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Ian Hamilton Finlay: Little Sparta

A garden the artist created outside his home near Edinburgh

Ian Hamilton Finlay's greatest work is arguably Little Sparta, the garden he created outside his home in the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh.

In 1966 Finlay and his wife, Sue, moved to the hillside farm of Stonypath, and set about transforming the surrounding acres into a unique garden in which sculptural and poetic elements are fused with the natural landscape. In this film their son Alec Finlay, himself an artist and poet, recounts what it was like growing up with a constantly evolving, living artwork on the doorstep.

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