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Creating an atmosphere with sculpture: Kern Baby by Faye Claridge, Compton Verney

You might disagree, but I think sculpture makes a garden. Of course, it's got to be the right one. No point in something tiny getting lost in a landscape, or something huge overwhelming a corner. Usually I like there to be at least a tenuous link to the setting - no Easter Island heads next to the climbing rose (OK, I admit, I'm guilty of this one, but I was young...)

A recent visit to Compton Verney, though, highlighted garden sculpture from a different angle: the atmosphere it creates. A row of eighteenth-century philosophers are a calm accompaniment to a contemplative walk. Animal sculpture implies a wildlife haven (I hate it when you see something like a bronze stag in the middle of a short-mown lawn). But what does this do?

 

Kern Baby by Faye Claridge is a five-metre high corn dolly. It's inspired by photographs taken by Sir Benjamin Stone who recorded festivals and customs in the UK around the turn of the 20th century:

The original Kern Baby was much smaller, as you can tell by the heads of corn used for the head.

Credit: Sir Benjamin Stone, The Harvest Home Kern Baby of 1901. Whalton Northumberland. (1902) © Benjamin Stone Photographic Collection.

Faye then took the idea of children gathering around a Baal fire (a bonfire lit on St John's Eve)...

Credit: Sir Benjamin Stone, Northumberland Baal Fires St. Johns Eve. The prepared faggots. July 4th 1903. © Benjamin Stone Photographic Collection.

and created an amalgamation of the two:

 Faye Claridge has had photos taken of children around her own Kern Baby which can be seen in Compton Verney's accompanying exhibition.

Credit: Faye Claridge, Digital amalgamation of 2 Benjamin Stone images The Harvest Home Kern Baby of 1901 & The Beltan or Baal Fires of Northumberland 1903)

If you've seen the film, I'm betting you're now thinking of Edward Woodward and The Wicker Man. It's difficult not to.

(If the trailer doesn't play, see it here. If you're looking for a film to watch to mark the passing of the late, great Christopher Lee, this wouldn't be a bad choice.)

Is Kern Baby really threatening, though, or are memories of the film responsible? I couldn't make up my mind. However, it's interesting that Robin Hardy*, director of The Wicker Man, is quoted as saying:

"Everything you see in the film is absolutely authentic. The whole series of ceremonies and details that we show have happened at different times and places in Britain and western Europe...The wicker man itself is quite real...What we hoped would fascinate people is not that they would think these things are still going on in Europe, but that they would recognise an awful lot of these things as sort of little echoes from either out of childhood stories and nursery rhymes or things they do at various times of the year."

Kern Baby certainly changes the scene at Compton Verney.  Here's the view in one direction from near the house:

Very ordered, rational and classical. Here's what you see in the opposite direction:

Do you get a frisson too?

I asked Faye if she herself felt there was a sinister edge. Stone's original Kern Baby image certainly jumped out at her when she saw it but, Faye said, the technical aspects of her production had involved her too much for her to feel anything but familiarity.

Faye Claridge with Kern Baby, Compton Verney

She did, however, take her children, aged three and five, to see it and was completely unprepared for their reaction. It was getting dark and there was a full moon; I think I'd have been spooked too. Faye said, "They didn't like her at all. 'Why doesn't she have a face?' they asked."

Reception-age children, in daylight, had no such qualms. Faye has said: 

"She is a great example of how disguised or 'faceless' figures raise awareness of our most common and unconscious form of interaction and judgement-making and make us question how we relate to others (in the past and present)."

Which, don't you think, sounds rather PC. Questioned further, Faye left socio-political phrases behind. Beyond cultural film references, she said, Kern Baby taps into something far deeper. There's something oddly unsettling about the figure. She's not human, but she's dressed in human clothing. She's called a baby, but obviously isn't. Which all chimes nicely with Robin Hardy's description of ritual above.

For me, she seems all the more sinister for being at odds with the Palladian setting. It is mysticism confronting rationalism. In fact, from certain angles, Kern Baby gives the Palladian mansion the dimensions of a doll's house: paganism seemingly overwhelming rationality.

A giant corn dolly isn't something that most people will want to emulate in their garden, but creating a mood in total contrast to the setting is an intriguing option. Not easy to pull it off but a fascinating dimension with which to play.

Kern Baby will be at Compton Verney until Sunday 13th December, after which she will move to the Library of Birmingham, where related photos are currently on exhibition.

