Romano Gabriel spent nearly three decades creating hundreds of brilliant objects that filled the front yard of his Eureka home, fashioning brightly painted trees and flowers from vegetable crates and adding droll faces and figures, some of them commentaries on contemporary people or events, political or religious. His Wooden Garden was a seeming jumble of objects, taller in back and smaller in front, arranged in an approximately thirty by sixty foot yard behind a picket fence and intended to be seen by passersby. Internationally renowned for originality of ideas, freedom of fantasy, and Gabriel’s commitment to his art, the work grew from memories of his travels and homeland as well as from his favorite magazines. Born in Mura, Italy, in about 1887, Gabriel worked with his father as a furniture maker before leaving for America in 1913. Soon after arriving in the United States, he served in World War I, then settled in Eureka, where he worked as a carpenter and gardener and built at least six houses. Many original pieces in the garden were cut with a hand saw and additional hand carving, and later he used a small electric saw while working in a small shed in his yard, peeking out secretly to observe people who stopped to see his work; some pieces were animated by motors. Known as an introvert, Gabriel created many trees that seem purely decorative, while other works embodied his attitudes about society and its institutions and his reactions to public events. Over the years the garden grew until it almost completely obscured his house and became a tourist attraction that gained national and international attention. Photographs of the sculptures were exhibited at Harvard and M.I.T., as well as in magazines including Architecture Plus and Art News and in the book All Their Own. Gabriel died in 1977, ten years after adding the final touches to his wooden works, and in that same year the California Arts Council notified that the Wooden Sculpture Garden had been designated a cultural landmark.