Garden Reflections : Gazing Globes Create Pretty, Colorful Pictures of Favorite Flowered Spots
It’s not necessary to wait for rain puddles for reflections of treetops and azure skies. A mirrored glass ball placed on a pedestal in the garden, like the Victorians used to do, can bring the sky and upper branches down to earth every day of the year.
Most of the garden will be included in the picture as well since a gazing globe is a spherical rather than flat-surfaced mirror. Think of it as a reflecting pool furnished with a fish-eye lens.
“You know how you can see the lights on the tree, the room, and your own face reflected in a Christmas tree ornament?” asks Lisa Hackman of Riverside, a gazing globe convert. “Well, the same thing happens with these balls. They’re like giant Christmas ornaments for your garden.”
Most people, though, find gazing globes a peculiar notion until they actually see them in a garden setting, she says.
Lisa’s mother, Pat Hackman of Fountain Valley, probably wouldn’t have her own gazing globe if she hadn’t seen one in her daughter’s garden. And Lisa wouldn’t have hers if her husband hadn’t fallen in love with the blue mirrored ball he saw in the rose garden at Butchart Gardens near Victoria, British Columbia.
“He thought that ball was the greatest thing in the world and took dozens of pictures of it,” Lisa Hackman says. “I thought it was nice, too, but at the time I was more interested in the roses.”
When her husband saw a globe like the one he had seen in Canada displayed at Sculpture World in Riverside the next year, says Lisa, he wrapped it up and presented it to her for Mother’s Day. “Is this for you or for me?” she teased, but soon fell under the globe’s spell. “It ties the whole world to the garden,” she says. “It’s magical that way.”
In addition to appreciating its mirrored reflections, Lisa now also loves the globe as an object unto itself. “It’s fun, especially on a dreary winter day, to look out into the garden and see this big, blue spot out there,” she says. “It’s like a giant blue flower.”
Kids are fascinated by the globe, too, she says. Her son, who was 5 at the time the ball landed in the garden, brought friends home for show and tell, she says. “They called it the giant alien orb.”
More alien orbs are likely to appear in the Hackman garden this year. “Green is next,” says Lisa. “The green ones are gorgeous. Then maybe silver.”
Gazing globes are blown glass spheres that have been coated on the inside with a reflective material. They are available in 10-inch and 12-inch sizes and cost about $36 and $46, respectively. Silver and gold are the most popular colors, say manufacturers, but the globes are also available in blue, green, and purple, and occasionally other colors.
Silver globes are the most like mirrors. They project the world around them without coloring it. The other globes are more like looking at the world through colored glass. They accent best those things in their own color range. The sky, for instance, is most intensified in a blue globe, and grass and foliage in a green one. Fall foliage, dormant grass, and bronzy blooms look great in a gold globe. Salvias, lavender and silver-foliaged plants look good reflected in a purple globe. The fun, say owners, is in the experimentation.
Gazing globes are usually displayed on birdbath-type pedestals centered in a flower bed. However, some owners have had fun toying with the placement--making the globes appear to be floating above ornamental grasses or even placed like giant birds’ eggs in a nest.
Following are some local merchants that carry gazing globes:
Heard’s Country Gardens, 14391 Edwards St., Westminster, (714) 894-2444.
Pottery Plus, 18285 Euclid St., Fountain Valley, (714) 641-6611.
Sculpture World, 330 N. Main St., Riverside, (909) 781-9850.
Gazing globes can also be ordered directly from manufacturer Baker’s Lawn Ornamentals, (814) 445-7028.
