The turn of the year – which marks a significant anniversary of Ian Hamilton Finlay’s centenary – of which much more to come. 

But for now in the garden.

Early in the month we have a week or so of deep snow and freezing conditions where all is muffled and erased. Just as quickly though this clears overnight with a rapid shift to much milder days – where at some points it feels almost warmer and brighter than at times last summer. From deep white frozen crunching underfoot and a crystalline coating to everything to being dank squishy and muddy puddling as all melts and disappears.

We are very much directly in the face of the elements here. The whole order of the place, trees, spaces and objects becomes transformed by weather.

There is a planned clearing of trees: dead, crowded, or out of scale specimens are thinned and removed from the Woodland garden mostly in the area by the Pyramid and Allotment – and then there is a lot of subsequent logging and stocking up by the woodshed. This will take a good while to complete, but for now all is stacked in a pile alongside an equally large pile of very useful wood-chip as a daily visual reminder of the ‘to-do’ list. There are also a few trees lower down in the Parkland bent over by the weight of snow, blocking the paths, which are being left for the time being to see if they spring back up – mostly willows, which were already unstable, sitting shallow-rooted, in boggy ground.

All of this also prompts a bit more small scale winter pruning and clearing of overhanging limbs and branches especially along the adjacent field edge to allow access for the largest planned seasonal job of replacement fencing around the front perimeter of the garden. This extends on up the hill at back of the lochan, where it joins on to previous works completed and making us fully secure. It is disruptive and messy but necessary work.

Elsewhere in the garden even on the drabbest of days winter aconites are now popping up, sharing their golden promise. The bright green arrowheads of snowdrops are also pushing through. Gathered in clusters or drifts these and other spring bulbs will soon act as setting or camouflage to their adjacent objects.

It is a reminder that here – Little Sparta – functions as something other and more than a garden. It is sometimes easy to overlook that it is not just an arrangement of plants, but a placement of ideas. A garden that goes beyond the garden. Planting works in relation to objects, the entirety is a composition. This is absolutely core to understanding how the garden defines itself. Here poetry is ever present, here words are not just descriptive, they are integral to the fabric and the meaning of this place.

And so now we embark on IHFs centenary year with a selection of his own words as recorded in Images From The Arcadian Dream Garden:

A ruined stone temple by the side of a lake. Within the temple stands a wooden shelter for geese: on the entablature the inscription The World Has Been Empty Since The Romans (Saint-Just).

The word Fragile in Roman letters, on a formal stone placed upright by the foot of a birch tree.

A small grove composed of young pine trees and delicate columns. All the needles which fall from the trees are carefully swept into heaps around the foot of the columns.

A tree, pierced right through by a bronze arrow.

An orchestral (not a rustic) flute: a strawberry plant growing from it.

A weather-worn oar standing upright in a field dotted with nettles and thistles.

A boulder inscribed in one corner with the word moss.

A rose lying on a rock, under a thundercloud.

An old fashioned (horizontal) sundial, the gnomon an exquisite bronze miniature of a modern anti-aircraft gun.

A statue of Apollo, naked, holding a sub-machine gun.

A tank approaching an 18th century ha-ha.

A bronze representation of a watering-can (an old-fashioned watering-can) with the inscription (Roman letters) M. Robespierre 1758 – 1794.

A neoclassical tomb in a ruinous condition. On a piece of stone fallen among the weeds the inscription Life Is Short – The Tomb Is Fleeting.

A herm, with the head of the philosopher Epicurus. The shaft, surrounded by wild flowers and thorns, is inscribed with the quotation Live Unknown.

An intricate maze which no-one can enter.

An old-fashioned knot garden, viewed from the platform of a structure resembling a World War Two prison camp sentry-post (with searchlight and gun).

A classical column painted with World War Two panzer camouflage (any official pattern).

Two trees growing side by side from a double column-base.