A Moorland Garden, with photos by Patrick Eyres

A MOORLAND GARD N Photos by Patrick Eyres

For over a quar er o a e ur , I visited Ian Hamilton Finlay annually at Little Sparta. Equipped with my analogue single-lens reflex camera, I used on each visit at least one 3 -exposure lm o 3mm colour slides. his large collection o slides was digitised y the Little Sparta rust in . Loo ing ac at these images, we get a sense o the garden s evolution through the longstanding colla oration etween gardener and poet, Sue Finlay and Ian, rom to c. . n my rst visit, c. , it was exhilarating to wal on the moor and en oy the panorama o the Stonypath armstead amidst the entland Hills with into in silhouette on the south-western hori on. Ian would su sequently lead orays onto the moor and distant into was always Sue s avourite eyecatcher.

In the slides overloo ing Stonypath, it s clear that most o the garden we now now as Little Sparta is moorside, and that the extensive tussoc y eld o the don ey paddoc elow the lochan will ecome the English ar land. In ront o the armstead, the original cottage garden flourishes and the single pre-existing ash proclaims itsel as Stonypath s only tree. ll the pools have een excavated y Ian s hard gra t, except or the lochan whose si e has required a . he arn is still intact and the coal shed is yet to ecome the emple o hilemon and aucis. he cow yre is in transition to he emple o pollo and the emple ool and oodland ardens are eginning to urgeon. he ild arden is ecoming reclaimed rom the moorside.

Sitting at the itchen ta le, the pleasura le staple o a visitor s lunch is trout, shed that morning rom the lochan accompanied y a mug o ultra-strong tea, which is poured through a strainer while Ian laments the invention o the tea ag. Laughter permeates each visit.

Former Little

See Sue s article,

lanting a Hillside

Patrick Eyres arta tr stee

arden at www.littlesparta.org.u

THE BATTLE MONUMENT

The Monument to the First Battle of ittle arta reminds us of the dramatic coup de thÊâtre that rebuffed the attempt by the sheriff officer from Strathclyde Regional Council to seize works from the em le of ollo.

The long running ittle Spartan ar was a dispute o er the authority s definition for the purpose of le ying local ta ation of the former cow byre as an art gallery rather than a garden temple.

THE ENTRANCE

c.

The gate pier is inscribed with the words ittle Sparta.

This is the name inlay bestowed upon his poetic domain in .

The poet s cottage is still called Stonypath, which is the name of the farmstead gifted to the Finlays in 66.

c.

The poems in the entrance area introduce us to a few ey themes of the garden to ousseau and the pastoral, and to naval warfare during the Second orld ar.

Finlay employed the warships and tan s of that war to explore his fascination with the classical and apparently contradictory union of opposites of violence and the pastoral.

THE FRONT P TH

The Front Path runs beside the farmstead of Stonypath and continues to disp ay Fin ay s p easure in the domestic sca e

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The Front ath is symptomatic of Finlay s practice of cultivating the garden both as an artwor -in-progress and as a nursery of ideas for the installations commissioned from the late s for sites across mainland Europe, the and the S .

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The pair of wooden benches outside the farmstead s porch are inscribed in English and erman with H lderlin s echo of irgil s invocation of Evening in the Eclogues.

Finlay then selected eight English translations of irgil s original for the inscriptions that grace the stone benches outside the Serpentine allery in London s ensington ardens.

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THE FRONT GARDEN

1988

The Front Garden was the first part of Little Sparta to be developed by Finlay with his wife Sue, and it was reated within the ori inal otta e arden of the Stonypath far stead

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Each of the garden areas at Little Sparta evolved over many years and each one accumulated poems that span several decades.

The Front Garden largely contains poems created during the early years of the 1970s and 1980s.

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The plantings throughout the Front Garden are inha ited y poems that invo e eets of sailing or oats and modern arships.

The presiding association ith distant seas ithin all the garden areas as characterised y the tree pla ue on the solitary ash tree efore the trun as sundered y lightning . The Latin ords high up the trun Mare Nostrum dre the eye up ards to en oy the sough of ind through leaves and oughs. The Latin ords for ur Sea claimed Little Sparta as Finlay s o n poetic ocean.

1978

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1980

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Finlay devised the form of the tree column ase to animate the tree trun as a living column oth to salute the origin of classical architecture and to unite in sylvan pantheons his favoured heroes of European culture.

These three demonstrate his interest in the French evolution and the associations of the inscri ed names Lycurge Fabre g a t e and a t ust com ine the la giving and the pastoral ith the Terror.

