Make an entrance -- 10 inspiring gate ideas

When it comes to garden gates, you're only limited by your imagination and the materials you buy or scrounge. The gate above, made from 200 year old mesquite doors in a steel frame, is as surreal as a Salvador Dali painting. It could be the entrance to a magic kingdom. The one immediately below is the back of an old horse cart with a horse shoe handle.  The ideas here are inventive in design and construction. Some of them are quirky and rustic, others are elegant.  They are all original.

Here's a gate that manages to look formal and rustic at the same time, thanks to the juxtaposition of solid stone pillars and wrought iron inserted into a barn-like wooden gate frame.

Purple beans drape over this weathered cedar gate, the entrance to a veggie garden.

I love the contrast between the delicate scroll work on the wrought iron gate and the solidity of the brick pillars on the gate above. The gate below could fuel a lot of Medieval fantasies.

Above: Lattice gets the palladian treatment on this Cape Cod style gate and fence in Salem Massachusetts. The large urn shaped finials on the fence post add some serious weight to what would otherwise be a very lighthearted structure.

Industrial steel makes a relatively low cost, but effective, gate with a lot of visual impact at the entrance to a modern home in Seattle.