Biskupice-Pulkov, Czechia

Pohádková Zahrádka (Fairytale Garden)

Before building her own tombstone, an outsider artist created a concrete menagerie in her garden.

In the 1970s most people in the small Czech village of Biskupice used their front yards for gardening. So it didn’t go unnoticed when Frantiska Blechová started building whimsical concrete sculptures in hers.

Blechová was in her late 60s when she started building the colorful princesses, musicians, gnomes, giraffes, and other people and animals. She built them baskets, guns and musical instruments, provided hats, and even changed their clothes with each season.

Blechová, who became well known in the village of fewer than 500, also made for herself a brightly colored tombstone, adorned with angels, turtledoves, and decorative stones. She was buried under it after she died in 2001 (though a few years later it was replaced with a more traditional gravestone).

After Blechová’s death the house and its garden’s inhabitants suffered from inattention until Jan Bierhanzl bought it in 2013. Aleš Novák of the Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design in Prague, restored the concrete works in 2014 and 2015, and a group of friends helped him repaint them in Blechová’s naive style. Passersby can see the garden from the street.