Sculpture Garden opened in 1991, designed collaboratively between Ian Hamilton Finlay who produced the master plan for the sculptures in 1986, and Bob Burgoyne, Master Gardener at Luton Borough Council, who planned the planting scheme with Sue Finlay and executed the design.
LOCATION, SETTING, LANDFORM, BOUNDARIES AND AREA Stockwood Park is a former country estate, now a public park, situated a mile south-west of Luton town centre, on a flat hilltop some 537ft (163.68m) above sea level. At its centre are the C18 stables and walled kitchen gardens which were remodelled as period gardens in the 1980s and rebranded as the Discovery Centre with an exhibition hall, visitor centre and café on their eastern flank in 2008. The Improvement Garden is a green glade that runs south-east from the C19 kitchen gardens, comprising around five acres. From north to south, the ground slopes down to a central ha-ha and rises again slightly towards the south. It is bounded to the north by a path and cut hedges of leylandii, and on the remaining three boundaries by fencing, trees and coniferous shrubs. Finlay did not specify any instructions for the perimeter planting which was partly determined by existing trees and further defined by the hedges planted by Bob Burgoyne.
ENTRANCES AND APPROACHES An early suggested route started from the cedar tree over the ha-ha through the birch grove and up to the lime spinney before turning back to the mulberry where it was proposed to fix the plaque before its position on the ash tree was confirmed.
The entrance was later changed by Bob Burgoyne to an opening between hedges from the Dutch Garden (one of the period gardens to the north-east), embellished by two large stone urns on plinths. These are replicas of those designed by William Kent for Alexander Pope’s garden at Twickenham and the Wilderness Garden at Great Linford Manor, acting as a prelude to the Improvement Garden by associating it with Kent who, like Finlay, was not primarily a landscape designer but a painter.
A second entrance has since been created slightly to the south-west along a path flanked by laurel hedges.
PRINCIPAL BUILDING The Palladian Stockwood House (1740) was demolished in 1964. The Grade II listed mid-C18 stable block, to the south-west of the Improvement Garden, is a two-storey, five-bay building of brick with later wings and a cupola. It was restored as a gallery by Buttress Architects in 2008. The walled kitchen gardens and C19 glasshouses to the north are separately listed at Grade II.
GARDEN AND SCULPTURES The Improvement Garden is rooted in C18 garden theory, which in turn took inspiration from the classical arcadian visions of C17 artists, presenting a place in which planting, inscription and carvings all work in harmony. It comprises six sculptures set apart from each other by carefully conceived vistas and views across a green glade running roughly north-west to south-east.
From the entrance through the hedge of the Dutch Garden, the first sculpture to be seen is the TREE PLAQUE. This is attached to a pre-existing tree, an extraordinarily knotted ash which is unfortunately dying. Affixed to the tree is a rectangular stone plaque carved with the words I SING FOR THE MUSES AND MYSELF, taken from the following words by the Emperor Julian: ‘I often say to myself, like Ismenias [ ] – for though my talents are not equal to his, I have a similar independence of the soul – I sing for the Muses and myself.’ In a letter of 1 November 1985, Finlay explains that the sense is changed by the setting: ‘it is now the tree which (as it were) speaks, and obviously “sings” now refers to the sound of the wind in the tree and not to an act of “composing”. He explains that the tree-plaque differs from modern sculpture ‘since the actual tree is made, via the plaque, into an element of the work. At the same time, the natural integrity […] of the tree is not violated; it remains part of “nature” and its surroundings.’ The semicircular clipped hedge around the back of the tree, which evokes a temple setting in a landscape park, was planted by Bob Burgoyne, as was the screen just beyond to the north-east, formed by a long clipped hedge incorporating two semicircles.
