Randy Ouzts launches new retail site for garden containers

Designing gardener Randy Ouzts has launched a new retail Web site featuring dozens of his uniquely colored clay containers, vases and candle pots at www.inthegardenwithrandy.com. We chatted this morning about his growing collection of garden containers, trellises and forms, and the popularity of container gardening in general. Randy sees it as a trend among aging baby boomers and post-boomers who are downsizing in search of simpler, more manageable lives.

"Everyone loves a beautiful lawn and garden, but at some point you have to hire a staff to keep it up," he said. "There’s a growing number of gardeners who are finding beauty and great satisfaction, not to mention a whole new outlet for their creativity, in smaller spaces, patios and walled-in gardens." 

I immediately thought of my friend and sort-of neighbor (same city, anyway) Ken Eaton who went one further by recently turning his gardening talent into a container garden business — and business is blooming. The possibilities of combinations — of shape, textures and colors in vessels that can be moved and repositioned at various eye-levels — takes backyard gardening to a whole new level as an art form. Unfortunately, though, Ken stays so busy now that he barely has time to enjoy his own garden:

Aside from looking like pots that look and feel like they were made by a gardener, one thing that makes Randy’s containers special is the color. The decision to apply verdigris, crimson, slate and turquoise color washes to classic forms is something that came to him one day while working in his own garden. "I got tired of looking at green and white," Randy said. "Now I’m beginning to see much more of this in gardening overall - a mixing of classics with color, contemporary mixed with traditional. Oh! And more sculptural whimsy, but done really well."

When he’s not designing, lecturing, gardening or traveling, the North Carolina native stays busy "Climbing the Walls,” the name of his shop in Gastonia, N.C., a collection of garden ornamentation, floral design and giftware. With a background in art and psychology and an early New York association with the American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet and Bergdorf Goodman, Randy has been designing decorative home and garden accessories for 17 years. His gardening commissions include floral design for the Swan House Ball in Atlanta and numerous projects in Lyford Cay, the Bahamas where he worked closely with Nina Campbell.