Hillside Garden: “The learning process. The love involved in this process. That loving absorption – the day-to-day tending of the poems. Their immediate surrounding areas, whether paved, grassy or covered with plants, always needed a lot of individual attention in the summer". Preservation The garden is now owned by the Little Sparta Trust, which plans to preserve the garden for the future by raising enough to pay for an ongoing maintenance fund. Trustees have included journalist Magnus Linklater and gallery owner Victoria Miro. The garden is open to the public on a limited basis. Reception In December 2004, a poll of fifty Scottish artists, gallery directors and arts professionals, conducted by Scotland on Sunday, voted Little Sparta "the most important work of Scottish art". Art historian Sir Roy Strong has said of Little Sparta that it is "the only really original garden made in this country since 1945". James Campbell, writing in The Guardian, describes the garden as "one of the wonders of 20th-century art", and agrees with Hamilton Finlay's description of himself as the "avant-gardener". References Further reading Jesse Sheeler and Andrew Lawson. Little Sparta: The Garden of Ian Hamilton Finlay. (2003). Robin Gillanders. Little Sparta. (1998). John Dixon Hunt. Nature Over Again: The Garden Art of Ian Hamilton Finlay (2008). Alec Finlay. Wood Notes Wild: Essays on the Art and Poetry of Ian Hamilton Finlay (1995). New Arcadian Journal, (No. 61/62, Patrick Eyres (ed.), New Arcadian Press, 2007, External links Little Sparta Trust https://www.facebook.com/pages/Little-Sparta-the-garden-of-Ian-Hamilton-Finlay/303817088244?fref=ts Outdoor sculptures in Scotland Sculpture gardens, trails and parks in the United Kingdom Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes Gardens in South Lanarkshire 1966 establishments in Scotland Landscape gardens