Loopy Lawn Flamingos, Gaudy Garden Gnomes Mean Spring Has Sprung

They're popping up everywhere, waking from long winter hibernation to reassume their place among yards and gardens and filling department store shelves.

Shy bunnies, cautious deer, geese, elves and an almost endless array of cheerful outdoor ornaments trace a long tradition that goes back to Europe, where sculptures in formal gardens were essentially lawn art. In modern times it's taken on a more personal presence, favorite animals and other themes lend themselves to adding a touch of whimsey while restoring a sence of the wild amid urban sprawl.

Long a staple of yards since the 1920s, and scoffed at for nearly as long, pink flamingos have held sway as the most popular landscaping decorations. Historically, flamingos first began showing up in the early 1800s and were made of bronze, concrete, or enamel-painted wood and were quite expensive - a far cry from the standard wire-legged variety that can be had for around $10 at the local Kmart.

"They're a symbol of tropical elegance," says Donald Featherstone, who created the plastic fowl in 1957. "If you've got a really bad lawn, the more flamingos, the better it looks."

Today the 64-year-old designer and owner of Union Products,Inc. produces 600 to 700 figures from holiday oriented sculptures to replicas of the Three Stooges and everything in between. Flamingos,however, have remained the company bread-and- butter, selling more than 20 milion of the hollow pink birds since their introduction.

Though flamingos have been derided for their kitch factor, they're no match for the controversy stirred up by lawn jockeys, the small cast-iron statues of blacks posing with upheld lanterns that have been condemned as racist and demeaning.

Not so, say some cultural experts, who point out that lawn jockeys were intended to honor - not belittle - their real-life counterparts who dominated horse racing in the United States during the late 19th century.

The facts are often overlooked, lost to the annals of sports history and unknown to even die hard racing enthusiasts that the first 13 winners of the Kentucky Derby were blacks who often owned the very same horses that they rode to victory in the "run for the roses" - starting with Oliver Lewis in 1875.

"By the early 1800s, the top jockeys universally were black," says Lynn Renau, former curator of the Kentucky Derby Museum in Louisville. " after the end of the Civil War, for the last quarter of the 19th century, they were highly regarded. They were very well-paid. They were sports heroes."

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