• For more on the film, see The Various Versions of Wicker Man

See more on Compton Verney's past exhibitions:

• Dan Pearson's Arts and Crafts meadow
• Quintessential Englishness: Capability Brown meets Shakespeare

And for the right sculpture in the right place: Placing sculpture in the garden

Turn your garden into a winter wonderland

Do you dress your garden for Christmas?  Now that we're well into December, lighting-up time round here is a positive colour-fest of twinkles.

Tacky? Well, sometimes. but the child in me loves it (don't you?) and, after prowling round after dark last year for ways to dress your garden for Christmas, I've had great fun in the last week checking them over again and seeing what's been added.

Designs are getting brighter year on year because people just can't resist adding to the strings they've already got. So, not just over the windows, but along the waney lap or continental panel fence (when those are scalloped at the top the lights look particularly good), twinkling up a trellis, hanging in trees and wound into shrubs. The fun is spotting what new additions have been made and I'm hoping that someone soon will lay out a landing strip across their lawn for reindeer and sleigh to accompany the "Santa Stop Here" sign. (Go on, please. If you do, send us a piccie.)

A cosy grotto

Of course, a winter wonderland doesn't have to be in the front garden (though it's nice to share). If you've a full house for the holidays, with a gaggle of teenagers perhaps, creating a cosy Christmas grotto might just lure them out for some fresh air and alleviate the crush indoors.

I'm tempted by the thought of transforming the garden office into a festive hidey-hole. You could use a summer house instead, or a larger shed could be partitioned to hide the tools and create a space for furry throws, fairy lights, holly and ivy decorations from the garden. You could add some solar lights outside for a twilight display.

Children would enjoy being allowed full rein (I remember my parents did their best to put me off paper chains in the sitting-room when I was a kid). 

And to give it the Disney touch, if you haven't set out any bird-feeders yet, now's the time to tempt robins to come in and complete the festive picture.

It might be white

I'm a sucker for snow, though I now add the qualification (age and experience, sigh!) of, "So long as it doesn't hang around". It is the perfect finishing touch, though, and will work off some juvenile energy. Gather a few accessories for the kids to use if the white stuff arrives - a small snow shovel will get them thinking, and a box of old gloves, hats and scarves will be handy to decorate old Frosty.

Ideas on Pinterest

I've neglected Pinterest lately, because once I'm on, I know I'm on for far too long, but I couldn't resist having a look for more inspiration. Christmas Garden Inspiration is one of the boards I share with others and I've found some lovely ideas for garden decoration on boards from Luci Cross and Earthworm Technologies. And just for a blast of festive snow fest, Sandra Strand gives you all you want.

What do you do in the garden at Christmas?

In association with Cocklestorm, fencing and garden timber supplier.

Chelsea Flower Show 2014: Luciano Giubbilei's Best in Show

Of course, you'll just have to take my word for it, but, standing on the edge of the Laurent-Perrier garden at Chelsea Flower Show yesterday, I predicted to myself that it was quite possibly Best in Show.

Like Luciano Giubbilei's gardens generally, it didn't give a massive instant hit. At first glance, it didn't even immediately seem like him, as the planting, which included foxgloves, verbascum, aconite and Tellima grandiflora, looked positively rumbustuous compared with his characteristically carefully controlled designs, inspired by Italian classicism.

However, although it's a quiet garden, you only have to contemplate it to find that it's also full of movement. Everything contrasts. Everything has its balancing opposite. All very classical. And very yin and yang.

Water wells up imperceptibly in two circular pools at opposite corners of the garden. Through careful flow control it appears motionless, but the pools feed the rills that deliver the water to the pond in the centre of the garden.

The circular pools not only contrast with the right-angled turn taken by the rills early on their path, but with the rectangular central pond. The ripples, caused by the water pouring from the mouth of the rills on either side of the pond, meet and create a scintillation of light and movement, the antithesis of their source.

American artist Ursula von Rydingsvard's sculpture of layered cedar echoes the ripples of the pond and its diagonal placing leads the eye into the garden, while breaking the strong rectangular lines.

Light and dark panels give a rhythm to the background, the flower spikes are counter-balanced by the rounded shrubs, stone cut with chiselled precision contrasts with the random gravelliness of the aggregate, which itself complements the wooden sculpture placed on it.

All this combines to make this, for my money, the most tranquil design at Chelsea. Just taking time to take in the details has a calming effect.

Some people couldn't resist delving deeper, though. Perhaps this underwater photographer is actually praying to the spirit of the garden.

