Finding the ideal piece of outdoor sculpture to suit your space requires careful research. Try visiting art in situ at a number of sculpture gardens around the country to inspire you in your quest for beauty
Outdoor sculpture can do much to elevate parts of the garden but unless you have specific knowledge of the topic, it can be hard to know how to choose a piece. A reliable way to discover your taste, from style through material to finish, is to see plenty of it and to see it in situ rather than in a showroom or studio.
As with art for interiors, there is a tremendous selection of garden sculpture on the market, with an accordant price range: expect to pay in the low hundreds for smaller items produced in volume and hundreds of thousands of pounds for large, singular pieces created by artists of note. Wood, stone, bronze and more affordable bronze resin are popular choices, but there are endless possibilities: glass and reflective metal surfaces can be desirable in the right setting. Happily, there is a good range of places to see sculpture in the open air, so take a road trip keeping specific spots in your own garden in mind.
The North
Just outside Edinburgh, Robert and Nicky Wilson founded Jupiter Artland in 2009. Since then, it’s become an institution. Set over 100 landscaped acres, the permanent collection here includes work by Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor and Charles Jencks but expect temporary exhibitions, too. This summer sees a show by Lindsey Mendick running from 15 July to 1 October. jupiterartland.org Nearby, in the Pentland Hills, Little Sparta is the erstwhile home of the late Ian Hamilton Finlay, poet, visual artist and gardener, and his wife, Sue Finlay. They collaborated with stone carvers and letterers to build up the sculpture in their garden to around 270 pieces. littlesparta.org.uk Influential British sculptor Barbara Hepworth was born in Wakefield in 1903 and the Hepworth Wakefield, which opened in 2011, is a fine counterpoint to the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden in St Ives, Cornwall, where she died in 1975. But the gardens here are as important as the sculpture they contain. Designed by Tom Stuart-Smith, they draw inspiration from the site’s industrial past and the contemporary gallery within. Amid Stuart-Smith’s elegant planting, find sculpture by Barbara Hepworth, Sir Michael Craig-Martin and Kim Lim. hepworthwakefield.org Ai Weiwei, Elisabeth Frink, Nigel Hall, David Nash and William Turnbull all feat
