I found it when I was little," says a young man leading two small boys through a technicolor forest of giant red hibiscus flowers and fat spikes of purple buddleia at San Antonio's Brackenridge Park.

I recently visited Grandview, a concrete folk art sculpture park in Hollandale, Wis. In the 1930s and 1940s, dairy farmer Nick Engelbert filled his yard with a variety of animals and mythical ...