![\"mirrors\"](\"http:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/mirrors.jpg\")
<\/a>This image is from Maureen Gilmer’s MOPlants. I don’t know where the garden mirror is located; I found the photo on-line.<\/p><\/div>\n
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Other times the mirror reflecting the garden is\u00a0a decorative feature, reflecting the people in it.<\/p>\n
<\/a>This photo is from the Art of Gardening. It shows a home-made mirror in a garden in Buffalo, New York.<\/p><\/div>\n
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But mirrors can do much more. In the photo below, I am taking a photograph of a sculpture — and a photograph of myself. Did I take this picture to record my presence in a particular place at a particular time? to capture an image of a work of art? to show to friends when I got home.? \u00a0Maybe it was vanity — maybe I thought I looked good that day and wanted a picture to prove it. Whatever prompted me to take the photo, though, the result is the same. I am\u00a0mirrored in the landscape behind me. Visually I become part of the sculpture, and part of the world\u00a0that surrounds it.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Gate: a sculpture by Rob Ward at the Cass Sculpture Park in Sussex, England. The title invites people to enter it. So does the shape, although that is hard to see in this photo.<\/p><\/div>\n
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Mirrors link us to our gardens, putting us quite literally into the picture. But that picture isn’t always an accurate one. \u00a0How many birch trees are there in the photo below? Are we seeing a reflection of the forest or are we looking through the tinted plexiglass at the forest beyond? Or are we doing both?<\/p>\n
<\/a>R\u00e9flecions Color\u00e9es, a plexiglass sculpture by Hal Ingborg at the Reford Gardens in Metis, Quebec, both mirrors the surroundings and allows us to look through it to the forest beyond .<\/p><\/div>\n
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Some years ago I visited Le \u00a0Jardin Precambrien at Val David, Quebec. An elaborate mock Italianate fountain created by the Quebec artist Marc Dulude was set in the forest. \u00a0The water in the fountain was suggested with mirrors\u00a0set at odd\u00a0angles. Seen together, the mirrors broke the surroundings into fragments, sending a message about a world\u00a0at odds with itself.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Mirrors set at different angles reflected different parts of the forest and the sky above.<\/p><\/div>\n
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At the same time, the distorted reflections\u00a0spoke of county fairs\u00a0and the fun houses children like to walk through. The mirrors intrigued spectators of all ages, made them laugh to see themselves turned upside down, stretched wide or narrowed to a point. And to see the world treated in the same way.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>A boy is turned upside down as he looks into the mirror. Trees towering above him seem to be growing upside down, too.<\/p><\/div>\n
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Mirrors aren’t used in gardens very\u00a0often, and when they are, their primary purpose is to make a space seem larger. I suppose this is understandable: people may be\u00a0afraid a mirror\u00a0will break or get dirty, and that certainly can happen. \u00a0Even so, it\u00a0seems a shame. There’s an opportunity that’s being missed.<\/p>\n
Searching through my collection of photographs from around the world, I found many images of mirrors used outdoors as part of a piece of art. I found very few where mirrors are\u00a0used to add meaning to a garden. One exception is at Througham Court in Gloucestershire, England. Here the garden owner and designer Christine Facer Hoffman has keyed in on the fact that\u00a0mirrors show what is behind you.\u00a0\u00a0She has used this metaphorically, to say that a mirror looks into the past.<\/p>\n
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