Looming over the Achesons’ backyard stands a 12-foot-tall Tyrannosaurus rex — once a Broadway puppet, now the centerpiece of the family’s ever-evolving outdoor art garden.

The T-rex isn’t just yard art; it’s a piece of performance history. Originally built for the Broadway revival of On the Town, the bright yellow dinosaur was designed by Matt Acheson, a puppeteer and artist who works out of his home studio on McConnell Mill Lane.

The dinosaur was built to come apart in pieces and be operated by six puppeteers. It’s made of Styrofoam and fiberglass, so it’s surprisingly light. When the show wrapped, Matt said, “I couldn’t just throw it away, so I had to put it up.”

These days, the dinosaur is less of a theater prop and more of a wildlife refuge. “Birds love to make their nests in the head,” Matt said. “There’s blue jays in the brain,” added his wife, Deana, a professor of interior architecture at Chatham University.

When the couple moved into their home — which now houses three generations  — the yard was a blank slate. “There was nothing here,” Matt said. “We had no idea what we were doing, but we wanted to make something for us. Keep our happiness alive.”

The dinosaur is an attention grabber, but there’s whimsy in artwork throughout the yard.

Windsails gifted by neighbors after a trip to Japan, a lion head salvaged from Matt’s childhood home in Detroit, and even two enormous, turkey-sized pigeons — originally built for a production at Radio City Music Hall — now dot the landscape. Much of the art was sourced from Craigslist, Freebo and Facebook Marketplace.

Sometimes, Matt wonders: “Where’s the line between Randyland and yard?”