I love garden gnomes. You might not know it, because there aren’t a lot of them in my garden for someone who professes to ‘love’ them, but I do.
I once wrote a short-film script about garden gnomes (it was perpetually in pre-production and I don’t think I even have a copy of the script now). But one of the gnomes I do have has been in my possession for 30-odd years.
The problem is, I’m really picky about my garden gnomes. I like what I like, and I’m ambivalent at best about everything else. I prefer concrete-cast gnomes. They are heavy and last almost-forever. But they are increasingly-rare, and cost an arm and a leg to ship anywhere.
They need to bring me joy, and not every gnome does that. So I don’t have a lot of them, but I love the ones I have.
There are two concrete garden gnomes living in my gardens, and recently I gave them both makeovers.
The cactus lady
This delightful woman sits in my succulent garden below a tall San Pedro cactus. And I do love her, she is genuinely one of my favourite things. But I’ve always disliked her paint job.
She came from a company in Levin that was closing down. The website is still there, and yes I have considered becoming a maker of gnomes in the last couple of weeks because the mould of this gnome is for sale, but I’ve decided I’ve got enough going on.
Anyway, I heard about it on Twitter, and went through pages and pages of garden art that would cost a small fortune to ship. And I just kept coming back to her. She reminded me of my mum (if you knew my mum, you’d know why). Richard purchased her as a birthday gift.
The model on the website had auburn hair, and a darker robe. The one that eventually showed up was the only one I was ever going to get, but she was never right. I had always wanted to revamp her, but when I thought about all the paint I would need to buy it got a wee bit overwhelming. So I’d never got around to it.
Until I posted the photo at the top of the page to Bluesky and someone said they reckoned she looked a bit like Boris Johnson.
Once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. I picked up the new colour for her hair in town the next day.
Side-quest
I scrubbed her up and realised she could do with a bit of maintenance. And I really hated that blue robe.
I had a couple of colours (I used Folk Art Multi-Surface acrylic paint), but it became apparent I’d need more. And given I was going to be ordering the paint, I decided my other gnome might as well get a glow-up too.
I found an online store who had colours I needed but couldn’t source locally, and ordered 8 bottles of paint.
My very old gnome came inside for a scrub. I used sugar soap to start, and once most of the muck was off, I dowsed him in Exit Mould, then went in with an old toothbrush.
I’ve had this fella for probably 30 years. I bought him from the Rotorua craft market in the mid-1990’s.
Somehow, he has made it through every move and every purge in the 30 years since then. He’s lived in at least 15 different houses in 6 different towns and cities. He was very much worse for the wear.
Somewhere along the line, his hat clearly fell off and was super-glued back on. He’s covered in chips. The paint job wasn’t that brilliant to begin with either. Poor little dude.
The glow-up
Once the paints arrived, I set to work creating the gnomes I really wanted in my garden. My biggest regret here is probably that I didn’t start with a white primer. Instead, I just went straight in.
In places where I wasn’t changing the colour, it took 2 coats. Three-four coats if I was aiming to change things. I found a gold paint hidden in my stash so the little dude could have actual gold in his pot of gold, instead of a muddy brown substance.
The People of Bluesky kept mentioning that the cactus lady needed some eye makeup. But in the end detail that fine just wasn’t working, so I settled for eyebrows. I think that helped a lot.
I gave her a forest green robe and repainted her jolly bits. Friend-of-the-blog, Jo, mentioned making her lips the same colour as her nips would (apparently) be more “flattering”. Neither of us know what that means but that made the job easier for me. So I custom-mixed a colour for those.
She doesn’t strike me as the kind of woman who believes in a high maintenance routine so I gave her some pubic hair. When I noticed the mould included fingernail detail, I couldn’t help but give her bright red fingernails too.
The transformation of my poor little dude was quite incredible. I love how the gold worked out, and he (almost) looks brand-new again.
I’m really happy I took that nudge from the universe to finally do this job. The gnomes are back out looking after the garden again, just significantly spiffier now!
Official Portrait of Boris Johnson used under the United Kingdom Open Government Licence 3.0 and accessed from Wikimedia Commons.
