Barbara Israel, Katonah, NY

“Ornaments draw your eye and lead you around the garden. Benches offer comfort, a place to sit and contemplate... fountains combine art and nature, interacting together to create the sounds and sights of splashing... a marble panther on a rock tells a tale.”

@barbaraisraelgardenantiques

BARBARA ISRAEL Katonah, NY

Barbara is one of the world’s leading experts on garden antiques, but this path began by chance when she found (and impulsively acquired) a major collection of antique garden ornaments. She now runs Barbara Israel Garden Antiques, offering an array of period garden ornaments from Europe, America, and Asia. To share her passion, she’s written several books on garden antiques and publishes a free, scholarly newsletter, Focal Points. Her historic property includes formal box-hedged perennial borders, a meditation garden, an orchard within a meadow, a rose garden, and many specimen trees, creating a remarkable setting for her collection of fountains, statues, sundials, urns, furniture, fencing, and wellheads dating from the fifteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries. Barbara was one of the original Open Days garden hosts in 1995 and has continued to share her enchanting garden over the years. She also hosted a sold-out Digging Deeper on siting garden ornaments.