Developing Placoderm Bay

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I was noticing yesterday that my Placoderm (armored fish) was becoming completely invisible under the growth of new plants at Trilobite Reef, so I have moved it.

This area, which is my new cycad colony, I will call Placoderm Bay. It's a good place to put this little bit of nonsense sculpture, as it's an area that needed some visual interest. Everything that I planted there has died from the summer heat, and the bulbs won't be appearing until October.

There is more than just whimsy here. There are some design principles. The one that I mention a lot is *visual interest*. That just means guiding someone's eye to where you want them to look. Some people refer to it as a *focal point*, but in my opinion, that is going too far. Bright, gaudy garden decoration that screams *hey, look at me!* is very popular, and very ugly. Instead I am trying to do the double-take. As someone looks at this area, they will say, *is that a scorpion?* And from a functional standpoint, I am putting sculptures on my stepping stones, which I can remove to step on as I need to, but will guard against the impulse that people have to step into the garden area. I am hoping to be successful enough at designing this so that eventually I don't have to remind people not to walk up into the garden, which I know is rude of me. I will need to add more pointy rocks!

To add to the ocean/bay effect, I have added some sea shells, stained brown so that they don't stand out too much, and some nice round stones from The Dollar Tree store at 67th Avenue and Peoria in Glendale. Looks like I need to get some more!

A garden is always growing and changing.


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