I like the bird houses and feeding stations they sell at actual bird stores. The houses usually have little doors so you can clean them out at the end of nesting season and the holes are the right size for the type of birds in your area. I don't know if Wild Birds Unlimited is still going there They used to have one in Dallas and the other big cities in Texas.

I had a friend who used to dress up her front of the house yard geese seasonally. It was pretty fun, especially around Easter and Christmas.

My husband is a big bird watcher guy so we have a birdbath with a dripper. Also some glass bottle hummer feeders. Those really bring them in. I like the hypertuffa pots scattered around and also some of the nice garden stakes in the shape of veggies for the vegetable garden. I have a few moon ornaments. Love the flamingoes. Always fun. Mary

I want a fountain. I keep looking at them but either the price or the design has not been right. I am thinking of using some pond liner I have and an old tin watering can to make a fountain of my own out of an old metal horse trough (but still not the look I want)

I am still wishing I had bought a birdbath I saw at a garden fundraiser years ago, it was made out of old tractor parts. I have a rusty candelabra made of parts, they would have been good together.

I would love a vintage metal glider.

And only because I have to buy a few more pavers, I think I will do a patio Chess/Checker board. I bet I can find enough odds and ends to make a really random set of pieces for it.

I have a birdbath/fountain. It's a foountain in the summer but just the birdbath in the winter so I can use the heater to keep it open for the birds. Then there are lots of bird feeders and a bird house. And every year there's some kind of wind twirler or novelty garden stakes. I have butterflies and fish ones I stick around the beds. But my favorite is my garden fairy sprinkler!

My favorite yard ornament is an orange glass globe. I think its fabulous. My husband refers to is as the Eye of Sauron.

I also appreciate a well-placed pink flamingo. :)

I'm currently being bad - spending money unnecessarily on "accessories". 3 bird bathes (a must), very cute dog and cat solar lights, lots of "regular" solar lights (I love these at night), moose adult and baby (Lowes) - SO darling, a little angel statue, two bunnies. A band of deer statues (big, GORGEOUS) came with the house - these are my very favorites.

Definitely like the little animal critters. Next is the fountain - that will take some serious thought.

The bird bathes to me, make quick and dramatic impacts on the garden.

my favourite accesory is a hose. I don't have any statues, sculptures, water features or decorative containers (apart from plain terracotta) of any kind - at best, I sometimes make a special effort to put a dozen tea-lights in jam-jars. Its always just about the plants for me to the disgust of my daughter who bought me a ceramic owl - meanly, I not only laughed, but refused to put it on display- she has never forgiven me....... at least I didn't actually break or 'lose' it and she now has it in her garden........ although I cannot help but notice it is more or less hidden behind the recycling bins.

I have found GREAT stuff on craigslist and at estate sales. Got two concrete troughs last week. Lots of folks who are downsizing cannot take the big outdoor stuff with them.
I have an antique little boy sitting on a clam shell and I'm going to make that a spiller into a water feature. I just periodically search craigslist for "iron" "antique gate" "bird bath" stuff like that. I've really gotten some great stuff.
Susan

The fairy sprinkler is great. Lots of attractive additions. My husband bought this two foot long stone crocodile head. It has sage growing all around the back of it and looks like it's coming out to eat people. Very realistic. He loves it. I also have a fierce looking ceramic snail. It's there to scare the other snails out of my herb garden. Mary

I have to say I really enjoy my bird baths, bird houses and bird feeders, but my all time favorite addition to my garden is my Rebecca statue---I absolutely love her.
Molly

Susan, than you for the search idea. I'll patrol CL for a while, maybe I can come up with interesting stuff like you.

I love little surprises around the garden. To Campanula I am sure that I have a horrifying amount of tchotchkes.

Besides the feeders and baths, my other favorites are the solar lights that change color.

A tip: The ones from Ls have a small globe, cost $10 and only have three colors. The ones from HD are $6, have a larger globe and cycle through SEVEN colors. I have about 10 scattered around and plan on getting more.

Campanula's ceramic owl and Tuggy's croc illustrate well that what one person thinks is tasteful or cute, another may find quite awful. A couple of years ago, my close friend who has pretty close to exquisite taste and a huge, gorgeous garden she is very particular about, brought me a gift that rendered me speechless at its awfulness. The brain centers that controlled her good taste had obviously gone awry. The gift was a decorative garden object, a large bicycle wheel which had various glass collectibles, such as plates and vases glued to it. There was a hanger to hang it from a tree limb or something sturdy, since it was very heavy. It was gloriously appalling. Later, I was able to "gift" it to a family member who loves bizarre objects. My friend has never asked about the wheel's whereabouts, and I'm not sure what I'd tell her. Hopefully, her tact will continue to prevent inquiries. Diane

Like a lot of us I too have some gifted yard art on permanent display. I probably would not have bought a crocodile but it has certainly been a conversation piece. The bird feeders bring in the quail because the feeder platform is not screened so that only small birds can drop down to get the seed. The quail form mobs and nip and strip my new green leaves in my garden patch and at the base of the roses. This spring I will have to net and fence a bit to keep them out. Once the leaves are sizeable they stop defoliating. When you live with a birder and a biologist you end up with crocodiles and the bird mafia. In my case a lot of heavy lifting gets done out there that I couldn't do all by myself. It's a tradeoff.

