By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

“We’re known for recycled animals—ones made from 55-gallon steel drums,” says Jim Honold with a smile, “but it’s gates that I love. A gate tells the story of the people who live behind it, and it’s the gate that makes the first impression on anybody who visits.” And so Jim and Lisa Honolds’ Home & Garden Art store is filled with gates of all kinds, more weathervanes than I’ve ever seen in one place, and a menagerie of iron birds, copper fish, metal frogs, and steel cows.

Some are ready made, others recycled, and many repurposed. The bench Honold sits in, for example, started out as a gate from an old New York brownstone. Rivets attest to its antiquity, showing that it was manufactured before welding was common. Honold thought it would be beautiful as high-backed bench, so he made it so. He learned to weld when he was growing up, and it’s his first love.

“People come here to see what we have, but by the time they leave they realize that I can make anything they want,” said Honold. The son of an artist mother and a father who specialized in architectural restorations, Honold often makes gates, fences, arbors, and trellises that fit seamlessly into an existing garden style. He does both interior and exterior work, and both manufacturing and installation. You pick the finish: rusted, powder coated, painted, or treated to develop a patina that just gets better with age.

Much of Home & Garden Art’s stock has a European feel, but even more of it is playful, much more whimsical than classical. You can’t walk through without smiling. While you’re there, be sure to look at the photo books on one of the tables: they’re filled with shots of the hammered copper salmon, iron-and-glass gates, and interior installations that now grace somebody’s house or garden somewhere out in the suburbs.

Home & Garden Art is at 1111 NW 85th Street, two or three miles west of Interstate 5 in Seattle; 206 784-1080.