Discovering Little Sparta: A Journey of Poetry and Follies
A journey that started in my head more than five years ago came to fruition and, from it, I gained incredible insights into a topic I was eager to learn more about: the English garden typology and its connection to the “folly.” I studied this subject in college, and devised a goal to visit the personal garden of Scottish poet, Ian Hamilton Finlay in the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh: Little Sparta.
Sketch by Shelley Warner
Finlay was an eclectic man who suffered from agoraphobia, and over the course of his life he shaped Little Sparta’s seven acres into more than 270 concrete poems/works that would become a beacon for creatives all over the world to learn about a true English garden and its employment of the folly. A folly is a structure that often serves no structural purpose, but it is utilized for an aesthetic/spatial reason, and it is common in gardens particularly to help develop romantic scenery. For Finlay, a garden was meant to be so much more than a beautiful place. He saw them as “attacks,” commentary on horrific times – such as war – or a place for heavy mental reflection and coping. Finlay believed gardens are “not an object but a process” and that they are often “composed of Glooms and Solitudes and not of plants and trees”.
In my own study of Finlay’s work, I believe his garden at Little Sparta is in itself a poem among the poems it holds. Poems are rarely direct, and much like Little Sparta, they wind themselves to a point not typically made in literal terms. In a similar way, follies are essentially poems, and the garden in particular is emphatically reading them to us in the hopes that we find an obscure answer. We confront each piece in the garden, and in these encounters, we discover more about ourselves, the hard truths in life, and the broader questions about our cosmos.
When I applied for this scholarship I always knew the intention was to visit Little Sparta and encounter its magic. The message Finlay shares is about discovering enlightenment through real encounters.
Steve Schultz believed in this core principle as well. It felt fitting that I not only went on this mission with this goal, but in the same spirit Steve portrayed to his mentees. The garden is not simply complex, but complicated – because it is not linear, and it delves into the mystifying ideas of war, loss, the classics, mythology, and more. We encounter artifacts as much as stories, and it is in these follies we may find truth. A piece was left in me from this journey, and while I hope to go back to this obscure garden in the middle of the Petland Hills of Scotland, I know that I came away with a connection to something much bigger than myself, and this is the main goal of the Steve Schultz Commemorative Scholarship. I am forever grateful for the opportunity and the experience that I had.
The Secret Garden
I looked out at the farm road,
It lay ahead of me,
Unknown to the common man,
Unknown to the unknowing eye.
A hedge of trees,
A cluster,
Unassuming of what lay beyond.
The voyage led past a series of sheep and cows,
Tending to themselves,
Ba-baing as I went along that dirt farm road.
A gate emerged, wooden, softly chained,
To conceal the sheep from the depths beyond.
Quite deep it led,
Up to an entry point to a garden.
A magnificent garden that had untold secrets.
It was a pondering place,
A place hidden,
Tucked away,
Like a princess in her palace.
Perhaps it is a palace.
The last known palace of its kind.
A plant palace.
A safe haven.
A secret garden.
The key is only unlocked with determination.
The journey is not treacherous, but winding,
At times uncertainty will find you,
But wonder will too.
I keep this place deep in my mind,
As it will be a place to come back to,
To find inner peace,
To cherish,
To love,
To get lost within its extents,
Wrapped in its embrace amongst the flowers.
And what might they call this place?
Well it is said to be of a man named Finlay.
A poet,
A father,
A man fearful to leave its comforts.
He created a wealth of growth and germination.
He cultivated his craft and found solace there.
He lost himself in the branches and bristles.
And carved eternity into stone.
His work will speak for him now.
And his message will forever weather with the land.
It is a place of whimsy,
Loss and recovery.
It is for those who are deep in thought,
In need of refuge,
In need of an escape.
Here he made his greatest work of art,
And so it lives on,
It stands hidden amongst the trees,
Down a dirt farm road alongside the sheep.
She is a garden, born again with each summer
bloom.
She is Little Sparta.
And I will take her home in my heart and forever
long for more.
Shelley Warner
Designer