Angel Field

An inspiring symbolic garden

Lucky are the students who walk through this outstanding modern garden on the way to classes at Hope University’s Creative Campus. Opened in 2010 and designed by Andy Thomson and Becky Sobell of Liverpool-based BCA Landscape, the garden is in four parts, each representing a different phase in Man’s spiritual journey.

It starts with Origins, a woodland garden with a bubbling pool, symbolising the primeval beginnings of life. On a circular stone bench are Latin words from St Thomas Aquinas, meaning “Nothing is in the intellect which was not first in the senses.” Next is the garden of the Body, an apple orchard in a wildflower meadow, celebrating nature and its fruits, which nurture humankind. The words carved on stone blocks are from Pied Beauty, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, a curate of the nearby Church of St Francis Xavier: “Glory be to God for dappled things / For skies of couple colour as a brindled cow.” In contrast, the garden of the Mind creates order from untamed nature, with clipped yew hedges and pleached lime trees inspired by Renaissance gardens. Flower beds shaped like Fibonacci spirals and bordered with box hedges are planted with colourful seasonal displays of perennials. In the centre is a circular performance space; across a rill, punctuated by jets of water, is a lawn where people can watch, picnic, or just contemplate. Around the pool is a quotation from Shakespeare’s As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage / And all the men and women merely players.”

From Mind one passes to Soul: high above stands an angel on a column, created by sculptor Lucy Glendinning, with lines from Daniel inlaid into the paving below: “He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. He knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells with him.” At night the garden is transformed by discreet lighting into a place of mystery and the angel glows pink from within.

Address Shaw Street, Liverpool L6 1HP, +44 1512193000 | Getting there 20-minute walk from Lime Street station; buses from Queen Square bus station: bus 21 to Everton, Brunswick Road; bus 12 or 13 to Shaw Street; enter via the lodge on Shaw Street | Hours 24/7 | Tip Musicians Pete Best and Holly Johnson, comedian Ted Ray, and actor Leonard Rossiter were all educated at the Collegiate School on the other side of Shaw Street, later converted to award-winning apartments by Urban Splash.