Yard Art and Handmade Places: Extraordinary Expressions of Home

by Jill Nokes and Pat Jasper

Book Overview

Relatively few people in America build their own homes, but many yearn to make the places they live in more truly their own. Yard Art and Handmade Places profiles twenty homemakers who have used their yards and gardens to express their sense of individuality, to maintain connections to family and heritage, or even to create sacred spaces for personal and community refreshment and healing. Jill Nokes, an authority on native plants and ecological...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0292716796
• ISBN13: 9780292716797
• Release Date: November 2007
• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Length: 188 Pages
• Weight: 2.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 9.4" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Reflects Upon the Heart & Spirit

When I was in the midst of my divorce, friends and family urged me to look upon it as a new beginning, a new path to a new life. Over and over, I heard that bit of philosophic consolation. But after a while I decided to take these words literally. And with carloads of cobbles and paver sand, I began to build my new path, expressing myself, letting my pathway curve and expand, wander along, almost losing the design of it at times, before it reached its eventual destination at the side of my front porch. The freehand nature of the path engendered plantings, borders, a fountain, and before I knew it, I had created my own garden, a sort of shrine to this unexpected direction my life had taken. So it is with the gardeners in "Yard Art and Handmade Places." Austin landscape designer Jill Nokes traveled across Texas in search of people who had transformed ordinary yards and gardens into vernacular reflections of their personal lives and style. In interviews accompanied by vivid color photography, the book tells the stories behind these extraordinary garden makers, why their gardens were created, or what their personal yard art means to them. Nearly every neighborhood or small town has that one yard that is unique, maybe even eccentric. Perhaps it's a dinosaur made of hubcaps, or a fence encrusted with colored bottle bottoms, or strange rock formations lining a street. Rather than looking upon these yards as a curiosity, or even a tacky eyesore, Nokes treats it as creative expression, sometimes a collection of memory, or as a sacred place. Often the beauty of the space is in the eye of the beholder, and Nokes helps to expose that beauty. Such is the case with the "Cathedral of Junk" in far south Austin, whose fascinating construction of scrap metal has shown up on web sites devoted to outsider art and other things considered outlandish and peculiar. In sleepy Caldwell there is a doctor who over a period of several decades, transformed his yard into a sculpture park reflecting in abstract a history of his life. There are many sacred gardens in the book with spiritual themes or shrines to something personal. A woman in Brownsville pays homage to her mother and her heritage in her "Mexican garden" filled with brightly colored pots and flowers, healing herbs and chile pequin. In San Angelo the aptly named Cascada de Piedra Pinta is both a monument to the builder's work as chief vaquero on a large ranch, and also a tribute to his wife who helped plan the garden design but died before it came to fruition. Yet the book does more than just show us a series of interesting gardens and pretty pictures of yard art. The stories reflect the spiritual experience of gardening. The true subject is the human heart and the way a garden can bestow its specific blessing on us. The cumulative effect is to deepen the value of pl

Extraordinary horticulture study

A unique book of horticulture and artistic research covering all areas of Texas. A well written study of individually designed and maintained yards and gardens of the state. The book includes all major ethnic groups, people of all levels of education and socioeconomic groups. The book shows just how creative people can be with nature. I felt a personal acquaintance and passionate appreciation for each gardener. Beautiful pictures make it a colorful as well as interesting book.

vulnerable heroes

This amazing book is, I think, about what it takes to make someplace your own. Nokes gets people to talk about how they've tried to do that -- some by fitting in, others by standing out. Some grow huge windbreaks around their houses or retreat to manmade caves, others make sugary palaces or refurbish old ferris wheels and invite everybody to come ride. What a lot of dedication any "home" takes! And these, because the ambitions behind them were so grand, are especially vulnerable to time and weather. People say "you can't take it with you." I don't know about that. But on the home front, if you dreamed it up, made it, and maintained it, it won't be long for this world without you. Look now, before these paradises vanish!

Not planted in gated communities !!!

I think this is one of the most informative books on the feelings & message of a homeowners garden!It is not your normal book on formal botanical gardens. In this day of planned & gated communities where every house & yard looks the same,the author,s book shows that creativity still abounds in nieghborhoods with no restrictions on what kind of garden you can build!These homeowners have used their yards to express who they are & their personal feelings of how their garden should be.Many thanks to the author for showcasing these individual gardens of Texas!