1981

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1968

1968

Three of the earliest or s are in the little sun en garden and these sho Finlay s interest in com ining the terseness of concrete poetry ith the garden s pastoral.

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1980

n the oman Garden Finlay updates and domesticates some of the monumental features in historical gardens. is aircraft carriers in ith a t in le in the eye at the sculpted triremes of oman imperial gardens and especially at the arship fountain of the illa d Este that reno ned enaissance garden at Tivoli outside ome. hen rendered in miniature the carriers potent form lends itself to the ird ta le and ird ath.

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JULIE’S GARDEN

1974

Julie’s Garden is small, secluded and sheltered on two sides by trees and on a third by a wall of the temple buildin

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Julie’s Garden invokes moments of literary romance to recollect that the garden is also an intimate place for lovers’ trysts and is named after the secret garden in Jean-Jaques Rousseau’s novel Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse. his tells of the love et een the aristocratic Julie and her middle-class tutor aint- reu hich as doomed y the difference in their social status. hus Julie renounced her passion in favour of family life ith a suita le hus and ho employed aint- reu as tutor to their children.

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Julie’s creation of a domestic and secluded arden for er famil made id llicall eautiful and roducti e colla oratin it rat er t an dominatin nature ro ed to e in uential as a model for t e armonious ell ein of societ

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E AIL ARD

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The Kailyard is one of the two rod ti e e eta le ardens on ad a ent sides of the Temple of Philemon and Bauci

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ail is the hardy variety of ca age that used to e a healthy staple in the cottish diet hile the ailyard is the cottish kitchen garden a term given to the rustic ranch of cottish literature prominent in the nineteenth century.

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THE TEMPLE POOL GARDEN

1972

The kernel of Little Sparta has been created out of the farmyard the co byre has been transformed into the Temple of Apollo the coal shed into the Temple of Philemon and Bau i ater is brou ht from a moorland sprin that o s throu h the rill pools and cascades of the ild Garden

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1980

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Finlay’s delight in the European landscape painting permeates Little Sparta and is clearly visible here in his double invocation of the German enaissance artist lbrecht rer n occasion The Great Piece of Turf is selected by an itinerant duc as the place for her intricately camou aged nest

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o other or s intimate remembrances of children in the garden Finlay’s pleasure in the forms of both minimal sculpture and the child’s hand made boat is mar ed

by Marble Pa er oat elevated high on its pedestal

1982

second pedestal bears omage to the illa d’Este an aircraft carrier hose ight dec once upon a time as lined ith bacon rind to encourage the robins to s oop do n refuel and ta e off again on their daily missions

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HORTUS CONCLUSUS

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The dilapidated barn was transformed into the Hortus Conclusus.

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THE WOODLAND ARDEN

1977

The Woodland arden ad oins the Temple ool and its paths lead the isitor towards the rest of the arden. t is hea il shaded and deliberatel e o es the atmosphere of the forest so fa oured b erman Romantic art and literature.

c.1979

c.1980

We are reminded of the external threat to Little Sparta from Strathclyde Regional Council by the track in ca t concrete that ugge t the pre ence of tank ithin the oodland uring the hot pha e of the Little Spartan War 1983 the gun barrel apparently of a an er protruded from the camou age netting hung o er the entrance to the barn 1977

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he land cape painter Ca par a id riedrich i commemorated and the narro cri cro ing path imitate ol ege the apparently random path made by fore ter hich may or may not lead any here

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The stele is inscribed with American nic names r amiliar aircra t r e am le e e the le endar a anese er hter

1991

he llotment empha i e the dome ticity of Stonypath Characteri tically the dome tic and the contemplati e are combined by a ociating the llotment ith picuru ho taught hi follo er in the garden of hi thenian hou e

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THE WILD GARDEN

1991

The Wild Garden extends from the rear of the Hortus Conclusus up the hillside to the edge of the moor, and can be entered through the ooden gate from the Woodland Garden

1991

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The Claudi bridge continues the theme of invoking the characteristics of particular types of landscape painting by replicating the artist’s signature.

In particular Claude and Poussin composed vistas of water, woodland and classical fragments, and their paintings were inspirational to the Georgian designers of the nglish landscape garden.

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The enclosed, sylvan atmosphere of the ild Garden is enhanced by the stream owing off the moor through the two pools, the a ueduct and cascades.

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mong other favoured themes invoked by the garden’s poems are the rench evolution, classical mythology and the elegies for working sailboats.

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The recurring theme of battles fought within the immensity of ocean translates the tlantic into an nglish ower garden. inlay bestows the resilience of oral namesakes upon the lower Class corvettes that shepherded the convoys of merchant ships to and from ritain during the econd orld ar. t the same time the names of these corvettes create poetic memorials to the ships and their sailors.

