like Paracelsus, but I do believe that soil is a magical medium full of organisms and symbiotic, alchemical and mysterious processes. We are only at the beginning of learning how complex and sophisticated the life of the soil is, and I suspect that as we become wiser about the earth’s ways, elemental creatures like gnomes are going to seem a lot less outrageous than they may now. Starr and I don’t have the resources of Sir Charles Isham, Sir Frank Crisp, or Sir George Harrison, but we are eccentric and we have been blessed with a gorgeous scrap of earth to care for. Our efforts to create a beautiful and diverse garden-scape above ground has already led to an increasingly active landscape, with birds and frogs, lizards, butterflies, bees and ladybugs abounding.We’re creating a large and lovely and meditative garden setting that we can share with others. If you’re sympathetic with this vision, or if you just want to get out in the fresh air and do some gardening to clear your mind please consider taking a shift as a volunteer “garden gnome.” We won’t make you stand guard all night by the cactus, like Ziggy, but he will be keeping an eye on you. We’re especially looking for help weeding in the lavender labyrinth to keep the labyrinthine passages clean and easy to walk, and we can use some help “deadheading” the roses and clipping the lavender too. If you would like to try your hand as a garden gnome, helping Ziggy to maintain the calm, beauty and order of a meditative garden, please reach out to us at https://www.mariquita.com/friends-of-ladybugs-labyrinth/ We ask that any volunteers be 18 or over and that they not bring any pets with them.It’s a farm, so expect a certain amount of dust or mud and dress accordingly with sturdy shoes.

A bee working hard in Ziggy’s Rosa gallica complicata

Again, we do have bees, so “bee aware” please. The bees have a lot of work to do, flying about gathering nectar and distributing pollen, so they are typically too busy to bother with us and they have a peaceful spirit but “Bee-ware” and give them their space. Bring a hat, sunscreen, water, and snacks. Bring a jar too- you may want to take home some flowers too.

If you’ve got your own garden to care for you might be interested in our “Create A Garden Stepping Stone” event, with local crafter, Jewel Rogers. https://www.mariquita.com/product/create-a-garden-stepping-stone/