So far I've resisted installing any lighting in my garden because it's just too tricky to get it right. Negotiating the hurdles of unsightliness, cliche and lurid effects is just too much for me - and for a lot of other people too, it seems. I mean I've yet to see an arrangement that doesn't have either irritatingly fancy or blindingly utilitarian lamps, or that doesn't create an impression that is either too harsh or too theatrically staged. Or that doesn't have awkward cables snaking up trees or humping out of the soil like recalcitrant black worms. "Look," cries out the proud illumination hardware, "this garden has lights!" "
In fact, perhaps the night-time garden (a veritable bustle of bug and creature activity) should be let get on with its business in darkness without being crudely spotlighted by us humans. Or maybe with just the odd, shimmering, winking light adding its enigmatic presence to the obscure nocturnal realm.
Such is the light produced by artist Gerard Cox's lantern sculptures, peculiar wooden creations, that each has a strong and eccentric - but eminently benign - personality. The pieces are the sculptor's response to the stone lanterns originally used in front of Buddhist temples, which later became an important element in Japanese tea gardens.
Cox, who engagingly describes himself as "a loose Buddhist", had seen the lanterns in his travels in Asia, and was moved to make his own versions recently. But, rather than the traditional granite or limestone, wood is his chosen material. It is a substance with which he has an enduring and close relationship: some readers will be familiar with his large Craobh piece commemorating the Botanic Gardens' 1995 bicentenary, carved from an oak that blew down in the gardens a decade earlier. Others may have seen his unique chairs that look as if a cloth of logs has been thrown casually over a frame - like a blanket over a deckchair. A pair of these were in his studio the day I visited, a male - lean and angular - and a female - softer and more curved. Both are remarkably comfortable (especially for those with "gardener's back" who need to sit upright). "When I make them," explains Cox, "I sit on them as I put each piece in place so that it is right."
But back to the lanterns: Cox makes these in the small workshop at the foot of the Dublin mountains. I arrived there on the day we had snow, and I was hoping to see one outdoors wearing a frozen white cap in the style of the Japanese yukimi or snow-viewing lanterns. But that was not to be: all - half a dozen or more - were safely housed in the studio. Imbued with the strong , intoxicating smell of linseed oil and raw tree parts, the timber building is like a wooden womb, filled with wooden sculptures in various stages - from embryonic to fully-formed. When the lanterns finally go out into the world their pristine, honey-coloured tones will mellow to a silvery-grey sheen, "I don't consider my sculpture finished until it's been weathered a little," Cox says.
The lanterns are of two styles. The first is quite formal, with a geometric rounded or angled hat of interlocking pieces of pressure-treated timber. This shelters the light chamber, which is positioned on a hefty pillar made from a spruce trunk worked into dimples. Each of these lanterns has "grown" from the bottom up, its form dictated by the shape of the spruce column (part of a tree felled in Cox's garden three years ago). I can imagine these lamp sculptures looking quirkily noble emerging from a backdrop of bamboos, ferns and other strong foliage plants. The other type of lantern is organic, animated and creature-like (and looks as if it would be quite happy in a slightly wild garden). Here the square light-cage is topped by a pyramid of yew logs and sits on a set of skewed yew legs, like those of a knock-kneed triffid. In daylight the lanterns appear bright and pale, patiently waiting to assume their evening character. At dusk, a couple of days later (in Gerard Cox's vegetable garden, of all places, and backed by pak choi) I am transfixed by the effect that one little candle produces behind the wooden grille, rippling gently like an amber-slatted beacon. As the night darkens, the garden retreats into blackness, the shape of the lantern recedes and all that remains is a quiet, flickering light inhabiting the garden with its serene, austere presence.
Gerard Cox's lantern sculptures range from £650 to £1,200, smaller or larger ones may be commissioned; a pair of chairs costs £1,500 (01-2691455).