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The hillside is marked by the tour de force of the ittle parta pantheon, whose arc of si tree column bases is dramatically punctuated by the a ueduct. ach one is inscribed with the name of a uropean cultural hero and together they con oin politics, philosophy, history and the visual arts in a manner similar to the worthies’ commemorated in a Georgian garden temple obespierre, ichelet, Corot, ousseau, Cusanus, riedrich.

lways keen to show off new works, Ian, on a bitterly cold and frosty winter’s day in 19 , introduces us to the si tree column bases that comprise the ittle parta Pantheon.

This is the biggest installation to date and spans the open grassy moorside of what is now the ild Garden. In fact, it’s the ma uette for his large and prestigious commission from the r ller ller useum’s sculpture garden in The etherlands. There, the ve monumental tree column bases of the acred Grove will stand before the trunks of mature forest conifers. ere, the bases are scaled to the domestic si e of tonypath and set before saplings.

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lready, one base and sapling lie prostrate, riven out of the ground by force of wind. nother, the obespierre’, will go through three versions before the column base is realised to Ian’s satisfaction.

Patrick E r

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LOCHAN ECK GARDEN

At the Lochan Eck Garden, we emerge into the open to embrace a panorama of water and countryside t encompasses the circuit of open water, and the hi side of heather and rough grass that rises to the highest and most windswept part of Litt e parta, o er ooking both the ochan and the a e of Dunsyre

This ‘little’ loch is contained by an embankment made of the soil scooped out of the hillside and is filled by the burn that flows off the moorland and continues through the English Parkland into the fields below.

The lochan was the playful site of sailing – of hand-made model boats and, with the children, in small dinghes – and, when it was regularly stocked, of fishing for the dinner table.

The far shore was once the place chosen for e periments with eyecatchers, though these pro ed to be unsatisfactory the Saint-Just Column was relocated as a ruin ad acent to the AD grotto. erpolette, rtemis and aus were the family’s donkeys and their paddock e entually became the English Parkland.

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The sublimity of faraway ocean, sky and battle is encapsulated by the idway pla ue set within a gro e of rowan trees amidst tufts of heather. t in okes the epic battle at the centrepoint of the Pacific in which the merican and apanese fleets ne er came within range of each others’ guns. t was fought o er the astness of ocean by s uadrons of carrier-borne aircraft and pro ed to be the turning point of the Pacific war.

The association of the aircraft with bees, the carriers with hi es and the fuel for both as honey originated in inlay’s representation of the battle as an emblematic enaissance garden in his e hibition at the erpentine allery in ondon. The theme of idway as a sublime turning point recurs at ittle parta.

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The ido theme complements those of idway and the tlantic by con oining editerranean warfare in ancient and modern worlds. hile the forlorn lo e affair between ido and eneas pro oked the Punic ars between arthage and ome, the oyal a y’s ido lass cruisers all fought in the editerranean during the econd orld ar and all bar one were sunk in that sea, whose littoral was awash with the bodies of ritish sailors.

Two monumental poems, ittl i l s and s nt , focus our contemplation on the breadth of countryside, comprising open moorland and farmed alley, while the pleasures of walking are suggested by two stiles.

s nt also addresses the rench e olution and inlay’s landscape installations elsewhere. reated for ondon’s ayward annual e hibition, which in specialised in sculpture, s nt was subse uently installed at ittle parta, whereupon inlay began to percei e it as an edition in which each poem would be uni uely inscribed in the nati e language of each commission.

THE ENGLISH PARKLAND

1996

This was once the donkey paddock and, when the children were young, the site o winter sledging and su er kite ying, as well as cricket a idst the thistles

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Begun in the early 1990s, the English Parkland is the most recently developed area of the garden.

The repertoire of inscribed forms throughout ittle parta con rms that the place as developed as a domestic response to the classical tradition of European gardening, for e ample, benches, columns, bridges, sundials, obelisks, an a ueduct and a grotto.

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ithin the English Parkland, the art orks are installed ithin a composition that is characteristic of eighteenth century English landscape gardening.

The sinuous arrangement of ater, tree clumps, hedgero s and plantings that emphasise the s eep of la n and distant eyecatcher the lo ers belisk is intended to evoke the design of ancelot apability Bro n.

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inlay s gardenist mentor, the poet illiam henstone, is saluted in the English Parkland. t as around his home at The easo es that similarly impecunious henstone had created his reno ned poetic garden. e also coined the term landscape garden and his Unconnected Sentence on den n became the model for inlay s numerous detached sentences on a variety of sub ects

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