Garden Gnome Urns

Our garden gnome urns are for the gardener who kept the beds well-tended and the collector whose gnomes grew with every birthday. These cast aluminum pieces, available in full-size, sharing, and keepsake sizes, honor the person whose sense of humor was the first thing anybody mentioned. Each urn features a gnome design and offers an optional two-tone engraving of a name and dates.

Whether finished in a painted color or hand-applied enamel with silver bands, these pieces acknowledge that for a life lived with laughter, a solemn urn is the wrong answer.

A gnome collection is often a joke that grows out of hand over many years. What begins as a single gift can become a gathering of characters, some with names of their own, after decades of birthdays and laughter. This collection is for the person who welcomed that kind of growing joy, the gardener whose gnomes were tucked carefully among the flower beds. It is for the one whose sense of humor was the first thing people noticed, making the garden a place of happiness rather than a display for a magazine.

The presence of these figures often leads to quiet family traditions, like moving a gnome a few feet each week or mailing back a photograph of one from vacation. Beneath that silliness, there is often a very real garden, where the beds are kept and the work is done with care. The gnomes were simply the reward for taking the rest of life seriously. You may remember moving one particular gnome a few feet at a time, just to see how long it would take them to notice, turning the garden into a place of shared, gentle games.

Each piece is cast aluminum and features the gnome design engraved directly into the surface. These urns are available in a range of painted finishes or in a hand-applied enamel with hand-detailed silver bands. This variety lets a family honor a person who did not mind being laughed at, with a piece that reflects enjoyment rather than something purely formal.

To accommodate the way families choose to remember, we offer these in full-size, sharing, and keepsake sizes. This allows for a single piece to be kept or for several pieces to be distributed among those who shared their life. Each urn is finished with a threaded screw-top lid and a felt base.

We can also provide a two-tone engraving of a name and dates, cut into the metal to become a permanent part of the design. The name and dates become a lasting element of the piece, grounding the playful character of the gnome with the weight of a real life.

Small ceramic dwarves were in stock at the Dresden firm of Baehr and Maresch as early as 1841. These figures spread from Saxony and Thuringia, eventually finding a first address in Britain. In 1847, Sir Charles Isham brought twenty-one terracotta gnomes made by Philip Griebel to Lamport Hall in Northamptonshire to be placed in his garden, which is where the English word for them settles. One of those original twenty-one survived. Known as Lampy, it is still at Lamport Hall and is insured for a million pounds.

For a family, the design on the urn is the garden the person kept, and the joke they kept running in it.

Source: Wikipedia, Garden gnome

If the person you remember was defined by a quick wit and a devotion to the soil, then these figures will recall the joy they brought to every season. A solemn tribute would have been the wrong answer for someone who found happiness in a well-placed joke.

Instead, a sibling or a grandchild will recognize the spirit of someone who valued enjoyment over perfection. The family still pictures them in the garden, tending the flower beds, and still remembers moving a gnome a few feet just to see how long it would take them to notice.

Our guide to selecting the right size urn