An Impossibly Short History of the Garden Gnome

Drive through the lanes of suburbia, and you’ll likely see a series of familiar faces. Propped outside of someone’s aunt’s house, plopped generously across their lawn, sit a group of garden gnomes — sitting, staring, wearily weathering the passage of time. Their painted boots planted firmly on the front lawn, sending out a vibe of invitation, but one carrying the threat of the weirdest conversation and off-brand candy you’ve ever been offered.

What is it, specifically, that made these diminutive sprites the official guardians of the middle-class home? Through what election or destiny did they receive this universal appointment? 

You might assume there’s no history to be found whatsoever, and it was just some sculptor, finding a random creature that for some reason resonated with legions of home and garden enthusiasts. To do so, however, would be a great disservice to the gnomes themselves, who have, in fact, been serving this purpose for actual centuries.

In the greater category of garden decoration, we can go all the way back to Rome, which placed statues of fertility gods in gardens to aid their flora. Fast-forward a millennia or two and we see the rise of statues known as “grotesques,” a sort of garden-bound offshoot of the gargoyle. The tradition of statuettes calling on various spirits and creatures moved forward into the modern age, and welcomed new characters. In particular, the gnome. 

The general idea of the gnome fit perfectly with a sort of creature you might want hanging around your house, since legends claimed they bestowed good luck and good fortune upon those that treated them well. The fact that they were conveniently sized probably didn’t hurt either.

This made the gnome and the home a natural pairing. As for how they expanded to our lawns? Again, the gnome simply existed as a perfect creature to silently supervise the world’s flowerbeds, since they also had associations with nature and the earth. The alchemist Paracelsus mentions gnomes in the 16th century as a type of “earth elemental,” which would suggest they would certainly have some influence on the well-being of your shrubbery. Their appearance, though, hadn’t yet become streamlined and defined. 

The man given credit for the image of the modern gnome is a German potter named Philipp Griebel, who in circa 1890 started making terra cotta gnomes based on their image from German stories, complete with iconic beard and pointed hat. The town where he created them, Grafenroda, still calls itself “The Birthplace of the Garden Gnome.”

So the next time you’re walking toward your grandparents’ front door, don’t look down on the gnomes. They’ve been around longer than you think, and they’ll likely be here long after you’re gone.