November 21, 2005

Land Matters
In a preview of the December column for Landscape Architecture magazine, Bill Thompson, FASLA, discusses Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Little Sparta in the hills south of Edinburgh, Scotland.

When I visit highly acclaimed built landscapes these days, I generally expect to see the emperor’s new clothes. This is particularly true of landscapes touted as “significant works of art.” Too often, these turn out to be sterile exercises in geometry pumped full of designers’ egos that the critics, for reasons known only to them, have decided to embrace.

So last June, when I had the opportunity to visit Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Little Sparta in the hills south of Edinburgh, Scotland, I may have worn a skeptical smirk as I boarded the tour bus. After all, the Scots themselves, in one newspaper poll, had named Little Sparta as their country’s greatest work of art. I fully expected to see an exercise in self-conscious form making.

One good look at Little Sparta wiped the smirk right off my face.

Our tour bus stopped at the side of a winding country road. There was no parking lot in sight. Nor was there a paved footpath, only a rutted, muddy track that led across a rough pasture toward a grove of trees. It was raining, and there was no shelter to be seen. Overall, not the entrance you’d expect to your typical high-profile landscape. 

Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Little Sparta in the hills south of Edinburgh, Scotland. Photo courtesy of Andrew Lawson.

Have you ever fallen in love with a garden at first sight? If you have, you will understand my delight at entering the grove and following the magical paths through the maze of plantings, punctuated with sculptures and inscriptions on stone and wood. The inscriptions came from various sources—classical antiquity, thinkers from the French Revolution and other periods, and Finlay himself, who is primarily not a designer but a poet. As the path wove in and out of the grove, it surprised me with wonderful views of the Pentland Hills; it crossed a stile, and emerged on a high point adorned with an inscription from the French philosopher Saint-Just. Although many of the inscriptions seem deliberately enigmatic (I suspect that Finlay alone understands their full meaning), their combined effect was to afford a window into their maker’s inner world. “This really isn’t about landscape at all,” remarked my wife. “It’s about a man baring his soul.”

You don’t see too many well-known designers baring their souls nowadays. Baring their egos—that you see plenty of.

Why is Little Sparta so moving? For me, it’s because it follows a road less traveled in the contemporary garden design. A prime example: Finlay, who lives in a cottage on site, built most of the garden himself, including digging the ponds and rerouting the stream. In most contemporary projects, the designer isn’t even around for most of the construction process, yet here’s a garden that was watered with a designer’s own sweat. Maybe that’s why Little Sparta seems to fit on its sloping site like a nugget in the hand and why the tiny stream threads so sweetly through that wonderful series of ponds.

Another example: At a time when so many top designers have abandoned serious attempts at planting design, Little Sparta is very much about plants. Commentators have focused on the inscriptions at Little Sparta and have given short shrift to the wonderful garden setting with its startling plant choices and compositions. Finlay himself criticized gardens that are mainly about sculptures and artifacts; their designers, he says, should pay more attention to the plants.

Little Sparta moved me precisely because it veers off from standard practices in contemporary design, breathing new life into old ways of thinking about gardens. What other contemporary landscapes are you aware of, reader, that are following roads equally less traveled?

Have an opinion? Respond now by emailing Bill Thompson at bthompson@asla.org.

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