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Salvage yard

Jill Nooney turns castoff artifacts into garden treasures.

THE OLD ADAGE "One man's trash is another man's treasure" certainly rings true for Jill Nooney. The social worker turned garden designer turned garden sculptor has a knack for looking at castaway junk and envisioning it as sculptural garden art.

Her company, Fine Garden Art, recently participated in New England Grows, a garden trade exhibition held at the Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center in Boston. Her small booth was jammed with aficionados of her work as well as passersby fascinated by the unique garden art on display. There were arbors made from shoe lasts, planters configured from old copper boilers and gramophones, and bird sculptures made from farm machine parts.

Many of Nooney's garden offerings are one of a kind, while others are limited editions. "Some are antiques," Nooney says, "others are pieces of American history in the form of salvage from old, architecturally interesting and significant buildings, and many are personally fabricated."

Her Gem Stems, for example, luminescent prisms that look like inverted diamonds, are actually reproductions of a 17th-century device used to transmit light between the decks of ships. Nooney added hand-forged stems so that they can be staked into the ground. The Gem Stems, which can be used individually or in a cluster, cast an amazing light in the garden, she says. They come in 2-foot, 2-foot, and 3-foot heights and are priced at $60.

No wonder Louis Raymond of Renaissance Gardening Ltd. was drawn to Nooney's work when he was planning the garden for the Newport Showhouse in Bristol, Rhode Island, last September.

Raymond met Nooney last year at the Newport Flower Show, where she was showing lamps she had designed. She asked Raymond if he knew any interior designers who might be interested in her work. Instead, he told her about the garden and suggested her art be incorporated into it.

For Nooney, Raymond's garden presented an ideal setting for her pieces. "It was large scale, and a vegetable garden is ideally suited for pieces made from farm and architectural salvage," she says. "The design of the garden had crossroads, so it was important that it had pieces that you could walk under, like the arbors."

Nooney, who has successfully dabbled in a number of disciplines, jokes that she is still deciding what she wants to do when she grows up. She practices full time as a psychiatric social worker. She founded and runs Fine Garden Art. She is a graduate of the Radcliffe landscape design program, reflecting her lifelong interest in gardens and plants.

Her one-of-a-kind pieces also adorn her extensive gardens at Bedrock Farm, a 10-acre property in Lee, New Hampshire, that she bought on a handshake in 1984 from Annie Piper, whose family had owned the farm for 60 years. The original farmhouse dates to the 18th century and, Nooney says, has many of the drawbacks of Colonial-era construction, such as being close to the road and having a rock foundation. A post-and-beam barn was added in the late 1800s.

Her intensive landscape project at the farm includes garden beds full of unusual specimens of trees and shrubs; a diamond-patterned, 150-foot fence on which 11 varieties of apple trees have been espaliered; a formal garden with pool, fountains, and water features; a 1-acre wildlife pond with a bridge; and 2 miles of woodland trails.

"I have always loved plants and making things," Nooney writes in the Fine Garden Art catalog. "I am also a restless sort, easily bored by repetition. When I couldn't find interesting objects to put in my garden, I began a hunt that eventually included making objects myself. I like the fact that human hands have made these pieces and each one is different. It is fun to think that they will go in a garden - another 'one-of-a-kind' art form."

Nooney scavenges the countryside, visiting flea markets, tag sales, and the town dump for bits and pieces she can use in her art. She never knows what will turn up, but she knows when an object has possibilities. Take, for instance, the boxes of wooden shoe lasts she found at a flea market. She ended up using them to ornament one of her garden arbors.

It takes a certain innovative perspective to look at three shabby shovel heads and see art. Nooney combined them with a recycled fan head to create Fleur de Spade. She turned a copper record player amplifier into a Phono Horn, a planter that sits on a tripod stand. Antique boilers have become fountains and birdbaths in Nooney's hands.

The creative possibilities are endless, especially since Nooney has a stockpile of found objects.

"It is hard to explain my attraction to the vestiges of human labor," she writes in the catalog. "I especially like the leftovers of agriculture, anything that has to do with working the land. Cooling towers from industry, lasts from shoe making, and electrical insulators work just fine, too, as inspiration."

Resources:
Fine Garden Art is at Bedrock Farm, 45 High Road, Lee, New Hampshire, 03824-6202; telephone 603-659-2993, Web page www.finegarden.com. Open houses will be held at the farm on May 19, June 16, July 14, and August 19. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with a tour of the farm's gardens at 2 p.m.