Join us for a Tuesday evening talk exploring Little Sparta, the extraordinary garden created by poet and artist Ian Hamilton Finlay.
Nestled in the Pentland Hills of Scotland, Little Sparta is more than a garden – it is Ian Hamilton Finlay’s lifelong artwork, where landscape, sculpture, and language are woven together into a living poem. On this Tuesday evening at the Garden Museum, Ian’s son Alec Finlay, Dr Patrick Eyres, and Tim Richardson invite you to discover the story of this unique place; from classical references and radical ideas, to moments of serenity and provocation, and the community of artists, gardeners, and thinkers it continues to inspire.
Through images, anecdotes, and reflections, our speakers will bring to life the creation and legacy of Little Sparta, offering insight into Ian Hamilton Finlay’s vision and the continuing relevance of his work. This event is ideal for anyone interested in art, gardens, poetry, or the fertile spaces where they meet.
This is an opportunity to discover more about how the garden is conserved and maintained now, and what the next chapter in its life is.
Speakers
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Alec Finlay
Alec Finlay
Alec Finlay (Scotland, 1966) is an internationally-recognised artist and poet whose work crosses over a range of media and forms. Much of Finlay's work considers how we as a culture, or cultures, relate to landscape and ecology. Through permanent and temporary interventions, integrative web-based projects, and publications, Finlay weaves together generous experiential works, often collaborative, sometimes mapped directly onto the landscape, embedded socially or accessed online. Recently Finlay's work has focussed on place-awareness and ecopoetics.
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Dr Patrick Eyres
Dr Patrick Eyres
Dr Patrick Eyres has created fifty-six editions of the unique, artist-illustrated New Arcadian Journal, many of which have featured Georgian landscape gardens. The current edition marks the centenary of the birth of the poet-gardener, Ian Hamilton Finlay, who he knew for almost thirty years. It was Finlay who introduced him to Janet Boulton in 1998.
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Tim Richardson
Tim Richardson
Tim Richardson is a writer who specializes in garden and landscape design and history. He has been gardens editor at Country Life, and landscape editor at Wallpaper* magazine, and was founding editor of both the award-winning gardens magazine New Eden and Country Life Gardens. He contributes to the Daily Telegraph, House and Garden, Gardens Illustrated and Country Life. He is the author of more than 20 books on garden and landscape topics including Arcadian Friends: the Makers of the English Landscape Garden (Bantam), The New English Garden (Frances Lincoln), English Gardens of the 20th Century (Aurum) and Sissinghurst: The Dream Garden (Frances Lincoln). Tim is also the founder-director of the Chelsea Fringe Festival.
