Garden Follies

folly |ˈfälē|

noun ( pl. -lies)

1 lack of good sense; foolishness : an act of sheer folly.

• a foolish act, idea, or practice : the follies of youth.2 a costly ornamental building with no practical purpose, esp. a tower or mock-Gothic ruin built in a large garden or park.3 ( Follies) a theatrical revue, typically with glamorous femaleperformers : [in names ] the Ziegfeld Follies.

By the photo you would assume that we were abroad at some famous Greek Doric Temple ruin. But no, we were in Calistoga, California visiting Villa Ca'Toga the home of  world-renowned artist Carlo Marchiori. His villa is littered with cement and recycled rubble follies. http://catoga.com/

Set inside a tree ring in the woods of this Monastery in Tuscany, is a solitary table made from a millstone, boulders as it's chairs. Dripping with symbolism one could not stumble upon this site without acknowledging that it was made to impress to the visitor a different time and place.

The lakeside gardens at Villa Cipressi in Varenna, Italy are impressive. When constructing the garden  an opening to a cavern was chiseled out to create a grotto where none had existed before.

The Venus Grotto, Linderhof

On a grander scale, follies can be all consuming. Consider Ludwig II of Bavaria. He acceded the throne at a mere 18 years of age and created a fantasy world in the mountains far away from Munich and his responsibilities. From age 28 he would sleep during the day and live during the night where he would dress in historic costume and ride around in elaborate coaches and sleighs. Linderhof in the Graswangtal, was considered his home. He had the Venus grotto fabricated on the property as an amusement.

Follies reached a zenith in the 17th and 18th centuries. Many European estates had ruins of monastic houses and Roman villas; others, lacking such buildings, constructed their own faux versions of these romantic structures. Today, in the U.S., you might be hard pressed to find examples except in large botanical gardens, but I believe that a little whimsy makes a garden enjoyable. So how can you go about adding such "ruins" to your landscape?

Redwood Stone of England offers fantastic Folly designs from small to large. You can order pieces or the whole design which are shipped to specific partners in the U.S. I like looking through their website to get inspiration on how to incorporate a folly into a landscape. If you are handy enough you may even be able to construct one of your own out of used bricks and reclaimed windows from the salvage yard. 

I took this photo in a village along las route des vins d'Alsace in France. The rest of the building was gone, only one weathered wall with a window still stood as a reminder of what once was. This would not be hard to replicate especially at a smaller scale as follies usually are.

Besides buildings, follies can be eye-fooling installations such as this elk.

 An existing rock was given a concrete head and a real pair of antlers. Put a few cows around him and you have a heard of bedded down elk on your back forty (or what seems to be). 

Let your creativity take a long stroll down the folly path. I'm sure, if you're determined to have one, it'll come to you.