{"id":252,"date":"2011-04-18T12:58:55","date_gmt":"2011-04-18T20:58:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=252"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:32:57","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:32:57","slug":"the-perfect-urn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/the-perfect-urn\/","title":{"rendered":"The Perfect Urn"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE PERFECT PLANTER
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\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I used to think that all it took to make a great garden was an unlimited number of plants and boundless energy.\u00a0 Now I know better.\u00a0 My garden is full of plants and there are moments when I still feel boundless energy, but something is missing.\u00a0 What I really need now is a significant urn.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It is not that I lack for containers.\u00a0 I already have lots of them in plastic, metal, terra cotta, and concrete.\u00a0 The cheap plastic ones even mate in the darkness of my garage and produce offspring.\u00a0 All of my pots do what they are supposed to, keeping the plants and dirt safely inside, while letting the extra water drain out.\u00a0 Some of them are pretty, like the two sky blue resin ones I bought last year at the local big box store.\u00a0 A few of the best terra cotta containers–for which I overpaid handsomely at a luxury garden goods emporium–are even a bit inspiring.\u00a0 But none of them are urns.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The ideal urn combines beauty with pedigree.\u00a0 Even if it was made last week, its style comes from Greek or Roman models that have withstood the test of time.\u00a0 Some of its ancestors may have survived the volcanic destruction of Pompeii.\u00a0 These are the urns you see all the time in magazine spreads of English estates and American millionaires’ expensively landscaped north forties.\u00a0 The best people, here and abroad, seem to have impressive eighteenth or nineteenth century copies of ancient originals that are now safely housed in museums.\u00a0 People lower on the economic ladder have copies of those copies.\u00a0 Old or new, urns can be as big as a Mini Cooper or as small as a teapot.\u00a0 I have a little cast iron starter urn that is only about eight inches high and weighs about twenty pounds.\u00a0 I keep it inside for decoration and self protection.\u00a0 Hurled with accuracy, it could stop any intruder instantly.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In my suburb urns abound and that has increased my desire to have one or more of my own.\u00a0 The people down the street have a beautiful cast iron model sitting atop a plinth made of an upended log.\u00a0 Their neighbors have two handsome footed urns flanking the front steps.\u00a0 Elsewhere in my town I have seen all shapes and sizes.\u00a0 My desire deepens by the day, encouraged by my daughter, who minored in Classics and wants a little piece of the ancient world for our very own doorstep.\u00a0 As I fill less impressive containers with spring annuals, I think how much better they would look if they were fertilized by the cachet inherent in a significant urn.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I browsed the Internet for urns and came up with one that is aesthetically perfect.\u00a0 Made by the English firm Haddonstone, it is called the “Hadrian Vase,”\u009d after the Roman Emperor who ruled in the second century A.D and is best known for building an exquisite villa at Tivoli and rebuilding the Roman Pantheon.\u00a0 Sitting atop a square base, the cast stone Hadrian Vase is shaped like a somewhat flattened thistle, with a wide rim decorated with an egg and dart design.\u00a0 The ornate handles are carved in a leaf pattern and curve up over the rim.\u00a0 At thirty-three inches tall and thirty-eight inches wide at the rim, it is a little large for my property, but I can easily overlook that.\u00a0 At sixteen hundred dollars, I cannot overlook the sad fact that I can’t afford it.\u00a0 It is little consolation to know that its three hundred seventy-seven pound weight would make it hard to move around.\u00a0 No doubt if I could afford the vase, I could also afford the burly young men who would move it for me.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So I am doomed to roam the face of the earth in search of a comparable, but much cheaper urn.\u00a0 I have checked numerous antique shops, especially those out in the country that are likely to have rusty cast iron models at lower prices.\u00a0 So far the perfect urn has not presented itself.\u00a0 I might eventually fall for a slightly different style, but it will have to be something that would look as appropriate in front of my Victorian house as it would in an Edward Gorey illustration.\u00a0 When it finally comes, I will fill it with a suitable arrangement of fancy-leaf geraniums, coleus and trailing ivy and toast my good taste with a cup of Earl Grey tea.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Every year I develop a fondness for some item of gardenalia that requires effort and determination to find.\u00a0 Up until now those items have been unusual plants.\u00a0 Now I am veering in the direction of garden d\u00c3\u00a9cor.\u00a0 Who knows where it will end?\u00a0 By next year at this time I may be hot on the trail of a tasteful Classically-inspired nude for the middle of the strawberry bed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE PERFECT PLANTER \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I used to think that all it took to make a great garden was an unlimited number of plants and boundless energy.\u00a0 Now I know better.\u00a0 My garden is full of plants and there are moments when I still feel boundless energy, but something is missing.\u00a0 What I really need now … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-spring"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1539,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions\/1539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}