Garden Glory: Reindeer Antler Hoses From Sweden
/For Swedish company Garden Glory, manufacturers of a line of colorful trägårdsslan–English “garden hoses”–and accompanying accessories, aspects like design and color and form are as much a part of gardening as they are there normal venues of art and architecture. “Miss Garden Glory” Linda Brattlöf matches her predilection towards design with her passion towards gardening to turn out Garden Glory’s 20 foot long high quality hoses and accompanying accoutrements, which embody the freedom and pleasure of modern gardening through the inspiration derived from the glamorous spectacle of its design.
Flare is inserted into a normally bland gardening tool in a manner befitting the cover of Vanity Fair, not Good Housekeeping, in its artistic verve and supermodel re-rendering of domesticated agriculture. The many colored hoses render as insufficient the traditional green and yellow ones, caked and stained with dirt and grime as they typically are, while their lustrously colored exteriors are are also a high quality membranous material designed for ease of cleaning. Curiously titled colors like “Black Swan” (black), “Candy Crush” (pink), and “Minty Mermaid” (turquoise) lend an immediate, sentimental personality to the line of hoses, allowing veteran and/or aspiring gardeners to instantly tune into their own inspirational spectrum by selecting one that reflects the desired tone of their garden. If a picture-perfect gardening snapshot features an individual holding a hose from which spurts a stream of water into a flower bed, Garden Glory’s line of colored hoses automatically elicit the inherent flaw to that photo (i.e. traditional grimy hoses) and photoshops an empathic glamour into the picture.
Garden Glory has more than shiny colored surfaces in store for gardening aficionados. Reinforced with knitted fabrics, these hoses will not fold in half and cut off the stream (which of course also wears down the hose after repeated uses). Rather than the faded caricature of what was once a store-quality item that most garden hoses become after extended time in the sun, these hoses are equipped with UV protection that ensures the longevity of their luster over time and use. And as they are free of lead and cadmium, gone too is the artificial taste of hose water. To round out the line of hoses Garden Glory has set forth two other sets of accessories: nozzles and wall mounts. The nozzles are sleek and sexy, showing up in the colors white, black, turquoise, and pink; while the color bronze is appropriately reserved for a retro-classic piston-shaped nozzle design that adds another dimension to the collection, bridging the gap between old and new. Despite the innovation of the rest of the line, the reindeer wall mounts are perhaps the most curiously intuitive re-working of traditional garden elements. The wall mounts keep things in technicolor, matching up with the spectrum showcased by the nozzles and the hoses, themselves forming a tripartite matching scheme with the wall mounts, from which endless combinations are explorable, and Garden Glory leaves it up to the enthusiastic buyer to select a combination befitting the distinct atmosphere of her or his garden. A white reindeer wall mount contrasts just as nicely with a bronze nozzle-capped black hose, as it does with a white nozzle-capped pink hose. Go for shades of grey to embody the colder northern temperatures from whence Garden Glory arose, or full bronze to reflect the warmer southern climes of Argentinian vineyard.
The variety and sleekly modern schemes that can be created with Garden Glory’s new three part line are pleasantly personable and decently endless, whereas traditional ugly hoses are a challenge to build the garden up to a point that rectifies their ugliness. Garden Glory’s hoses are a challenge stripped of compensation and aiming much higher, a challenge to align the care and upkeep of a garden with the tool that waters it, an admonition towards the excellence, glamor for glamor’s sake.
Photography courtesy of Garden Glory
