Thinking the Sculpture Garden

Art, Plant, Landscape

Penny Florence

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429576225
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

This innovative book poses two, deceptively simple, questions: what is a sculpture garden, and what happens when you give equal weight to the main elements of landscape, planting and artwork?

Its wide-ranging frame of reference, including the USA, Europe and Japan, is brought into focus through Tremenheere Sculpture Garden, Cornwall, with which the book begins and ends. Effectively less than 15 years old, and largely the work of one man, Tremenheere affords an opportunity to examine as work-in-progress the creation of a new kind of sculpture garden. Including a historical overview, the book traverses multiple ways of seeing and experiencing sculpture gardens, culminating in an exploration of their relevance as 'cultural ecology' in the context of globalisation, urbanisation and climate change. The thinking here is non-dualist and broadly aligned with New Materialisms and Material Feminisms to explore our place as humans in the non-human world on which we depend. Eminent contributors, including John Dixon Hunt, George Descombes, Bernard Lassus and David Leatherbarrow, approach these issues through practices and theories of landscape architecture; garden and art making; history and writing; and philosophy.

Richly illustrated with over 100 images, including a colour plate section, the book will primarily appeal to those engaged in professional or academic research, along with sculpture garden visitors, who will find new and surprising ways of experiencing plants and art in natural and urban settings.

PART I

Tremenheere sculpture garden

1

Tremenheere

Place of the long stones

Penny Florence

Figure 1.1 View from top of Tremenheere to St Michael’s Mount.

Photo: Dave Peake 2017

‘Tremenheere’ means ‘place of the long stones’ in Cornish, and the valley where it lies is at the gateway to the tiny Penwith Peninsula, 10 miles or so wide and across to Lands End; ‘Pennwydh’, in turn, is Cornish for ‘at the end’ (‘wydh’) ‘of the ‘headland’ (‘penn’). ‘By Tre, Pol and Pen [ … ].’¹ Weighing about 8 and 10 tons respectively, the two menhirs from which the name derives are the first thing you see as you drive through the outer gates, the only entrance apart from the inconspicuous pre-existing local footpath through the trees by the stream. The twin stones are even larger than they appear, since stability required that a large proportion of the narrow, upright stones should remain underground.

For such a small area, Penwith is crammed with ancient sites and ‘menheere’ (menhirs), although not in the spectacular way of Carnac just across the Channel in Brittany; Penwith almost forms one single ancient site, and you have to seek out its scattered monuments in defiance of intermittent signage that is sometimes (they say) turned around to confuse outsiders. It is a wild and beautiful place that would doubtless have been ruined by now were it not for its remoteness and its precipitate fall on three sides into the Atlantic Ocean; it doesn’t ‘go anywhere’; next stop the USA, via the Scilly Isles.

This location is critical. Warmed by the Gulf Stream and famous among artists for its extraordinary light, Penwith is a microclimate made up of microclimates. (See, e.g., Colour Plates 17 and 20.) Sub-tropical plants abound alongside hawthorn and gorse, and in the many narrow valleys with their rocky streams there is shelter from the prevailing Westerlies that regularly blast the frequent rain and winter storms with gale force. But they also, on the whole, keep the frost at bay. It is comparatively rare for sub-zero temperatures to last beyond the occasional day.²

The importation into Europe of species of floral and arboreal exotica that began at least in the 1540s if not before³ is essential to its biodiversity, especially in the UK, whose native species are far fewer than most inhabitants think. It has suited Cornwall even more than the rest of these islands, as showcased by the group of 12 ‘Great Gardens of Cornwall’⁴ stretching right across the county – or country, depending on your political persuasions. From Cotehele in the east, just this side of the Tamar river that divides Devon (and the rest of England) from Cornwall, to Tresco Abbey Gardens on Scilly in the west, many of them are in the sheltered valley homes of their wealthy plant-hunting landowners. Tremenheere is one of the two newest members and, like many of the Great Gardens of Cornwall, it occupies almost the whole of a valley.⁵ Unlike them there is no great house and no history of gardening. This is a significant point, and one to which I shall return.

Tremenheere Sculpture Garden is a private passion that has rapidly developed into a valuable regional asset. Begun in 1999 (and officially opened in September 2012) by gardener, art-lover, plant collector and practicing physician, Dr Neil Armstrong, and wholly owned by him and his wife, Dr Jane Martin, it was bought when disused agricultural land was very cheap in the 1990s. Only two fields have been under cultivation, as the rest was either too wet or impenetrable. NHS doctors, however well paid they may seem to be in the UK of ‘austerity’ politics, are not in the league of the super rich or even the wealthy. Tremenheere has to pay its way.

It is run as self-financing in about 20 acres of what was a neglected valley – of Grade 1 agricultural land – and woods. In the words of its maker Armstrong, ‘The first five years was just hacking and burning.’⁶ He has received very little indeed in the way of outside capital finance or grant aid,⁷ and no ongoing support at all. The UK thus far does not allow tax benefits comparable to those of the USA to charity or arts benefactors. ‘I suppose I’m lucky, this kind of thing is normally the preserve of the filthy rich, not necessarily aristocratic, but serious industrialists who have [maybe comparable] resources.’⁸

One such highly successful industrialist is the owner of a private garden near Copenhagen, on 120 acres of landscaped grazing land. It has a substantial art collection, and Armstrong finds quite a lot of similarities to Tremenheere, although that garden is not open to the public. Armstrong continues, ‘The next artist he [the Danish industrialist] would very much like [to have in his collection is] Richard Long. He is able to afford that from his own resources.’

