Lindi Bilgorri finds out how sculpture can improve your garden

YOUR garden can be full of interest and impact through out the year -- and it isn't due to the plants.

Sculpture can look absolutely stunning set in an outdoor environment especially in winter when the flowers, which gave a riot of colour in the summer, have disappeared.

Sculptor Mary Orrom has more than 50 of her sculptures in her garden.

She says: "My garden was designed by Gertrude Jekyll with deep terraces. It is a good place to see how you can use sculptures in the garden."

Mary, who trained at St Martins School of Art, has been sculpting for 17 years.

But she doesn't work in clay, Mary creates her figurative and naturalistic pieces using junk, wire, netting and cement.

Sculptor Charlotte Green from Hurley says: "People are looking to have something other than plants in the garden.

"One couple in Hedgerley have filled their home with sculpture, so they are now putting sculpture in the garden," she adds.

And because many sculptural pieces are large, a garden provides a more dramatic setting for them.

Charlotte creates sheep, geese and plants out of chicken wire, and she has also used builders' re-inforcing mesh, which is slightly less manipulative, to a create a fox.

"I like to use chicken wire because it has an open weave. It has a sketchy quality."

Charlotte, who trained at Manchester Art College and then took the Bucks Higher Diploma in Art at Amersham College, has been working with wire and mesh for five years.

"I worked in clay for 15 years. I was looking for new materials to work with."

The beauty of working with mesh is that the piece does not have to be fired, instead Charlotte twists and turns the wire with her hands.

"I like to work along with the material. It is very sensitive to my touch."

The mesh, she explains, helps her to create the feeling of the animal.

"I am interested in the animals themselves and to put the spirit of the animals over in the sculptural piece.

"Having a piece of sculpture in a garden does look very striking. The piece can also look different with the light at different times of the day," says Charlotte.

Joyce Playle, from Wendover, also creates sculptural pieces for the garden, using natural materials and man-made fabrics.

"I like to use material that shows the essence of the animal."

Her Highland calf is made out of curly willow and his mane is made out of kelp rope.

Joyce, an ex-student of the Bucks Higher Diploma in Art, has also sculptured hares and an ant-eater out of chicken wire, and a pig out of a mixture of mud, lime, cement and coconut fibre.

"The idea is to get some kind of movement and texture to the animal," she says.

"I am not trying to get an absolute replica but something which is reminiscent of the animal."

Joyce begins her sculptures by either sketching from life or getting the characteristic stance of the animal from a photograph.

"Then the kind of material will lend itself to the animal."

Joyce moved from ceramics to sculpting with twigs, wire and metal to develop her style.

"I always tended to be representational with my work. I wanted to push my work on so I had to use other materials that were demanding of me."

% Mary Orrom, Charlotte Green and Joyce Playle are exhibiting their work during the Wooburn Festival. For more information telephone (01628) 524243

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.