Outdoor Garden Columns
Buy the best outdoor garden columns selected and recommended by interior designers. By Tara Gosselin.
Outdoor garden columns will add a classic and sophisticated touch to your backyard or patio area. You can either decide to have them as a primarily decorative item, a functional piece, or… both! In fact, shorter garden columns can easily be used as plant stands, too. Depending on what you had in mind for your garden, get inspired by the varied selection of columns and pedestals that we’ve put together for you.
Outdoor Garden Columns
Buying Guide
Tara Gosselin
Interior Design Expert
Tara is a San Antonio-based award-winning landscape architect, writer and educator, passionate about eco-friendly solutions and growing her own food. She knows all it takes to help you create a sustainable backyard retreat that combines blissful charm with a modern take on landscaping.
In their various forms, garden columns pedestals are elements for decorating the exterior of your home. Put potted plants or sculpture on them to make an attractive display. Their style derives from the towering columns of ancient Greece that supported temples and public buildings.
In the United States, common styles adapted from the Greeks that you are likely to see are:
- Ionic
- Doric
- Corinthian
In fact, many early American architects were so impressed with the Greek styles that they incorporated them into important public buildings. The White House, Jefferson Memorial and Union Station, for example, were built using Ionic columns.
And Doric columns grace the Lincoln Memorial in addition to many public schools, libraries and government buildings. Corinthian columns are part of the architecture of the New York Stock Exchange. Columns in this style are the simplest of the three, the top being plain and the shaft or main part being fluted.
The elements of Corinthian columns are the most ornate of the three. The Greeks included elaborate sculpted details of native acanthus leaves and flowers at the top of the fluted columns of this type. Some American architects substituted images of our native species: tobacco plants, thistles and corn cobs.
Most of today’s garden columns pedestals are made for the outdoors, although one gray-colored variety for the interior is made from resin. Another short, stocky one made of solid marble has an ancient, weathered look and it definitely has a place in your yard. One suggestion for how to use it is to let ivy grow over it. While that one has no top, it is fluted. Another cream-colored item falls into the Greek vein because it has a Corinthian column.
Mosaic garden columns pedestals present a contemporary look and add color and texture to a yard. One comes with tiles in white, gray, black and rust. Available in several heights, it adds interest by breaking up the monotony. Another choice comes covered in navy blue and light blue pieces of glass. Though the glass may suggest delicacy, the core of this item is metal.
Perhaps a pedestal made with plaster, a material used by the ancients, and finished in reddish brown invites your eye. Garden columns pedestals can beautify a porch, and they are available in white in several styles, not all of them with an Ancient Greek theme. Most are in a simple style with no fluting. They will add simplicity, grace, and elegance to your porch.