Gardens

An Argyll Garden

This garden has been created by Christine and Andrew Campbell over the past 35 years. The garden is situated on the North side of Loch Etive at Bonawe. It is in a spectacular location.

The garden is a mixed of untouched nature and sensitive and appropriate planting. The garden is regularly visited by pine martins, otters, all manner of birds. There are newts, frogs, dragonfly larvae in the pond and adders in the undergrowth. Until the construction of a gate and fence the deer regularly visited the garden.

The siting and orientation of the sculptures was entirely down to Andrew and Christine.

A Lanark Garden

This garden is attached to a large Victorian home. The garden was landscaped in the C19th so that it is tiered and devided into several seperate spaces each with a distinct atmosphere. The owners of the house very carefully chose locations which were specific to the sculptures. Some of the sculptures are located in domestic spaces, others in quiet corners of the garden and others in more prominent locations.

One of the strange things about locating sculpture in a natural setting is that Nature simply does not comprehend the human meaning of a sculpture. For a robin a sculpture is simply a perch, for a fox a marking post, for ivy something to climb and so on. And that is maybe how things should be. Perhaps the clamour for meaning that underlines a sculptor’s creative life achieves a modicum of wisdom when it is faced with with themes that the natural world throws up. Perhaps the way that light and shade move accross a piece is more important than a sculptor’s motives. And almost certainly how a sculpture is repurposed and reclaimed by nature.

In the case of this garden there is a synergy between the sculptures and nature in that the themes of the sculpture are about abundance and life and death and the constant battles between animals or plants for their very survival. All of the sculptures in their way are about the matrix between us but mostly so in the Bird Table where we can actively participate in the magic of flight from a kitchen window.

An Edinburgh Garden

The following images are from my own garden in the suburb of Portobello in Edinburgh. The garden sits between an A listed Georgian terraced house and it’s adjacent coach house. Much of the sculpture in the garden is disassembled and still waiting to be given a final location so it is still rather a work in progress.

I want a very particular feeling from this garden in that I want the garden and nature to overwhelm the sculpture for most of the year and for the sculpture itself to be revealed only in winter when the leaves have fallen from the Virginia creeper and Boston ivy. I want nature and life itself to triumph over the ephemeral monuments to human vanity.