However it takes you, Best in Show was a well-deserved accolade for a designer who has complete control of his designs.

See Landscape Juice for a more general view of this year's Chelsea Flower Show, and to hear an interview with Luciano.

Plant Me Now Christmas Gardens Competition - 5 Tips for Decorating the Outdoors

Christmas decorations have exploded all over our neighbourhood. Obviously not literally - that would have made the 6 o'clock News - but whereas a few isolated homes used to string up lights, now they're joined by gardens filled with festive adornment.

It makes a walk on a winter's evening a colourful show of discovery (and, let's face it, occasional jaw-dropping horror).  I love it.

So does Plant Me Now*, who are running a Christmas Gardens Facebook Competition. Decorate your garden, post up as many pictures as you like on their Facebook page by 22nd December, and you're in with a chance to win £100 of plants. You won't have to wait too long to choose and receive them either, as some starter packs, like those of Bacopa, are available early in the New Year.

What, I wonder, makes us want increasingly to make a splash in winter? Partly, it must be that decorations are more affordable, but I think that, deep down, it's an act of defiance, a primal instinct to drive the dark away while we wait for the return of warmth and light. The fun thing is, now self-expression is positively encouraged, people seem ever more happy to be festively flamboyant.

So, having beaten the streets in pursuit of Christmas cheer, here are my 5 tips for decorating your Christmas garden:

1. Just because the lights are on, it doesn't make them look good. Hang them up securely (removable hooks from 3M might be your answer) and make sure they're well arranged. An artistically jumbled line can be more attractive than a straight one, as below where the occupants have fed lights into the climber that frames the window and added a wreath to the front door.

 

2. Repeating motifs can create an elegance that's missing from a mish-mash of different elements.

 3. Are you decorating your garden, or using it as an open space (see top picture)? Think about where you put your decorations. Placing them carefully could make a garden feature, like the tree below, part of the tableau.

4. One large feature can have more impact that lots of smaller ones. This garden has only this gorgeous silver and gold tree. The occupants leave the lights in place all year and I look forward to their turning them on every Christmas.

5. In the end, it's your garden. Do whatever makes you happy. Just try not to cause accidents by startling passing traffic. 

*If you fancy a few minutes respite, they've got rather a nifty plant filter that lets you select plants according to up to six criteria, including height, position and light level. It's kept me playing for far too long. :). You can also see much more professionally decorated gardens on their Pinterest page, Christmas Garden Inspiration.

This post is sponsored by Plant Me Now.  (NB Dec 2015 Plant Me Now no longer seems to be operating.)

Product Review: solar-powered garden lights

Have you ever wondered how well solar-powered garden lights work, as you've missed a step in the dark and tripped over a wayward flower pot?  Well, over the last few months I've had a chance to find out. 

Four varieties of light arrived at the beginning of October, in time for me to report the results in an article for the Christmas edition of Smallholder magazine. The raised bed looked increasingly bizarre as more and more lights appeared among the beetroot but I put them all together to ensure that the conditions for each set were as similar as possible, and this is the garden's sunniest spot with the longest exposure to daylight.

They've been there ever since, so now's a good time to sum up how they've stood up to the wet weather and are coping with this particularly dreary winter.

Solar Light Features

The four types are:

1. Gardman Stainless Steel Solar-Powered Marker Light (stands 26 cms (10¼ ins) high)
2. Benross Gardenkraft 18100 Stainless Steel Garden Lights, set of 4 (18.5 cms (7¼ ins))
3. Smart Solar Dual Function Solar Light Posts, set of 8 (29 cms (11½ ins))
4. Gardman's Solar Sparkling Bubble Lights, set of 3 (29 cms (11½ ins))*

* These are sometimes labelled Gardman, but the name on the box is actually Cole and Bright.

They're set to automatic, which means that they turn themselves on as twilight deepens. At the beginning of October, they came on around 7 pm. This week they've been turning themselves on around 4.45, which is about half an hour after official sunset time.

All can be turned off except the Smart Solar, which instead gives you the option of a steady white light or a rather pretty, gentle colour-changing cycle from green to blue to red.  Of those that can be turned off, only the Bubble Lights have an easily accessible switch that doesn't require the lights to be partially dismantled.  The advantage of being able to switch them off is that they can build up a reserve of power over several days.

The Bubble Lights are also the only ones wired in a string to a separate solar panel. All the other lights stand alone, each containing an inbuilt solar panel.

