Sculpture in the garden - some ideas on where to start
Plus: the first Digging Around interview, with sculptor Tom Stogdon, and a few more special plants for late summer colour
In true style, I couldn’t wait any longer to share with you the first of the new interview series, Digging Around. Do you ever get like that? You have a really good idea which you think you’ll sit on for a while, but then you simply have to do it/share it/act on it, even if you sit on your hands and remind yourself that patience is a virtue and all the other mottoes to live by which still lurk around in a sensible part of your brain? Well, that’s what happened here: as I recalled how the artist Tom Stogdon went from Brussels sprouts to sculpture, I couldn’t wait any longer to share this. So I know I said this would be starting in September, but here’s a big August welcome to the first Digging Around interview.
Before we get going, a reminder that the next Border Design and Small Garden Design Zoom get-together, for paying subscribers, is on Thursday 21st September at 7pm UK time. It costs just over £1 a week to subscribe to The Gardening Mind and to be part of these events and to have access to all articles - and remember, if you subscribe now, your subscription will always stay the same - it’ll never increase again, even when there’s a price increase.
Talking of which, this week’s paying subscribers’ Plants that Make Magic feature generated quite a few requests for the Water Lane flowerbed plant list. The airy, veil-making plants turned out to be particularly popular. As ever, I aim to please, and so as requested, the first part of that plant list is coming up at the end of today’s post:
Before we get to that, though, let’s take a little dip into Wildlife Corner:
It turns out, predictably, that Gardening Mind readers know a lot more about insects than I do. You generously gave super-helpful feedback to last week’s question on how on earth to start learning how to identify insects, and so I’ve included your feedback in the footnotes here.1 Even more wonderful was the fact that these comments took off down a whole new rabbit-hole of the issue of distinguishing between rooks and crows. How happy that conversation made me - a conversation which is still continuing: check the comments here. As The Gardening Mind says in its description “Welcome to this community, inspired by the magic of nature and landscapes.” That’s exactly what it feels like as I read through those comments: an inspirational community. You are all magic.
The conclusion was that alongside the bee, there are two Eristalis tenax, the Common Drone fly, which can be easily identified by the entirely dark, somewhat swollen hind tibiae (which are often dangled in flight to resemble a landing honeybee) and very broad black stripe running down the face. The Drone fly is one of several related hoverflies that are honeybee mimics: with a dark-brown body, orange patches on the sides and top, and a covering of orangey hair, it does a good job of looking like a honeybee. Key differences include the lack of a stinger and 'waist', and only one pair of wings.
I feel a bit sorry for the drone fly having no waist and no stinger. I guess it really has to rely on first impressions to convince onlookers that it could pack a punchy sting; I know I’ve definitely been fooled by it in the past. And by the way, don’t get excited like I did when I found an article headed ‘how to spot a drone at night’. I was a good three paragraphs in before I realised what I’d done.2
Let’s talk about art
Art is a funny old thing, isn’t it? One person’s glorious, enigmatic Mona Lisa is another person’s boring old portrait of some random woman with a weird smile. Whether a painting or a sculpture ‘speaks’ to us or not is entirely subjective, and a piece that might be transcendent to some, will quite possibly leave others cold.
The garden is no exception, and I’d dare to say that it’s even harder to place art outside. Garden art tends to be big: I remind clients of this when they ask me to help them choose a sculpture for their garden, and I also remind them that they’ve got to be pretty sure they won’t go off it, as it can be an expensive investment.
What is considered art when it comes to the outside? Many would say that gardens themselves are art, which really is another question for another time. But even each element which goes to make up a garden - for example layout, trees, focal points, water, furniture, buildings - can be considered art in itself. Trees can be sculptural, acting as focal points; a bench can be a piece of art, designed to perform more than one function.
What garden art is, what garden art does and what it means, is a question we’ll be taking a look at with artists including sculptors, florists, architects and water designers. Have a look at this article about sculpture in a small London garden:
And as far as sculpture goes?
Well, that’s the thing. I’m not a sculptor: creating a solid form of interest and beauty to sit and stay in one place takes a professional, in my opinion. I’m a firm believer in everyone doing what they’re best at, and whilst there are of course lots of things we can do at home and on a more achievable scale3 which I’ll be taking a look at in the future, when we’re talking about bigger scale sculpture, whom you choose to work with is a pretty big decision.
Getting something that’s right for your space is critical, and whilst you’re often lucky enough to find something ‘off the shelf’ that you love and you know will be perfect, other times, being able to work with a sculptor to create something specifically for the spot, is indeed a true luxury. I knew when I first met Tom Stogdon that here was a person whose work was fascinating, intricate and absorbing on so many levels.
Tom is an artist born into a fourth generation of greengrocers in Bloomsbury. He withdrew from the fruit trade in 1998 and has never looked back: “I often wonder how life would have been if I had gone on to art school instead of the market but always arrive back at the same conclusion… who really knows? What I do know is that I feel very lucky to be doing what I love every day.”
