In Virginia: How to Dress Up a Naked Lawn

By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

Most of the people who stop at Carroll Harper's place are tourists from up North or from over on the other side of the Blue Ridge, in the District of Columbia's westward-creeping suburbs. But the two men standing out front next to a pickup truck, wearing overalls and visored caps, are obviously locals. "My brother got me a statue here last week. He thought I'd like it," says one, the soft twang of his western Virginia accent confirming the visual evidence. "I don't. Can I trade it in on something else?" Harper, a stocky man of medium height, thinks a moment, then replies, "I don't see why not. What kind of statue was that, anyway?" "Some kind of mannequin" is the reply.

It turns out to be a madonna, 3 ft. high -- perfect for a porch in Hoboken, N.J., perhaps, but maybe a little out of place dressing up a Shenandoah Valley farmer's front yard. The farmer looks around for a few minutes, then asks, "How about if I take that deer over there and pay you the difference?" The animal in question is a buck, 4 ft. high, with a brown paint job and an impressive rack of gleaming metal antlers. "That'd be fine," says Harper. He calls his sons Doug and Dale and son-in-law Russell Armentrout out of the work shed to reclaim the Virgin Mary and wrestle 300 lbs. of concrete venison onto the truck bed.

The chance that the farmer would have failed to locate something he liked was approximately zero: on a mere 1 1/2 acres, Harper's Lawn Ornaments, just north of Harrisonburg, Va., has one of the largest selections anywhere of items for people who shudder at the thought of a naked lawn. The place is crowded with hundreds of objects designed to satisfy every yearning: there are pedestals holding colored glass balls that resemble huge Christmas-tree ornaments, 6-ft.-tall ranch-style windmills, plastic pink flamingos -- and some items that are downright tasteless, notably a painted wooden figure that depicts an obese woman bending over, seen from behind. "I won't go so far as to say we're the biggest in the business," says Harper. "I heard of some place in Chicago that has a pretty big stock. But we do have the biggest variety I know about."

That is especially true when it comes to concrete: while the flamingos and , their kin are concentrated up front, near the highway, the enormous side yard is filled with concrete birdbaths, statues (including Jesus, St. Francis of Assisi, gnomes, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck), decorative paving stones, planters and fountains, all neatly stacked in piles up to 6 ft. high. Most impressive is Harper's collection of concrete animals. He has 20 types of deer alone, ranging in size from a miniature fawn up to the just departed buck, and 18 kinds of frogs. There are also lifelike rabbits, geese, chickens, lambs, foxes, crocodiles, armadillos, toy poodles and blue jays. On a larger scale, Harper features full-size pigs and half-size cows and black bears, which nevertheless weigh about a fifth of a ton.

What keeps the customers coming back from as far away as Buffalo, though, is not just the selection: because Harper and his family make all their concrete statuary right on the premises, the prices are low. The pig, for example, is just $34, and a 10-in.-high rabbit is $3.50; it might sell for three times as much in a typical garden store. Brightly painted versions (too brightly, some might say) cost about 20% more. Says Harper: "I guess we sell about half our concrete painted and half not."

But it is too cold to stand outside talking; the temperature is down in the 30s, and the sky is clouding up. Besides, there are few buyers at this time of year, and the boys are inside working to replenish the stock for the consumer onslaught that will begin around Mother's Day and last all summer. "We pour six days a week, year round," says Harper, as he leads the way into the shed, a dirt-floored, corrugated-metal building about 30 ft. wide and twice as long. The shed is filled with the paraphernalia of the concrete game. One 60-ft. wall is hidden by floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with empty molds and piles of rabbits, frogs and other small animals. In front of the shelves sit three long work tables cluttered with cans of oil, reinforcing rods and clamps.

The rest of the building is devoted to larger projects: one of the big-deer molds, clamped together and full of concrete that was poured the day before, is propped up on a homemade wooden frame. Several other drying molds, including a planter with a fox peering over the edge and a large turkey, stand on their own. Moving among them, Doug is methodically assembling and preparing two different kinds of molds for today's pouring. The aluminum variety comes in sections, which he clamps together and paints inside with used motor oil, so the concrete won't stick. The other molds, made of rubber, come in a single sheet that nestles into a fiber-glass form. "Aluminum molds are the best," says Harper, "because they last forever. But even though rubber wears out after a few years, you need it for anything with a lot of fine detail, so you can peel the mold away a little at a time." While Doug gets the molds ready, Dale and Russell are preparing concrete at the far end of the room. "I'd say we do 150 items a day," says Harper. "What we really need is a building four times this size. Then we could do more pouring in winter and build up the stock."

If the assembly line works smoothly, that is no surprise. Harper and his wife Betty started the business some 25 years ago. "At the time," he says, "I was working at the local Safeway supermarket, but I thought it might be nice to get into my own business." He was looking through a garden magazine one day when he saw an ad for a concrete-mold catalog. "I got it, even though they wanted $3 for it," says Harper, and sent away for a concrete-planter mold. He and Betty started in the backyard. In winters they poured in the basement.

"At first," he remembers, "business was slow, but it's just sort of gone wild." The boys began helping out when they were five or six, and as they grew up and got more involved, Betty specialized in decorating the concrete. When Harper built the shop, which is about a 15-second commute from their red brick, one-story house, Betty got a corner, where she uses an air compressor to spray-paint the animals with automotive-grade enamel. Almost from the beginning, says Harper, "I've been saying I want to slow down. But then I order more molds." That is an expensive habit: the deer mold cost him about $700 and the pig $400 or so. It would be cheaper to make his own molds, and Harper has tried it, but the job is just too time consuming. To keep the assembly line going, he needs as many as six copies of each, and he carries scores of items.

Just then, a visitor walks in, a chubby man with the kind of short, wire- brush haircut that has been out so long it is back in again in certain regions of New York City and Los Angeles. He is Ray Judd, a colleague from the days when the concrete business was populated by honorable men. "Ray had a place up near Luray, but we didn't used to compete," Harper reminisces. "We even traded molds. Nowadays the competition won't even tell you where they buy theirs. I think it's time to get out of this business." But then he drags Ray outside to inspect a new figure, a massive concrete hound balanced on its hind legs. The front paws could rest on the shoulders of a man 6 ft. tall. Harper did not make the dog: he bought it from another dealer. "I'm trying out the statue first before I order the mold," he explains, while Ray nods sagely. "I don't trust those hind legs. They're so thin I think they'll crack, and I don't see how we could reinforce them." If there is a way, though, Harper will probably find it, and connoisseurs of concrete will find it harder than ever to narrow down their choices.