Lulah Ellender visits Goodwood Art Foundation.

In her memoir, The Garden Against Time, Olivia Laing describes the hypnotic, almost hallucinatory effect of gardening as a ‘trance of attention that’s as unlike daily thinking as dream logic is to waking’. Standing in a coppice of ancient woodland in the newly opened Goodwood Art Foundation grounds, I fall into a similar trance of attention.

I had been walking for a while, enjoying the cool of the woodland on a humid summer’s day. As I approached a small glade on the edge of the woods, I heard voices coming from the trees. Women’s voices, singing an old folk song, surrounding me on all sides. Now, enveloped in the soft sound, I feel like I’m in a half-dream. Then, as suddenly as it started, the singing stops. I stay rooted to the spot, feeling the sound reverberate through the trees and my body. For the first time that day I notice the sound of the wind in the leaves – and feel the now, now, very now of the moment.

The voices are part of the installation piece As Many As Will by Scottish artist, Susan Philipsz, one of several impressive artworks that populate the 70-acre grounds just a few miles outside Chichester. Goodwood is a not-for-profit contemporary art destination on the site where the Cass Sculpture Foundation once stood, though triple the size. It aims to foster wellbeing, creativity and lifelong learning through the interaction of art, visitor and landscape. The site has been carefully redesigned by garden designer, Dan Pearson, in collaboration with the Foundation’s curator, Ann Gallagher. Over the course of three years Pearson has worked on a plan for the space to incorporate hard landscaping (paths and driveways), gallery areas, gardens and informal woodlands.

Pearson began by removing some of the old trees to bring in more light, and has planted around 1500 more, creating airy glades and linear rides with vistas out beyond the softened edges of the parkland’s borders. Inspired by the Japanese concept of ‘microseasons’, in which the year is divided into 52 f ive-or-six-day seasons instead of the usual four, he devised a planting scheme that would provide a continuous cascade of interest over 24 two-week ‘seasons’ – white-stemmed birch trees glowing in the winter darkness will be replaced by a wash of wild narcissus that then gives way to a burst of cherry blossom. He designed a series of open spaces that artists could choose to site their work in according to how they responded to the landscape.

As you arrive at the Foundation a bonded resin path leads you down through a small wood that’s carpeted with ivy, ferns and holly. At the bottom are two gallery buildings, all steel and glass and edges. Beyond these, the grounds open onto a terraced garden area planted with geraniums, foxgloves, ferns and thalictrum. This leads up to a cherry grove on the left and ahead into a wildflower area, then out into woodland. Maps are available but the space is designed to encourage you to drift through the landscape rather than plot linear routes from A to B.

As well as subtly orchestrating our movement through the space, the design also allows for a three-way conversation between the artists, their work and the natural surroundings. Some pieces, like the bold Magic Square by Hélio Oiticica, needed to be positioned away from others so as not to crowd them out, whilst others are closer together. You can rarely see more than one piece at a time, which gives them space to breathe and keeps you moving. Gallagher was keen to avoid it being ‘a sculpture park where you just bang into one sculpture after another’, and her collaboration with Pearson has created a wonderful sense of flow and exploration.

The landscape also invites nuance, propelling you through it without feeling you’re being led. Gallagher describes it as a ‘journey of discovery’ – there are no signs or information points beyond the main gallery, leaving the visitor to meander and stumble across the artworks organically. She wanted the sculptures to speak for themselves and not fight with the landscape, so the design needed to be quiet and humble. There may be an inevitable friction between the setting and the art in any outdoor exhibition space, but Pearson thinks of it as ‘A quiet conversation… a healthy tension and a nice juxtaposition’.

Here, that means a serene, shady space that houses Rachel Whiteread’s stark white mortuary slab casts; her solid concrete stairs looming at the edge of an open meadow; Veronica Ryan’s giant germinating magnolia pod resting in a dappled glade like a botanical meteor; or Rosie Wylie’s giant, colourful pineapple set against the blank white of a chalk quarry.

The design is so clever and accommodating that there’s no dissonance here, just delight. It is an evolving project, constantly in flux – there are plans to create a lake, and the sculptures will be replaced by other artworks. These pieces too will be weathered, crawled on by creatures, and affected by changes in light as the seasons turn. This is a challenge for curators and artists, but a joy for the visitor as every time we experience the work it will feel different. Standing in that coppice listening to the singing might be eerie in the weak light of a January morning. Bare winter branches will expose new sightlines. Heavy rain will create tiny pools on Isamu Noguchi’s plastic Octetra, reflecting the sky.

As we become more attuned to the landscape, Pearson hopes visitors will become more attuned to the artworks, to have the opportunity to be suspended in time, and for the visit to linger in our mind. He wants the place to take us out of our day, to make time mutable for a moment, to elongate the magic. Go. Go again. Keep going back – and notice how time changes when you’re there.

Lulah Ellender is the author of the memoirs Elizabeth’s Lists (Granta 2018) and Grounding: Finding Home in a Garden (Granta 2022).