Antique Enthusiast Shares Tips for Displaying Treasures in Your Garden

Michael Trapp, a celebrated antiques dealer, interior designer, and garden designer, offers advice on how to showcase architectural fragments and vintage finds in outdoor spaces.

Mar. 20, 2026 at 11:24pm

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Michael Trapp, an antiques dealer and garden designer, shares his expertise on how to incorporate antique and salvaged items into your outdoor spaces. Trapp's Connecticut garden, home to his antiques shop, showcases his approach to displaying timeworn details and architectural fragments in enchanting ways. He emphasizes that the value of these pieces is not measured monetarily, but by their beauty, integrity, and ability to add interest and history to a garden.

Why it matters

As urban development continues and historic buildings are demolished, Trapp's business of selling architectural salvage aims to prevent the waste of beautifully crafted 18th- and 19th-century fragments. His garden serves as a model for how homeowners can give new life to these antique pieces, transforming them into focal points that add character and charm to outdoor spaces.

The details

Trapp's antiques and architectural salvage business started as a way to recycle and repurpose fragments from demolished buildings. He found that many people didn't know what to do with these beautiful old columns, balustrades, and other items. In his own garden, Trapp showcases how to display these salvaged treasures, highlighting how their imperfections can make them perfect additions to an outdoor space. He emphasizes the importance of choosing materials that can withstand the elements, such as teak, cement, limestone, and marble. When it comes to mixing different periods and styles, Trapp advises following your heart and not worrying about rules, as 'taste is a matter of opinion'.

  • Trapp's antiques and architectural salvage business started 'years and years ago' during a time of major urban development.
  • Trapp has lived in his early 1800s farmhouse in West Cornwall, Connecticut, which is home to his antiques shop, for an unspecified period of time.

The players

Michael Trapp

A celebrated antiques dealer, interior designer, and garden designer who owns an antiques shop in his Connecticut garden.

Grace Haynes Wall

The Senior Home & Garden Editor for VERANDA, where she manages the brand's home and garden coverage.

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What they’re saying

“Something may look like a piece of rubble—like old cobblestones recovered from a local factory or a chipped 19th-century Tuscan urn—but depending on where you place it and what you surround it with, it becomes interesting.”

— Michael Trapp, Antiques Dealer and Garden Designer

“Value is not measured monetarily. I traffic in things that are beautiful, things with integrity. They have something about them that is interesting or magical to me, and I feel they deserve respect for whatever reason. It might be its color, or its texture, or its provenance. Its imperfections make it perfect to me.”

— Michael Trapp, Antiques Dealer and Garden Designer

What’s next

Readers can visit Trapp's antiques shop in his Connecticut garden to see his approach to displaying antique and salvaged items firsthand.

The takeaway

Trapp's garden showcases how homeowners can breathe new life into architectural fragments and antique pieces, transforming them into unique and enchanting focal points in their outdoor spaces, regardless of the items' monetary value.