Hamish Mackie News

When introducing sculpture to your own garden, it’s important to consider how a piece or artwork or furniture will interact with its surroundings, and what effect you are striving for. For example, do you want to enhance a contemporary aesthetic, create a dramatic and traditional setting, or encourage a sense of peace and synchronicity with the environment?

The titular founder of the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation, was a prominent British artist as well as outspoken conservationist, and said: “Bringing conservation and environmental issues to the forefront of people’s minds in this busy, commercial world has always been a monumental task and one that I, through my art, have strived to achieve”. You may be familiar with his inaugural fund raising success, in which he auctioned off his piece Tiger Fire (1973) and raised £127,000 for Project Tiger - a wildlife conservation project launched by India’s first and only female Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, in April 1973.

The days are now much shorter and temperatures have started to drop, but there are still plenty of reasons to get out-and-about and enjoy the great outdoors and all the natural delights that it has to offer at this time of year, not least the fascinating array of British wildlife. The shortening hours of daylight are said to provoke the red deer rut in October, and you may hear the grunts of mature stags at dusk and dawn as they attempt to ward off their competitors, each vying for the attention of fertile female deer.