Does Your Home Need A Sculpture Garden?

SOURCE: Sotheby’s

Art can transform an outdoor space, providing stability through the seasons and a focus for quiet contemplation, writes Elfreda Pownall

Traditionally, the job of sculpture in a garden or landscape has been as an eyecatcher: picture an imposing classical statue at the end of an allée of trees in an ancestral estate, or a simpler piece, offering a solid conclusion to a path between two flower beds or hedges. 

Sculpture brings a sense of permanence and timelessness to a garden. It looks on, unchanging, at its surroundings, from the first snowdrops in January, through the burst of spring and summer color, to the frosted rime on the withered stems of December. But it does more: it is looked on, too. A sculpture that seems to float on a stretch of tranquil, dark water, enclosed by greenery, can lower the blood pressure as you gaze, while a bright bed of tulips reflected in a highly polished piece can lift the spirits.

Storm King Art Center, the outdoor museum in New York’s Hudson Valley that reopened in May 2025, showcases the work of some of the world’s finest sculptors across its 500 acres. Visitors can experience large-scale work by artists including Carl Andre, Louise Bourgeois and Alexander Calder, and appreciate, from the location of sculptures among these hills, fields and woods, how important pieces of art can be seen to their best advantage. 

Here, Andy Goldsworthy’s “Storm King Wall” (1997–98), a 2,278-foot dry-stone wall made the traditional way without mortar, takes a winding path through woodland, descending into a pond and emerging the other side to continue its snaking course; a work of great beauty. 

On a more domestic scale, The Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden sits in the grounds of a 15th-century cottage just an hour outside London. Established in the 1980s, the garden’s mature trees and ponds, fringed with bold architectural plants, form the backdrop for an annual exhibition of works by more than 50 sculptors. Each piece is carefully sited to take advantage of the sun or dappled shade, and visitors are given a photographic guide and suggested route, though the directions (and opening times) are idiosyncratically British. 

Curator Vikki Leedham oversees hundreds of sculptures here every year and aims for a synergy between the art and its surroundings. She has practical suggestions for introducing sculpture to your own garden—but only one rule: “Don’t place your piece in the middle of the lawn. It’s impractical (you have to mow around it) and aesthetically unsatisfactory.”

Building a sculpture garden, even from a single work, begins with observation. “Look for good backgrounds in the garden that will enhance the piece you are thinking of buying,” says Leedham. “To choose a site, look at how the light changes through the day in different parts of the space. It is good to discover sculpture as you walk through a garden.”

Materials matter when it comes to placing sculpture, says Leedham. “Think of the texture of a piece and the background you will see it against,” she advises. “The rough bark of a tree can look wonderful beside a roughly glazed ceramic. You will see a highly polished marble piece better in dappled shade to appreciate its contours. Glass pieces work well near water.” Similarly, Leedham suggests considering the juxtaposition of shapes: a tall, slim sculpture near a hanging branch will draw your eye up to the canopy, while the larger leaves of architectural plants “make a splendid background for a tender female figure,” she says.

On a clifftop overlooking the beautiful Alabaster Coast in Normandy, Alexandre Grivko, chief landscape architect of the garden design company Il Nature, has created Les Jardins d’Etretat. Where Manet and Monet once painted, evergreens trimmed with laser-like precision now frame the work of contemporary artists. In Samuel Salcedo’s “Gouttes de Pluie” (Drops of Rain), sculpted heads with expressions of extreme emotion—anguish, fear, joy—sit amid the precise green topiary, a masterful contrast of control and passion. 

It is hard to imagine them in a bed of wallflowers. But there are many things sculpture can do outdoors, and no formula, only what the late Hannah Peschar said of the garden she founded four decades ago: “[Art] rubs off on you, and then you find you can’t live without it.” 

SOURCE: Sotheby’s

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