how about bowling ball art???

i especially like the first pic ...

now.. where to find a plethora of bowling balls

ken

Here is a link that might be useful: link

I wanted to do a chocolate garden but could not think of anything for chocolate decor.

Shoes. I have started collecting odd shoes. Like the wooden Dutch shoes.

Here is a link that might be useful: Dutch Shoes

I have one bowling ball destined for something wonderful.

Half the fun of theme gardens is thinking up strategies for making the displays. For chocolate, I'd consider forming old foil into a Hershey's kiss and painting small glass blobs to look like M & M's for starters. Maybe look for a plastic bunny and paint it brown to be a chocolate easter bunny.

If you check the internet for Chicken Theme Garden, you can see what I did with paint for Chicken Pot Pie, emulating peas, carrots and potatoes.

Have you checked out the garden junk forum?

Last year I gave a powerpoint presentation on Junk in the Garden. I haven't looked lately so I'll look again for more inspirations.

-marquest, for the chocolate decor, how about getting a couple of those concrete garden rabbits and painting them brown with candy color eyes and a bright bow? You would have some chocolate Easter Bunnies roaming the Chocolate Garden ;-) Maybe even paint a gazing ball a brown color and add painted "sprinkles" on top and you would have some giant bon-bons....
CMK

I also thought of using an old round cookie tin, slathering it with something chocolate colored (cement?) and decorating it to resemble a chocolate cake. Or brownies.

Another idea I might suggest is Bucket Brigade...an assortment of buckets with plants in them. And maybe one old boot kicking a bucket.

Maybe not unusual enough, but these were hits with my great niece when she was younger.

We just named things as we came upon them. I used to hide some clay animals amongst the veg & fruits, so we've played hide & seek with them over the years. Then she began calling an area the kitten bed or the hippo garden. I brought them to the backyard for this year, but next year, I'm putting the animals back to the veg. garden where one animal per bed so that we'll refer back to the animal residing in that space where I want my son or hubby to go pick lettuce or pull some onions for dinner. Much easier for the ungardeners to find what is needed.

Strawberry Garden - kept a deep crock 1/2 buried in the bed & filled with clean water during the ripe berry season for easy dipping clean before eating. She wanted whipped cream at first, but I told her these berries were best dipped in water. After tasting them she agreed.

Fairy Garden - planted miniature plants in a pot just for her along with some fairy toys to keep it interesting.

Pizza Garden - of herbs & tomatoes for topping on pizza. She expected to see pizza (bread dough & cheese) and I found an article that had the plants in the shape of pizza wedges, but we didn't have space to plant them that way. We did pick the herbs for pizza, but the tomatoes weren't ripe when she visited and she wisely didn't want a green tomato on pizza.

WOW you all have some really good ideas for the chocolate garden. I am going to spend my winter working on some of the decor suggestions.

Watching Angels. More of a inspirational garden.

I am a night owl and you can find me in the garden or on the patio looking out over the garden in the evening.

It would be great to see what would appear to be angels over seeing the garden. This garden would have a lot of white/silver plants and lighting highlighting the Angels positioning to look like they are floating over the plants.

I'm doing a spooky theme garden that I can easily turn into a Halloween garden next fall. There is a mossy log that looks just like a snake, with a stone head that has "eyes; a stump that looks like some kind of mythical bird; an eerie dead tree that has "claw" shaped branches; and plants like "First Ghost" Japanese maple, hostas "Swamp Thing" and "Witches Brew", Ghost ferns, lamium "Ghost", black snake root, toad lilies, and anything else I can find that will grow in shade with spooky names and bloom or be interesting in October. Droopy grape vines and mossy paths add to the atmosphere, which actually is quiet and serene the rest of the year!

Of course it will be pretty the rest of the year, but with ghostly white leaves on some of the plants it should kind of "glow" at night and lend itself pretty well to dressing up for All Hallow's Eve!

There will be a spider web and spider sculpture also that will be made of metal and wire and be permanent.

This theme garden is deep in my small woods, down the mossy path, past the brush pile "hobbit house" and the fairy house, and thru the twig gate. Kind of like entering Mirkwood.

Sandy

mosswitch

Oh, that sounds sooo neat. Maybe you can find a small cauldron, skull or fake bloody hand at an after Halloween sale somewhere to spook things up a bit more.

I have a half buried plastic hand in my chicken theme garden for "a bird in the hand...". It's in my webshots album.

I have lots of things to put in the garden on Halloween-- skulls, skeletons, bats, all that sort of stuff. I've collected it for years, lol!

Maybe not a "theme" garden exactly, but next garden club tour at my garden I'm going to borrow all my grandson's big (12" tall) dinosaurs and scatter them among the hosta "jungle (Jurassic Park, T-Rex, etc)! Should be fun!