Week 2. 10th Feb: Ian Hamilton Finlay at Little Sparta with Patrick Eyres
It was between 1966 and 2006 that the poetic vision and hard graft of Ian Hamilton Finlay transformed, high up in the Pentland Hills of southern Scotland, four acres around the small farmstead into the well-watered glades of the contemplative place that is renowned as an iconic art garden. Little Sparta is extraordinary because, although created on a domestic scale, it has been designed as a series of atmospheric spaces that embower inscribed artworks, which invoke the spirit of association that permeates the European classical garden. The Finlay’s gardening was waged as continuous warfare against the surprising range of predators that encompassed rodents, weeds, and weather, as well as critics, bailiffs, the local authority and even the French government!! After 1990, Finlay continued to enlarge the garden with the help of gardener Ralph Irving who, after Finlay’s death, continued to work for the Little Sparta Trust. The place continues to flourish in the care of head gardener, George Gilliland.
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When Dr Patrick Eyres first visited Little Sparta in 1979, he immediately fell in love with the place and struck up a lifelong friendship with Ian and Sue Finlay. The launch, in 1981, of the unique, artist-illustrated New Arcadian Journal was partly influenced by Little Sparta and the publications of Ian Hamilton Finlay. Patrick has also published extensively on Finlay’s garden and landscape works - most recently ‘Little Sparta and the Neo-Classical Re-Arming of the Sculpture Garden’, in Penny Florence (ed.), Thinking The Sculpture Garden: Art, Plant, Landscape (2020) and ‘The influence of Humphry Repton on the poet-gardener, Ian Hamilton Finlay’ in Patrick Eyres and Karen Lynch, On The Spot: The Yorkshire Red Books of Humphry Repton, Landscape Gardener (2018). For many years he served on the board of the Little Sparta Trust and continues to advise on the conservation of the garden.