Visitors pay a modest entry fee; there is an Art Gallery (opened January 2017) across an open, sloping meadow from the very popular café area from which there is a shady rural path typical of the locality that leads to the garden proper. While the comparatively new Gallery is commercial in that it sells art, it does not sell sculpture from the gardens, and it does much to promote the varied and excellent contemporary art of West Cornwall. It is run as a complementary addition, and like the gardens overall, is socially aware and thoroughly engaged with the community and the cultural life of the region.⁹

The Gallery was originally planned as part of the restaurant building, so it would have been there at the beginning.¹⁰ It forms part of Armstrong’s ‘long standing ambition to grow Tremenheere as an arts destination. If this ambition is serious, then it makes sense to ensure the quality’ that will bring it about. The Gallery is ‘strictly contemporary in the same way as the garden, showing new work by living artists and retrospectives of relevant prominent local artists such as Jeremy Le Grice.’¹¹ The inaugural exhibition was ‘Rose Hilton and Friends: Fifty Years in Cornwall,’ opening on January 28th 2017.¹² Armstrong feels the gallery is still trying to find its voice and expression, its style: ‘It is pretty flexible, now having three spaces including a small room for prints, books, small objects d’art.’

Inevitably, the need to remain financially self-sufficient will affect the Sculpture Gardens long-term, and will be interesting to see whether its aims can be upheld. This is especially so, given that its organizational structure is dependant on one individual, despite the fact that it operates highly collaboratively in practice.¹³ Armstrong views the process of carrying out all the permanent installations and long-term loans as an enjoyable and friendly ‘arm-wrestle’ with the artists ‘to try to find something that works, that doesn’t dominate or take away from what’s there. So I’m not in the position of the artist as such, but I’m trying to work productively and collaboratively with the artist.’

The following is a long quotation about the history of the place and the inception of the gardens in Armstrong’s own words, lightly edited:

The garden differs in many ways from the wonderful long established gardens of Cornwall. There is no big house, no emphasis on spring planting,¹⁴ no existing garden and a new factor is to add contemporary art to the mix.

The land was owned by the monks on St Michaels Mount until a tenant farmer Michael de Tremenheere bought the land in June 1294. The owner of the land carried the Tremenheere name forward for 600 years. […] Seymour Tremenheere was the last owner carrying this name (1830–1894). He was a prominent national figure, leading barrister and social reformer involved in improving conditions for mine workers and in schools. He also had the woodland planting carried out which is now an important feature of the gardens. The ‘crossroads’ where paths meet at the top of the gardens was the turning circle for his striking yellow carriage.

The garden now occupies 22 acres. Like many Cornish gardens the core is a south facing valley running towards the sea. A happy set of natural features: shelter, good soil, fast flowing stream, mature woodland, benign micro-climate and wonderful views all provided a promising starting point. [We] set about clearing overgrown woodland, which had been neglected for decades. Brambles and bracken dominated the land over several acres and wild rhododendrons were well established in non-cultivated areas. The land used for cropping had reverted to luxuriant layers of weeds.

Over the subsequent 15 years an embryonic garden emerged and then flourished. The planting scheme is designed to respond to varying aspects, soil and exposure to create a large scale naturalistic, subtropical effect taking full advantage of the near frost free conditions.

An early surprise development was the arrival of the hugely respected (and generally inaccessible in person) American artist James Turrell. He was looking for a site from which he could interact with the 1999 total solar eclipse, for which West Cornwall was predicted to be the ideal viewing place.¹⁵ Turrell clearly recognised me as not being a Russian oligarch, who really have a different set of rules, I’m sure. So he was happy to support the overall ideas and concepts, which he did hugely by not demanding his usual fees. The work itself was paid for by Turrell’s then agent.

[The involvement of Turrell] was extremely helpful, and released interest from other big name artists who came along in various ways. They’ve all arrived from different angles, with different [assumptions] I think. Things have evolved organically, starting off from a position of quality. This is literally true organically, since plants mature fast in West Cornwall and the outline planting and landscape were by this time already legible, so that new artists had something to go on, to respond to.

As Armstrong puts it, ‘[…] I’m sat here, right on the central line [of the eclipse], when his team turns up and asked if I’d be interested in hosting a work, no cost, nothing, just like that!’ Turrell’s Gallery remained very distant, and in the end, Armstrong project-managed the whole installation of what was to become Elliptic Ecliptic, a wooden Skyspace.¹⁶

Figure 1.2 James and Kyung Turrell at the opening of Tewlwolow Kernow, 2015.

Photo: CJ Everard

At dinner on the eve of the eclipse, ‘Turrell said that he liked the valley, and, further, it is an out of the way place, and you have to make an effort to get here. He asked if he could do something permanent.’ It was as extraordinary and as simple as that.¹⁷ The title of this st...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Contributors’ biographies
• Acknowledgments
• Note on method: Diffracting the sculpture garden
• Introduction: The ground
• Part I: Tremenheere sculpture garden
• Part II: Placing history in/of the garden
• Part III: Return to Tremenheere
• Appendix: Tremenheere plant list and map
• Bibliography
• Index