I was invited to create an installation for The Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall using the history of the garden. In the Autumn of 1998 I produced large scale figures, representing the gardener's who had worked in the gardens prior to the 1914-18 war. Linking the medium of frozen water to the garden frozen in time. The figures in working poses were placed around the gardens, melting away by the light of the moon. The work was filmed by Channel 4 and has been used on the cover of Tim Smit's book "Secrets Locked in Silence" Spring 1999:

Blue Boy	Scythe Man	Hoe Man	Vine Man	The Dreamer

The Lost Gardens of Heligan

In the Summer of 1977, Tim Smit was speaking at Dartington at the annual "Ways with Words festival,

Tim was giving a slide talk about The Lost Gardens of Heligan. A good friend Dennis Smith had told me something of the Heligan story and had mentioned a connection with my Marley 1914-18 foot soldier. Curious I attended and apart from hearing about this sleeping beauty of a garden which Tim, John Nelson and team had breathed life back into, I learnt that all the original gardening staff from Heligan had volunteered for the war, setting the seeds of total decline for the country house and garden, for with these men their knowledge crafts and agricultural skills were die.

I decided to approach Tim and after an initial meeting on that same day he invited me to the gardens. From that point I dreamt of The Great Chinese Terracotta army as found in the tomb of Emperor Shi Huang Ti (210BC) and imagined placing an ice-army in the lost valley. This army would have held sentinel positions in the early morning mist, melting under the 'firing' of the sun, without the horses charioteers and archers.

This memorial ice-army was not a search for heroic naturalism or symbolic protectors of the after life but an idea for a figurative attempt to capture the human quality through the metaphor of water. My ice army was not to be, the chosen valley was part of a major planting scheme in process. I walked the grounds absorbing the feel of the place and was bewitched by fragrant bosky dells with their green promise, lasting memories of blue charcoal smoke rising like incense in silent reverence to unknown gods, dragonflies shimmering spilling their colours out onto a silver surface, dented only by beetles scatting in circles.

The peace in the top notes of the citrus house, nests of yellow billiard ball cue cumbers and ivory Ostrich egg forms all lasting images, snoozing amber onions drying in the sun, stacked terracotta flower pots, bees buzzing , just the sort of place you might glimpse a shadow of a ghost moving moth like through the garden.

Pathways cross the main walled gardens:The Melon Yard and the Flower Garden, returning from my walk I entered The Flower Garden and was bowled over by a green house roof. The glistening panels of glass reflected the perfect blue of a timeless summer day, that clear wistful quality punctuated by cloud fractures and reading to me as an immense wall of ice.

I was very excited about this discovery, feeling that it could used to reveal the next part of the garden development but my enthusiasm was not shared. Tim had many meetings to attend for his next project, after all a man who can move clay pits can find anything possible including creating the Eden Project, in his absence he nominated Angus as my contact. It should be said that Tim's P.A Carolyn Trivivian was a super diplomatic and sensitive to my work and supportive throughout the project.

The present day Heligan gardeners are a committed bunch who are happy to speak with all visitors and I enjoyed many a session taking photographs of them working, By now I knew that the work I was about to commence was: The Ghosts of Gardeners Past but although I could feel their presence I needed a more tangible connection.

Angus was the volunteer curator of Heligans collection of Horticultural implements, so I was thrilled when he took me behind the scenes. We went up into a roof space where a positive arsenal of tools were stored, there in half light I met the old scythe which would have been used by one of Heligans original gardeners before the 1914-18 war and from a modern polly tunnel the old hoe and beautiful wooden wheelbarrow.

These especially the scythe gave me a very real tangible connection from the indentations and pitted surface of the blade to the wooden handles caressed and polished with the toil of years. Head Gardener Richard Dee arranged for the gardeners Charlie, Mike, Lander and Adrian to model the tools for me. There were ofcourse several visits, apart from the collecting of visual images a sound recording was made + choosing a site for each ghost gardener. The work took a year to create and execute .

On a Moon light night in 1998 all melted & my return was completed.

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