He works in stone, wood, metals and paper and takes his inspiration from many different avenues. The building process either starts by adding something to an object, or taking part of it away and is serendipitous, with one piece of work informing what happens with the next. Sometimes it’s a journey of several years before he returns back to the original kernel of an idea.
I got to know Tom at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 2011, when he was setting up his exhibit near to the plot where I was working. The pieces that he would bring out were extraordinary, they were captivating, and I just knew that I wanted to work with him. Since then we’ve actually had the opportunity to do so on a couple of occasions; each time, bearing in mind that he knows what he’s doing and that inspiration is key, instead of using an existing piece, the approach we took instead was to chat about the plans and ideas for the garden. Tom would go away, mull things over, and then respond to the space.
I had no idea what he would come up with on both these occasions. Not a clue. I just knew it would be a glorious adventure. And sure enough, each time, the resulting works were truly wonderful. Sitting in their location perfectly, unique, and made for the space, they slotted into place and looked as if they belonged.
Here he is, standing between the monumental and mesmerising ‘Divided’ that he made for me in 2013. Can I just point out here that Tom is tall, so scale-wise, you can see quite how big this sculpture is. And just look at those layers and layers, layers upon layers, of thousands of pieces of stone, each one selected, cut and tumbled by Tom over a very cold winter. Months of patience, months of dedication and work.
When we next worked together a couple of years later in 2015, he came up with something just as beautiful, but totally different, as a response to the natural swimming pond and Purbeck stone in this RHS Chelsea garden:
A focal point and a frame, with double the effect when reflected. Perfect scale, perfect textures, perfect form.
There’s total trust, added to which is the bonus that Tom is one of the nicest, funniest people I know. I’m delighted that he’s joining us today. Let’s go ‘Digging Around’ with Tom himself.
Digging Around with …. Tom Stogdon
Tom, when did gardening arrive for you?
Gardening, and I suppose Art too, arrived in my life around about the same time.
I grew up in Islington and we lived above a converted Victorian dairy. My family ran a fruit and vegetable business from there. We only had flat roofs and window ledges, but my mum loved plants. She would encourage me to help with the planting, and to do it on my own. I really wasn’t very good but surprised myself how I appreciated the colour of it all. The relentless maintenance however was tedious as a teenager.
The seeds of art came with being tasked to make up the boxes of mixed fruit and vegetables for the hotels, cafés, restaurants that the family business supplied. I realised: why just put the tomatoes mushrooms and radishes in a box when you can make them look pretty as well? I remember this driving my father and elder brothers mad, as it massively slowed my production.
Saying this, I see that the planting and packing of fruit are bedded together by colour. Strangely, much later I ran away from colour with my art, and pursued muted natural tones. I do flirt with colour more and more with my art, but never in an unbridled way. Perhaps this is why I married an amazing florist, who is absolutely the most confident administrator of colour that I know
Are you an all-weather or fair-weather gardener?
Certainly all weather sculpture mainly for necessity: the length of time to make them and material requiring a more external location. Gardening likewise is all weather, especially where we now live with my wife’s family in the most beautiful and yet needy garden. Gardens don’t seem to really have any time off, do they ?
This is true, there’s always something to do - would you say you’re a weeder or a let-them be-er?
Well, I could lie about the weeding, but it’s a battle. The weeds wait for me to leave the studio for a couple of days when they then mount surprise attacks from behind piles of stone or metal. Bindweed in the borders is ever present.
What about the best bits of gardening, and also of your work?
In terms of gardening, I genuinely love every stage of the process. It’s all about the process with both gardening and art: Endeavour, Anticipation, Joy and of course Disappointment.
Do you have a gardening hack or any handy hint that you’d like to share?
Don’t plant more than you can maintain, and with sculpture don’t buy more material than you need.
And does anything get your gardening goat?
My gardening goat - that would be non recyclable black plastic plant pots.
And my artistic goat? Snobbery in the art world.
Any bad garden habits?
Bad habits in both garden and art are not acting often enough upon my dad’s immortal words: “Do not leave until tomorrow what you can do today”
Happiness is….
taking time to enjoy your garden and equally taking time to enjoy your finished work.
To mow or not to mow?
We have a lot of grass and very luckily we also have a sit-on mower.
Gloves or no gloves?
Definitely gloves for gardening; gloves for sculpture in the winter, less so in the summer.
Edibles or pretties - or both?
We’re lucky and have lots of vegetables and fruits and beautiful flowers. A veg garden is still such a thing to behold (it must be the greengrocer in me).
Proudest moment?
Gardening and sculpture are all very well, but my proudest moment has to be my boys.
Describe your garden in one word:
Am I allowed two? Frustrating and Fulfilling.
I hope you all enjoyed the first in this Q&A series. Look out for the next very special interviewee in a couple of weeks’ time; again, I can’t wait, so I am definitely going to have to sit on my hands.
To round up this week, let’s take a look at the first part of that plant list I promised you. You can see it in reality at Water Lane, where the dahlias are looking magnificent, and the palette of peach, lemonade, watermelon and wine is looking as delicious as it sounds: