This is a small garden bed in the Goffstown Historical Society Gardens. The stone birds or frogs or gargoyles came from a building in Goffstown, where they peered down at Mast Road while dutifully diverting rain off the roof. Now they sit along beneath a retaining wall beside abandoned stone steps.
I have seen pictures of such steps and statues in pictures of old French and Italian gardens. I dug up a small bed and added a large yellow hosta, some carex, and heuchera. I did not intend to flower up the statues as they were impressive enough on their own, but the statues had other ideas. They invited in the Heart leaved aster and the White wood aster,and a Virginia creeper decided to crawl down from above.
This was a gardener and nature collaboration, and I must admit nature and lichen were more artful than I could ever be.
Gardening On Granite 