Packed in the hills of Pentland, in the middle of rolling agricultural land southwest of Edinburgh, a low stone chalet is hidden on a ground of earth TUFFUS gardens. Through a wooden side door, a path winds towards an old pigsty, a plot of vegetables and streams for rainwater: two ponds with gurgling pipes, a little burning and a Lochan Lorgish. The ducks slide happily, with moors and hilltes in the distance. Spring frogs are starting to eat in libraries.
It is a small modest traditional exploitation, where an owner could almost scratch his life. Instead, his former resident, the delay artist Ian Hamilton Finlay, transformed him into his most famous and most idiosyncratic works of art.
This year marks the centenary of the birth of Finlay, and its singular heritage is celebrated in May with a book and a series of exhibitions in eight galleries from Edinburgh in London and Basel, all entitled Fragments, and organized and edited by Pia Maria Simig. The notables are those of the Ingleby gallery and Victoria Miro; The latter will show works of wood, stone and neon. Among the pieces on the theme on the theme of guillotine, which attracted Finlay to international attention in the late 1980s, when its interest in the social revolution gave it a thorny and rotating cachet.
But it is the cottage of Pentland, gifted in Finlay and his wife on by his family, which remains the most enchanting draw. In the 1960s, when the newlyweds moved, the estate was darkly called Stonypath and only one ash was held in the garden. During the 40 -year -old Occupation of Finlays, he renamed like Little Sparta, a kind of works of art residing on seven acres. The sculptures and landscaping by Finlay gradually filled the garden of ideas, designed to make cryptic allusions to classical myths, maritime adventure and antiquity. The name was inspired by Spartans, warriors who – like the artist – had a brave and somewhat isolated spirit of combat.
According to most accounts, including his, Finlay was a mercurial figure. He asked that one occupation be written on the tombstone of his family – the poet – but art and language were always linked to his work. After early studies at the Glasgow School of Art, he moved into concrete poetry. Later, he became a large polymathe and collaborator. This brought the world of art to Little Sparta, rather than taking Finlay there: it was reluctant to rub shoulders in the Galeries Clubby, but turned out to have a glimpse of its playful and fragmentary verse to works on paper, stone and other media, helped by other craftsmen.
In the chalet, a wet floor bedroom applauded by a wood stove, books, an Olivetti typewriter and model sailboats was its self-declared “central command”. Here, he used his library as “his palette”, explains the chief gardener George Gilliland.
Gilliland has a difficult job of jobs – taking care of the garden almost half, but also managing the stone art fragiles. “If you were thinking of planning a garden, it's not the place to do so,” he said with irony. At an altitude of 300 m, surrounded by the Landes extending from the Pentlands, Little Sparta is high enough to catch the wind, the rain and all the elements – a storm has torn and shot a partition of trees when I visit.
But the Finlays, showing a determination which has become a part of the mythology of Little Sparta, created a windbreak and began to build greenery with “garden thugs” such as Cranesbill, Periwinkle, Astrantia, Sweet Cicely and Rosebay Willow Herb, a hard fire that Finlay called his “obstered companion”. The somewhat iconoclastic plantations of the garden – including close trees – reflected its more general contempt for the wisdom received. “He took a position on all kinds of authority and had greatly held principles,” said Gilliland.
The garden has a strong pattern; It is a “garden of the sea”, explains Gilliland. The sea and the childish romance of sailing – but also the danger and mystery of maritime adventure – were particular obsessions for Finlay. There are flags inscribed with names of historic ships – Caravel (sailboat of Portuguese explorers), Boolie (large mastactions talls), cog (War ship of the Middle Ages) – and trees planted so that the shadows of the leaves imitate the play of light on the water.
Playful tips meet you at each corner: the pillars of a door are lined with carved stone grenades, resembling and mocking pineapple with status symbol once at hand of the 17th century. A plot of the slate roof of the porchie is sprayed in gold, pushing to the story of Philemon and Baucis, the good old couple of Ovid Metamorphosis who showed hospitality to the disguised gods and was rewarded with a temple.
Classical sources were just as important for Finlay as those maritime: there is even a temple in Apollo, which, in the superbly cunning manner, Finlay makes fun as tax relief, asserting the local council that it was a place of worship and should be considered as such. (Inevitably, that has not lowered well.)
In the first years of the garden, Finlay made a “big leap, moving his poetry in the landscape,” explains Gilliland. Many pieces are poems or words and fragments of verse engraved in stone, manufactured by local stonesmas with finlay instructions, and in collaborations with font designers such as Michael Harvey, who also created fonts for Faber & Faber. The program has been improvised and added to, little by little, over the years. “He acted as a testing field for ideas, but it is a sequence of poetic vanites – it's deliberate,” adds Gilliland.
For most of the year, Gillilland works here alone. “The garden is supposed to be lonely, the paths are narrow and turn to a point of no return-which is part of the discovery,” he said. In the “English Parkland” section at the back of the house, there is even a parallel track of the beech hedge for a “Huff path” where a bad mood could be isolated and, hopefully, healed with a contemplative sit on one of the benches.
True to his demanding vision, the garden was only open in summer, when Finlay thought he had the most to offer. Overall, Little Sparta is “like a cryptic crossword puzzle”, explains Gilliland. “It's a place that allows you to think.”
Little Sparta is opened in June-September (LittleSparta.org.uk); Victoria-Miro.com; Inglebygallery.com; “Fragments”,, published by ACC art books
