The Making of The Hepworth Wakefield Garden

To connect the garden with the gallery, Tom began by looking at Barbara Hepworth’s sculptures and the design was inspired by the angular shapes of this kneeling figure.

Tom also considered the unusual setting between 19th-century red-brick mills and the 21st-century David Chipperfield-designed gallery, edged by the River Calder and a main road with multiple lanes of traffic.

Crucial to the success of the project was the desire for the garden to feel a natural extension of the gallery and a new role – a ‘Cultural Gardener’ was created. Katy perfectly combines an art history background with experience of working in some of the most important gardens around the world. Her role is to look after the garden with a team of volunteers and to devise activity to encourage the broadest possible audience to use the garden.

In the summer, four sculptures were installed in the garden – two by 20th-century modernists and two by leading contemporary artists to reflect the displays inside the gallery.

‘I prefer my work to be shown outside. I think sculpture grows in the open light and with the movement of the sun its aspect is always changing.’

In October we needed to plant over 9,000 bulbs across the site, which will provide a burst of colour in the spring and pays homage to The Wakefield Tulip Society, the last remaining society of its kind in Britain. Wakefield College Horticultural students were invited to take part in the planting and gain hands-on experience.

The Hepworth Wakefield successfully fundraised £1.6million to make the garden a reality.

We have introduced 52 new trees and shrubs, 120m of beech hedges and over 14,000 herbaceous plants. This is beginning to attract all sorts of new wildlife to what was a pretty barren site.

It is open all year round and free for anyone to visit.