When I was growing up, we had a metal garden gate around our house. We had it for security, not decoration. It always looked uncomfortable and foreboding. I know that it should have made me feel safer, but it didn’t. Instead, it made me feel locked in as surely as the world was locked out.

I thought that all metal fences and gates were like this ” that all they did was make the world feel divided and uncomfortable. It took me a while to realize how much of a difference design makes. A wrought iron gate has a much different feel than a simple steel one.

The first time I saw a really nice wrought iron garden gate was actually at the local cemetery. I had a friend who used to like to go down there to get away from everything, and one day he took me along with him. From outside, the wrought iron garden gates were foreboding and intimidating, but from the inside they made us feel protected and peaceful. The cemetery was a restful place, a place of perpetual peace, and the wrought iron railing that surrounded marked it as separate from the rest of the world.