An open meadow leads southwards toward FLOCK OF STONES which is adjacent to one of two specially excavated sections of the ha-ha, thus re-integrating this essential feature of an C18 garden. The group of stones is suggestive of a flock of sheep in which, compositionally, each is precisely positioned to replace the sheep in Claude’s Pastoral Landscape (1645). The largest stone carries the inscription: ‘FLOCK, n. a number of a kind, an amplitude. The Pythagoreans regarded men as the property of the gods, as a sort of FLOCK, which may not leave its fold without the consent of the gods. -Zeller.’ (The quotation comes from Eduard Zeller’s C19 Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy, concise edition 1955). Finlay deliberately placed the stone ‘flock’ within the ha-ha, intended to keep them out, so that they are committing an error of convention. He also meant them as places to sit on for picnics. Part of the wall of the ha-ha was rebuilt when it was excavated and the earth was used to create the mound behind. The bridge and hedge were later put in, as was the cherry laurel which was not part of the original planting. The stump to the right is that of a mulberry bush that died. A group of trees situated between the ha-ha and the tree plaque consists of variegated holly, maple and Persian ironwood.
To the south-west, in the undulating lawn near the edge of the garden, protrudes the BURIED CAPITAL, the abacus and volute of a seemingly enormous Corinthian capital. This intimates the presence of the former C18 Palladian mansion, although its size and richness introduces a sense of awe at the scale of the suggested ruins that might lie beneath, which could easily be an ancient temple as a Palladian house. In his proposal for the sculpture, Finlay alludes to the Classical system of architecture in which, to quote Quatremère de Quincy, ‘the least part of an elevation has the ability to make the whole known’. The buried column was the last item to be installed.
To the north of the capital, a meandering line of silver birches leads southwards from the ha-ha. This was adapted from an existing line of trees planted in the 1970s to mark the boundary between the tree nursery and adjacent golf course. In their midst is set THE HERM OF APRODITE (the goddess of love), indicating that the garden is ‘a lovely place’ and ‘a place for loving’. A plain, tapering stone pedestal supports the bronze head which is a cast from a British Museum cast of a Roman copy of a Greek original by an unknown artist. As Patrick Eyres comments, ‘this earnest whimsy states Finlay’s desire to articulate a tradition rather than a self.’ The head is a facsimile of the original which was stolen. The front face of the pedestal is inscribed with a concrete poem, each of the three lines forming an anagram of Aphrodite’s name: ‘I HARD POET / HOT DIP EAR / O DIRE PATH’. At the end of the line of birch trees is an old circle of lime trees present in the parkland on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1889.
From here, the visitor begins to wander back, coming across the DOUBLE TREE-COLUMN BASE towards the northern end of the birch trees. This consists of two moulded stone column bases on a red brick plinth laid in English bond, out of which grow two silver birch trees which become the columns themselves. It evokes Vitruvius’s idea that classical temples were originally built by supporting beams on living trees. The double column base has the same proportions as those of Perrault’s Louvre East Wing. Its brick plinth bears two stone plaques inscribed ‘BETULA PENDULA’ and ‘SILVER BIRCH’, echoing the identification labels seen in arboretums. The sculpture also suggests another transformation, albeit counter to those in Ovid (where people are turned into trees), whereby the landscape is turned into a built structure, creating a fusion of nature and culture. It has a backdrop of box.
Beyond, to the east, lies the THE ERRATA OF OVID, the focal emblem of the grove. This curving wall is the largest and most central piece in the garden, owing much to the Temple of British Worthies at Stowe. Constructed by a master builder, it is of red and plum brick laid in English bond with flat stone coping and a stone string course across the lower half. The eight inscribed stone wall plaques use the convention for addressing printed typographical errors (or errata) that inadvertently change the meaning of a text through accidental metamorphoses. The first plaque, is inscribed THE ERRATA OF OVID, followed by seven in which Finlay suggests possible typographic errors in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Through these he proposes five corrections that lead from the names of nymphs and humans into landscape features: ‘for DAPHNE read LAUREL; for PHILOMENA read NIGHTINGALE; for CYANE read FOUNTAIN; for ATYS read PINE; for ADONIS read ANENOME’. The other two lead from classical allusion into concrete poetics: ‘for NARCISSUS read NARCISSUS; for ECHO read echo’. In the Metamorphoses these are characters suffering from unrequited or self-love. The dark laurel grove forming a backdrop to the wall is particularly appropriate given its association with Daphne.
In the north-west corner of the garden is a magnificent cedar tree retained from the parkland, and a small winter garden planted by Bob Burgoyne in 1990s.