Just call her Junker Jo.

Her friends do.

Joan Stone has been collecting and arranging antiques for decades. But she doesn’t limit herself to the confines of four walls. Many of her favorite relics are nestled among the plants in her garden.

There are stained-glass windows, metal glider seats, teapots, bullet-riddled birdhouses and pieces of wrought iron fencing. The mailbox is propped up with a wooden corbel that once adorned an old porch post.

Everywhere you look, Joan has put her personal stamp on the landscape. I was lucky enough to stumble into Joan’s garden the day before her big, biannual yard sale, featuring antique furnishings, ancient toys, timeless holiday decorations and jewelry only a grandmother could love. I bought a carload of goodies to fill the nooks and crannies in my house. That’s the beauty of antiques: They lead a dozen lives and never seem to lose their grace and appeal.

Joan’s passion for collecting them began in junior high, when she refinished her mother’s childhood bedside table, which ended up winning a blue ribbon at the county fair. She later took that inclination and majored in interior design at Iowa State University.

“I like the challenge of finding a new use for an antique,” she says. “I personally want to be able to use the antiques and not worry too much about them. If I have an old chest for a coffee table, I’ll put my feet up on it. I like knowing if I buy an antique and tire of it a few years later, most likely it will still be worth what I originally paid for it. I am always trading up and rearranging my collection.”

I found, however, that the most magnificent pieces in Joan’s collection were those to which she had formed an emotional attachment that would likely keep her from parting with them.

She tells a story of such an item: “I sometimes decorate from emotion and find a home for an item just because of the feelings or memories attach to it.

“About 20 years ago, I mentioned to my dad that if he came across an old water pump I would love to have a piece of Iowa in our Texas garden. He found the still-working but unused pump on a farm outside my hometown. He negotiated a deal and spent an afternoon extracting it from a field. It was a wonderful Christmas gift. We had it in our garden in Katy, Texas, and when we moved to Lawrence, my husband used it as the fountainhead for a small backyard fishpond at our new home.

“My tastes have changed, but I can’t seem to part with the pump, partly because I know how much time and energy my dad spent to get it for me, but mostly because every time I see it I feel good knowing my dad cared about me.”

Other items, too, have sentimental value.

There’s the baby swing hanging from a tree in the garden.

“Our baby is 21 now,” Joan says. “It seemed a shame to sell it at a yard sale or pack it away in a box. Sometimes I will fix a pot of impatiens to spend the summer in the swing, but I genuinely like seeing it hang in the garden full of memories.”

Or the rusted-out bicycle that leans against the tree where the baby swing hangs.

“My ‘Wizard of Oz’ bicycle is no longer good for riding. It was one of the first purchases we made as a married couple living in student housing at Iowa State,” Joan recalls. “I needed transportation, and the campus was closed to cars. I was young, in love, living and working on campus – life was good.

“After leaving school, I stored the bike at my folks’ until Dad said he was going to take it to Good Will, so I brought it to Kansas. After years in the back of the garage, the tires were shot, the chain and gears all rusty. But out in the garden, leaning against a tree way in back, it looks just fine with the ivy creeping up and around the spokes.”

Joan’s advice for adding antiques to your garden isn’t much different from what she would recommend when shopping for your home.

“Pieces that have some personal connection are good because there is a story that goes with them,” she says. “Finding a unique piece or using it in a unique way adds interest. Try staying away from the cliche, the ‘pink flamingo’ syndrome.

“Humor in both the piece and its placement is always good. Do you have a neighbor who seems to hear everything that goes on in your yard? Well then, a small cast stone sculpture of an ear mounted somewhere on the adjoining fence might be just the thing.”

So if you’ve sown your favorite plants and rearranged endlessly but your garden still seems to be missing something, you might try adding a personal touch with antiques. They maintain interest all year-round, exude history, retain their value and personalize almost any space.