Boxing clever-clever?

To the delightful Courts Garden in Holt, near Bradford-On-Avon. A charming, mostly early 20th Century creation with traditional beds of colour, ponds (one a former dye pool revealing is origins as a textile mill), an arboretum and the antidote to all those hideous peacocks - topiary in organic shapes, clearly sculpted, but oh-so-natural.

Bird brained?

The garden is also home this summer to "Urban Arboretum", an art installation. Created by Paul Tecklenberg and Mikey Georgeson, it comprises 20 bird boxes attached to trees. But instead of hosting wrens or tits, the receptacles contain photographs which blend images of the garden with landmarks of London. One peers into the hole where a bird might enter to view the photo - and peer is the operative word. Fixed to the trees which are now in full leaf, most are in deep shadow and the images are very difficult to make out. Only at the end of the tour did we find an information board admitting that this was a problem and offering the loan of a torch! Setting this "school of the bleedin' obvious" issue aside, what is the point of the exercise? I could see little. Mrs W enjoyed the novelty of it all, treating the trail as something of a treasure hunt. But what is the work trying to say exactly? That's there's a little garden to be found hidden in every cityscape - and/or vice-versa? And why London? Images of the less salubrious parts of Trowbridge or Westbury or Swindon would have made more sense. I applaud the National Trust for placing contemporary art in historic settings  - Antony Gormley's "Field" currently at Barrington Court, near Yeovil, works brilliantly -  but Tecklenberg and Georgeson's efforts rather smack of the Imperial new wardrobe.

A Courts resident makes clear his feelings about 'Urban Arboretum'