Looking after concrete garden ornaments

Why frost matters

Concrete is porous. Water soaks into the surface, freezes, expands, and a hairline crack becomes a wider one over a few winters. Most damage is not the cold itself but water that was left standing in a bowl, a trough or a crack when the temperature dropped.

Before the first hard frost

• Empty anything that holds water — bird baths, bowls, planters — or bring it under cover for the winter.
• Lift smaller pieces onto a slab or a couple of bricks so they are not sitting in wet ground for months.
• Check for cracks that hold water and let them dry out properly before the frost arrives.
• In a bird bath you keep filled, float a small ball: it moves with the wind and stops a solid lid of ice forming.

Cleaning without damage

Warm water, a stiff brush and patience. Leave the pressure washer in the shed: a jet strips the top layer of the surface and opens the texture, which makes the next winter worse rather than better. Algae and green growth come off with a brush; a diluted white vinegar solution helps on stubborn patches. Avoid bleach on coloured or sealed pieces, and avoid wire brushes entirely.

Does it need sealing?

Honestly: usually not. A sealer slows staining and reduces how much water soaks in, but it has to be renewed every year or two and it changes how the surface looks and ages. Most ornaments never need it. The piece that benefits most is one that holds water for long periods — a bird bath — and even then, draining it before frost does more good than any coating.

Moving a heavy piece

• Lift from the base. Never lift a bird bath or a bowl by its rim — that is how bowls crack.
• Two people for anything of real weight, and lift with your legs rather than your back.
• Take the bowl off the pedestal before moving a pedestal bath; it is two easy pieces rather than one awkward one.

Colour and finish, over time

Concrete lightens as it dries and weathers, and plain pieces slowly pick up the colour of the ground around them — moss, lichen and a little green in a damp corner. That is the material behaving normally, and it is why each casting is a one-off rather than an exact repeat of the photograph on its product page.