Also popular are well heads, the carved square or round blocks of stone or marble placed over wells. Proler, who keeps a waiting list for such rarities, currently has a hand-carved Istrian stone well head from northeastern Italy priced at $68,000. Architectural details are increasingly prized, as “people are beginning to think about vertical gardens, growing their plants on structures, including arches, arbors, columns and trellis work,” says Kathryn Meehan, a retired assistant chief of horticulture at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., who is working on a history of American antiques for the garden. Lampposts, gazebos, bridges, entrances and balustrades individualize spaces within a larger landscape, she says.

Collectors are also seeking exterior grills from 19th-century buildings as garden art, as well as high-

Alfred Gilbert, sculpture of Eros, 19th century, aluminum.

quality armillaries. (An armillary sphere, an ancient astronomical instrument, consists of intertwining metal rings representing the relative positions of the celestial equator and other celestial circles.) According to Proler, antique European armillaries tend to run around $16,000, though she recently sold an 8 1/2-foot 1840 Georgian-style pedestal topped with a bronze armillary for about $35,000.

Among the best places to discover European garden antiques are Sotheby’s twice-yearly Garden, Architectural and Fossil Decoration sales in Sussex. According to Rupert Van de Werff, head of Sotheby’s garden statuary department, prices for 18th-century English lead sculpture have quadrupled over the last five years. In contrast, cast-iron urns and seats haven’t moved that much in price. At last year’s September sale, prices for stone urns hovered around an anticipated $25,000, while an aluminum sculpture of the Greek god Eros by Alfred Gilbert (1854–1934) fetched $102,605 against an estimate of $95,000 to $152,000. At least half the bidders at these auctions are private American collectors, Van de Werff reports.

Dealers who sell online have transformed this market, specialists say, as collectors increasingly turn to the Internet for purchases, a practice that can be fraught with risk: Meticulously reproduced “antiques” from China and Eastern Europe are flooding the market, and computer images don’t always reveal an object’s condition. As with other collecting arenas, working with a connoisseur when buying remotely is essential. After all, your goal is to create a folly for your garden, not to commit one in your purchase.

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New York correspondent Bobbie Leigh is a member of the International Association of Art Critics–USA section.