Belmond Le Manoir

Garden

Belmond Le Manoir is a luxury hotel-restaurant in the village of Great Milton near Oxford, in Oxfordshire, England.

The restaurant, run by French chef Raymond Blanc, has two Michelin stars, serves up to 260 guests per day, and was used as filming location in the BBC 2 television programme The Restaurant, where it has been used for challenges as well as Raymond Blanc’s “room of truth”.

Ian has been heavily involved with Raymond Blanc for the last 2 years producing sculpture for his Jardin Blanc pop-up restaurant at the RHS Chelsea flower show. Ian produced a smaller scale Dragonfly & Bulrush piece for the Jardin Blanc restaurant at the Chelsea flower show in 2018, which Raymond immediately fell in love with, and he then asked if a bigger version could be made for the Belmond Le Manoir restaurant. 18 months on from that conversation, the finished piece has finally been installed.

Ian Gill Sculpture at Le Manoir

The stunning gardens made a perfect location for a truly “Giant Bulrush with Dragonfly”.

This sculpture was 6.5 meters tall and weighed 300 kg, this was a challenge in itself!

Special thanks go to the hard working team, Gav, Beau and Mark, who needed to erect two scaffold towers on the bottom of this lake, before we could think about fitting the base of this huge sculpture. After a longs days work waist deep in freezing cold water, the sculpture was complete in its new home, and it was great to see Raymond Blanc so happy and passionate about the finished piece.