Is your child (or you) a new Arcimboldo? Vegetable competition from Dulwich Art Gallery

Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s weird pictures of faces formed from food are well known. If you grow vegetables, these 16th Century Renaissance oddities are particularly memorable.

Philip Haas, the American artist and film-maker has gone a step further and created four 15-foot high "portraits" of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter after Arcimbaldo's paintings, this time in 3D.  I can see how they might appeal to Haas, as the pictures have a strange intensity and so do his films, which include Angels and Insects and Up at the Villa.

I'm not sure they're worth a traipse across London  but if you're already visiting Dulwich Picture Gallery for one of their other exhibitions, it would be a shame not to go and have a look.

Inspired by the sculptures, Dulwich are running a Foodie Faces competition, which runs until the end of this month.  Ideal for parents facing a glut of children and courgettes over the summer, there's actually no age limit, so you don't have to invent a child if the spirit moves you to enter.  Just create your self-portrait from fruits, vegetables, homemade meals, pizzas, your favourite sweets or even a full English breakfast and you could win a place on one of the Gallery's art courses, as well as be displayed alongside Andy Warhol's paintings and Philip Haas's fibreglass sculptures.

The right piece in the right place: placing sculpture in the garden

Sculpture in public places draws controversy. I could list a few pieces that have aroused fierce opinion, but Orbit, Anish Kapoor’s cross between construction debris and a fairground helter-skelter, is currently the most prominent.

Of course, you may be struck by what you see as its (very) peculiar beauty, but I’d argue that it’s a good example of a problem encountered in much garden sculpture: trying to fit the right piece to the right place.

Over at Thinkingardens, Anne Wareham has just posted pictures of Art in the Garden, Painswick Rococo Gardens’ annual exhibition, now in its third year (and running until 31st August).

It’s difficult to tell how successfully the pieces sit in their surroundings. The website tells us that many of them are either site specific or created in direct response to their environment (the balancing boxes in the orchard don’t strike me as entirely successful), but on a general point Abbie Jury, who runs Tikorangi The Jury Garden, New Zealand, comments, “A garden setting can enhance sculpture but I have never seen sculpture enhance a garden.” Sculpture, she feels, must always draw attention away from the garden.

Hmm.

 

CD difference?

One of the most popular sections on this site is Recycled Items for the Garden, so I just thought I'd mention that one of my favourite ideas from Hampton Court Flower Show this year was these garden ornaments. 

Perhaps it's through the "benefit" of myopia that I was fooled by the materials, but only after ten unsuspecting minutes talking to Alex Bell, who designed The Deptford Project: An Urban Harvest, did I realise (OK, he had to tell me) that they're created from empty CD cases.

Painted on the inside in graduated shades of colour, they're surprisingly effective. Of course, these towers are inspired by towers of glass of the sort that I've blogged about before, and (feel free to disagree) I think this is one the most successful ways I've seen to recycle plastic in the garden.

Presents for Gardeners: decorative bird scarers

In summer, vegetable gardens around the country are festooned with CDs. There's no doubt that they catch the light (this summer, a lunch guest stoically put up with being blinded every 30 seconds, as a distant CD twisted in the breeze and sent blazes of light into the dining-room - if only he'd mentioned it earlier...). But they ain't pretty.

So here's another idea for a present. Gardeners who find hanging tat in the garden offensive might be glad to receive a more attractive bird scarer, and something that last year was awarded Gift of the Year in the Outdoor Living Category. Gift of the Year is a competition run by the Giftware Association, which looks for, according to their website, innovative designs of good quality, well presented.

Certainly the Birds Away kit caught my eye, and I wanted to know more. Unfortunately Gifts for the Girls, who include it in their catalogue, never answered my email asking what the little forks and trowels are made of, but one assumes it is something shiny.

If you prefer something with a whiff of magic, however, I think these stainless steel fairies from Black Forge Art fit the bill. At £15 each, or four for £50, they're not as cheap as CDs, of course, but cut from mirror-polished stainless steel, they're definitely more decorative.

Glass sculptures add structure

Speaking of structure in the Winter Garden, one “eye-catcher” that definitely caught my eye at the Hampton Court Flower Show a couple of years ago was Garden Glass by brother-and-sister team Sarah and Dominic Hayhoe. Available either in tall panels or as individual leaves, the glass adds a touch of warmth and colour, even with the weak light of January behind it, not to mention making quite a splash against the recent snow!