Learn how to select and position artwork in your garden to enhance the design of your landscape. As strongly as I feel about the power and value of art, I do not agree with those who treat it as something ethereal, something to be venerated in seclusion. On the contrary, I believe that the processes both of making and enjoying art should be a part of all our daily lives. This means that precious as the finished product may be, I don’t like to see it treated as untouchable—pinned like a butterfly behind a pane of glass. Art should inhabit the places we inhabit. Above all (given my predilections), I want to see it in the garden.
Taking art off its pedestal and turning it loose in the landscape has been one of my passions over the years. In my work, plants, architecture, and sculpture each contribute to the dynamic nature of a garden and influence its changing silhouette.
A garden, as I see it, is a work of art. When I design, I use all the elements at hand—light, temperature, water, stone, steel, and organic and geological forms—to create a finished, integrated space. This makes the garden a natural setting for art. Like the other elements of the garden, the art must be fully integrated into the design. When I am successful at this, the result is a landscape in which it’s impossible to distinguish where the functional elements of the design end and where the aesthetic elements begin. Art, architecture, and plantings should combine so completely that it’s hard to imagine anyone of them existing without the others. Thus, art mingles with daily life—for my gardens are places made to be lived in.
This goal of integration is my motivation for defiance of a conventional practice. I don’t like to raise garden art aloft, setting it up on an elevated base, superior and aloof. Instead, I prefer to bring it down to earth. When sculpture literally steps off its plinth to wander among grasses, seedpods, and sunbeams, the garden comes alive. Wit and ideas mingle with the effects of light and wind as the landscape becomes a “movable feast” for the mind and senses.
A further effect of this treatment, one that especially fascinates me, is the new dimension that integration with a garden lends to the artworks. Any experienced gardener knows the power that the change of seasons has to transform their plants; once art merges with the garden, it too undergoes seasonal metamorphoses. Thus, art can appear clothed or unclothed, depending on the season. In my own garden, for example, the spheres by sculptor Grace Knowlton are almost entirely hidden in summertime by the thick foliage of a bold ornamental grass, Miscanthus giganteus. The spheres just peek out from behind the fronds, hinting at something wonderful but unseen. In winter, though, the egglike, earthy forms shed their leafy cover and stand exposed. Their curves set off in dramatic fashion the stark vertical profiles of unscythed grasses. Of course, on a subtler level, this installation is changing daily, even hour by hour. In that sense, I never look out at the same sculpture twice.
Art truly inhabits the garden—in the form of water sculpture, mosaic panels, and freestanding stone and metal sculpture—and directs our experience of that place. The artworks’ powerful effect on the eye and the emotions lets it set the tone for the whole landscape, whether sublime or playful, elegant or lighthearted. In one garden I did, for example, the magnificent valentine that artist Marc Chagall presented to the garden’s owner has a monumental, though dreamlike, presence. That mosaic is permanently fixed in the garden’s main wall, where it will transfix anyone who ventures out into that space. But art doesn’t have to hold still. In another venue, the stainless steel arms of a George Rickey sculpture revolve on subtle currents of wind, to catch and reflect the changing seasons.
Few of us are fortunate enough to have a Rickey sculpture or a Chagall mosaic or similarly distinguished work of art as a backdrop for our garden. Still, don’t discount art because of the limits of your budget or garden size. Instead, broaden your thinking about what constitutes artwork. The art you incorporate into your garden can be simply an innovative treatment of a familiar object: a decorative flight of steps, a painted wall, a small eruption of water in a lily pond, an arrangement of boulders, ornamental light fixtures, or an unusual piece of furniture. Even a specimen plant, perhaps a small tree or shrub with a strong and distinctive structure of trunks
and branches such as a Stewartia, can be treated as an interesting sculpture—and one that changes with the seasons.
Here are a few design guidelines to consider when you discuss with your landscape architect the selection and placement of artwork in the garden.
- Consider how the piece will look in every season. This involves taking into account the foliage and flowers of surrounding plants, the quality of shade in each season, and how the light will fall on the piece as the sun moves higher and lower in the sky with the change from winter to summer and back again. Choose a spot that will do the piece justice year-round.
- Experiment with unusual textures, colors, and materials, but also remember to take into account the materials that predominate in your garden. Let the art appear to have emerged from the depths of the garden itself.
- Make the piece work. Placed properly, it can subdivide and foreshorten too long or too linear spaces, divert attention from less desirable views, and mark important garden features such as path intersections.
- If your artwork is movable, take advantage of its flexibility. Your garden can be transformed from season to season, event to event, and mood to mood.
- Avoid diluting the effect of an important piece of sculpture by surrounding it with too many other pieces… one work of art constructed at the right scale can pull all the other elements of the garden together, and less can be more.
Finally, keep in mind the following practical considerations:
- Artworks that you intend to display outside should be constructed of materials that tolerate all weathers and extreme temperatures.
- Anchor sculptures securely to prevent theft (plaques or other art that decorate a wall should also be permanently affixed).
- To protect both the art and your guests, avoid locating delicate freestanding sculpture in high-traffic areas or too close to paths.
Have fun! Art is at times serious and edifying, but it can also remind us how to play.