It began with a few potatoes planted in the corner of a stony field, and turned into one of the "greatest works of art created in Scotland".
When the poet and philosopher Ian Hamilton Finlay began his great garden on an abandoned croft at Stonypath, his larder and his bank account were as bare as the Pentland Hills around him.
He and his wife, Sue, were so poor that when visitors called they had to divide their last sausage in four. There was meat but no veg. Potatoes, like art, take time. But from humble tubers a great garden grew. And now Little Sparta, stretched over seven undulating acres, is regarded as one of the great modern imaginative landscapes of Europe, a poet's garden of visual treats and cerebral conceits like those laid out by Alexander Pope and William Shenstone in the 18th century.
For Sir Roy Strong, the former head of the V&A - who as the creator of a notable horticultural nirvana or two himself, ought to know - it is the "only really original garden made in this country since the second world war".
But like the garden the painter and film-maker Derek Jarman conjured from flotsam on the pebbly lip of Dungeness beach in Kent, the smallholding that helped turn the philosopher-poet into a major artist has always had a limpet existence.
While Finlay, now 82, is regarded as one of the best British artists of the past half century, his earning power has never matched his flush contemporary, Lucian Freud. And what money he made has gone into filling the garden with his concrete poetry, such as exquisite classical stelas and the pineapple column capital that is in fact a giant grenade.
Shenstone's poetic garden is now mostly a golf course, and £500,000 is needed to stop the same fate one day befalling Little Sparta. Although Finlay reckons even Sandy Lyle would have trouble negotiating his Hegel Stile, the water trap next to his Nuclear Sail, or his aircraft carrier bird table.
"There were no trees when we came. Trees have matured that I never thought I'd see mature," said Finlay, who has not made any art since he suffered a stroke last year. "But there's time for more yet, I hope.
"Still, nothing lasts forever. When I was young I was in love with the way things decline. But now I would like the garden to go on forever. I think it's quite durable."
Finlay took the name from the ancient Greek city. The Scots, who have always been in love with icy classicism, saw something of themselves in the martial, ascetic Spartans.
Stonypath was pretty spartan when Finlay arrived in 1966. London may have been swinging but Lanarkshire was damp, dreck and a lot dourer than it is now.
The neighbours were welcoming though, even if still, Finlay noted, "more people come from the continent and America to see the garden than from Scotland".
With so little cash, he was more Incapability than Capability Brown. "Like all gardeners, I had to learn patience. It was a painful lesson that," he said. He then started doing things in the corners of fields - "which wasn't a bad place to start, because corners get forgotten. Now the garden has turned inside-out, and there are no corners anymore."
Finlay's father was a smuggler and bootlegger in Bermuda, and he revisits his maritime roots - and his life-long fascination with the ideas and personalities of the French revolution - in a show of his latest work at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London. There's gardening there too, with a table of empty dinner plates decorated with wild flowers and weeds representing the decapitated aristos presided over by Marie Antoinette.
Alongside the show younger stars, led by Chris Ofili and Peter Doig, are selling their paintings in a silent auction over the next week to raise more than £50,000 for the Little Sparta Trust.
· Little Sparta is open on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays until the end of September. Ian Hamilton Finlay's show, Idylls and Interventions, at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London, runs until August 2.