I like hearing about all the whimsical things people add to their gardens. Gardens are so varied and personal. The water features are probably my favorites.
Mary

This is my angel. I just love her. She was a gift from my two sons on Mother`s Day many years ago. I figure she watches over the garden...which I appreciate! Lesley

Lovely. That's an especially beautiful one. Mary

lesmc, what a beautiful angel for your gorgeous garden. I hope everyone on this forum has a chance to go to the Rose Forum Gallery and see the wonderful photos you have posted of your garden.
Tuggy,
I feed "my" quail everyday (there are hundreds in the gulley behind my backyard), and they do, indeed, tear lots of my plantings to pieces, especially rudbeckia, when the plants are small. But I love to watch their antics, so I put up with the loss of some plants, which were free seedlings, anyway. We live out in the foothills outside of Boise and it's full of all kinds of wildlife out here.
Below is my favorite garden decoration.

That is the best yard art of all.

I'm glad I'm not the only one losing my greenery. They are cute birds. They like to take dust baths in the summer and there are all these little round dents in the drier spots. I have a silly array of little mismatched fences around my tiny patch of spring greens. I guess the quail are my moving yard art.

Yard art is personal and I am unapologetic in my regard for pink flamingos (which I don't have right now). Other art is personal as well, and if Jackson Pollock's drip paintings made with house paint dripped onto canvas sit in museums, the flamingos and geese and other yard art will sit in my garden.
As long as I do not decorate with old tires and discarded toilets, I figure I'm good.
I toyed with the idea of making bird houses, but I just want a few so will likely just buy them. I've seen some that are beautifully done, and some nice looking ones that appear to be simple gourds that are cleaned and painted.

Yard art is personal and I am unapologetic in my regard for pink flamingos (which I don't have right now). Other art is personal as well, and if Jackson Pollock's drip paintings made with house paint dripped onto canvas sit in museums, the flamingos and geese and other yard art will sit in my garden.
As long as I do not decorate with old tires and discarded toilets, I figure I'm good.
I toyed with the idea of making bird houses, but I just want a few so will likely just buy them. I've seen some that are beautifully done, and some nice looking ones that appear to be simple gourds that are cleaned and painted.

I have always been a bit sniffy about 'art' - I used to use the children's numerous paintings to light the fire (especially in the days when I was having a newspaper ban to avoid massive rage explosions). Obviously, I didn't actually do it in front of them....and they did hundreds so it was easy to 'lose' a few. Of course, now they are all grown up, I am sitting at my keyboard looking at three projects which escaped the blaze....and. presciently (I didn't garden in those days - too knackered) they are all drawings or paintings of flowers. I still have some of the variously painted jamjars ('For Mum, XXX') - hence the tea lights.
In other people's gardens, I find myself delighting in full-on displays of kitsch (shell grottoes, gnomes and mythic statues).....but usually filtered through a nastily knowing ironic sensibility. Sometimes I appall myself.

This is my favorite birdhouse! A gift from my sister. When I look at some of the gifts that were given to my garden, it is a reminder of people I love. I know that each gardener feels this,too.I love to delight in the art the others gardens and hope the art in mine brings pleasure to my visitors. Thanks nanadoll, for your kind comments on my garden. I think we all get pleasure from viewing everyones gardens. I go over the pictures time and again. Your favorite accessory is lovely...best ever! Lesley

Camp, you so remind me of my late friend Kay, a total pragmatist! She never kept anything just for sentimental value. If it didn't have a use or purpose it was tossed. After she passed we discovered she kept and collected many things but always had them hidden away! Are you a secret collector too?

NOT my favorite accessory!

t-bred....I completely agree! Those little buggers are nothing but trouble! Hope you ran out there and ran them off after you snapped this shot! Lesley

Run them off?
I am seeing supper there.
Venison, yum (gotta be better than the current Brit diet of horseburger).

Well, there are probably a dozen regulations you'd be violating if you took a shot at one of these, campanula. It's much easier over here to take a pot shot at your neighbor instead, unfortunately. Frankly, I wish there were a larger deer "harvest" because the deer population all over the U.S. has gotten much too large, and unmanageable, while the number of hunters is falling, and the damage deer wreak grows. Wish we could ship a few to England. Diane

Did shoo them but wouldn't shoot them, I'm a sucker for those big brown eyes! Campanula, look on the bright side- could be soy bean and melamine!

Gazing ball as Eye of Sauron! LOL.

I don't have much in the way of objects but do have a fountain and love it because the hummers come and take baths in the morning. It is so fun to watch them.

Back in 2008 I got some transparent sheets with adhesive backing for laser printers and copied some Emily Dickinson and Rilke poems onto them and stuck a few on the walls here and there in the garden. Those are kind of fun and visitors like them and it only cost a few dollars.

I love this sign that belongs to a garden buddy. I wish I had one of my own. Maybe I will print out a sheet of it and put it on a wall somewhere:
{{gwi:232012}}

Nice garden sign. I like the simple ones. I like that bird house with the starburst too.

I cut a hole in the middle of a tall hedge that masks our garbage can area and hung a little birdhouse in there. The hedge is pretty boring so it broke the monotony.

When the garden is asleep in the winter the garden art adds interest. I think the birds appreciate the feeders and the water when their food supply is lower. Mary

Instead of the planned bird bath there is going to be a pond. I went to Home Depot for 2x4s and there were a bunch of ponds for half price, so I got a small one. I'm sure it will be an adventure putting it in.