Little Sparta’s Head Gardener, George Gilliland, has overseen the maintenance and development of the garden, and the conservation of its numerous individual artworks, since 2012. Until 2016, George’s work was supported by gardener Ralph Irving, who worked with Ian Hamilton Finlay and Sue Finlay for many years. This continuity has ensured Finlay’s original vision for the garden is maintained. George’s work today is supported by Assistant Gardener Lynne Maclagan, members of the Little Sparta Trust and by volunteers. This page features George’s monthly Gardener’s Diary, published with the Little Sparta Newsletters.
Plum and cherry blossom, the freshness of new growth, daffodils still blooming away, much later here than everywhere else it seems, in golden swathes across the hillside by the back
Take a breath… A month of preparations with the promise of spring – and as it nears its end we are blessed with a long spell of warm weather, clear
Very present weather… Yet another month of very indecisive but very present weather. As elsewhere, more named storms rip through, but we do not sustain much notable damage – the
Planning and planting. The old year ends and the new begins begins with storms sweeping over – a few trees and limbs down but not too much substantial damage –
Another winter sea. The colours change and with them the course of the seasons. All of the leaves have gradually transformed from green to yellow to red and brown and
Autumn is fully upon us, … as if by the flick of a switch the sounds and colours change: geese honk overhead in their precise flight patterns, rowan berries glow
The end of the visitor season. The month begins with what the weather forecast describes as an ‘anti-cyclonic gloom’ – a sequence of brooding grey skies, but then peaks with
More extremes of weather. Yet another month where it seems that extremes of weather happen within a few hours of one another. We have a sequence of drab muggy days,
Extremes of weather. This month has brought more extremes of weather – heavy downpours where it feels like weeks of accumulated rain fall in just a few hours, and then
Settling in… The main change this month is of course completion of the new building, and the return of visitors. First among these is a swallow which begins a nest