If you think of public sculpture, what comes to mind? Most people think of the big outdoor sculpture parks, or names like Epstein or Moore, or these days Antony Gormley, whose monumental Angel of the North could be the country’s most famous piece of public modern art.

We don’t do badly in Oxford when it comes to sculpture, especially if you count the thousands of medieval sculptures on college walls and gateways, and there are a few contemporary sculptures like Mark Wallinger’s Y in Magdalen College grounds since 2008 and Gormley’s standing figure of a man that showed up on top of Exeter College in 2009. All there, part of the environment, for us to enjoy.

On a smaller, more modest scale, but also for us to enjoy — emphatically so — is the Turrill Sculpture Garden in Summertown. It has been there for ten years now, officially opened on April 8, 2000, tucked away in a small garden behind the public library in South Parade, open to all comers during library opening hours. It offers regular free exhibitions of contemporary sculpture — and, importantly, a tranquil verdant environment in which to sit and relax. I spoke to Katherine Shock who came up with the idea.

Katherine lives in North Oxford and has been designing gardens in and around the city for nearly 20 years. She told me she was in the library one day arranging a Summertown Artweeks display when she casually looked out at the back.

“I’d not really noticed the garden before,” she said. “It looked forlorn. It was neat and tidy, an open space with two benches in it, but they had their backs to the library, so no one was on them.

“There must be something in the human psyche that makes that uninviting,” she mused.

Katherine started thinking about how it could be made more attractive. She spoke to the librarian and Oxfordshire County Council, offering to redesign the garden, and to local firms and the community seeking support and funding.

“Everyone was very supportive,” Katherine recalls.

The Summertown 2000 group was formed, and soon a local family, trading in the area for years as Shepherd and Woodward, came forward with the sponsorship. The name Turrill is in memory of their aunt Miss Marjorie Turrill who had lived in the Banbury Road all her life, and her sister Betty Venables who had built two gardens on Cumnor Hill, and another at Cunliffe Close where she lived once widowed. Both were passionate gardeners.

The garden itself was constructed by Ian Lattimore of Nor-Lye Landscapes, Witney.

Today, the Friends of the Turrill Sculpture Garden help support and maintain the garden. Routine work is done by the lawn ranger, Richard Brown.

“One of the nice things about the garden’s success is seeing it buzzing in the summer with people having picnics and things. Even in the winter on nice days you see people out there,” Katherine says.

She chose to use circles in the garden design since they are peaceful and you can sit privately in them.

She also made sure the plants were labelled, with details about them inside, so the garden itself acts as a sort of ‘reference library’.

Katherine remembers thinking ‘why not sculptures, too?’. They look so good in gardens and bring up features.

First, however, she took herself to a sculptors’ symposium in Jersey to check out the idea — that she “wasn’t totally dotty” creating a local sculpture garden. Even now there are very few.

The Turrill has had about 50 exhibitions since 2000, five or six each year, attracting national and locally known sculptors from far and wide.

A quick look at the website shows the scope of their achievements. Here are a few — but only a few — of the many who have exhibited: James Butler RA, Anthony Stones (ex president of the Society of British Portrait Sculptors) plus other members of the society who work nationally including local sculptor Martin Jennings, the late Geraldine Knight, and Johannes Von Stumm (president of the Royal Society of British Sculptors). Oxford Sculpture Group exhibitions are held there each autumn. Schoolchildren get involved too — six local schools are competing there this summer.

A special Artweeks exhibition, celebrating the anniversary, is being staged until May 29, featuring new work from 18 past exhibitors.

They always wanted it to be for everyone, right from schoolchildren up, Katherine said. They seem to have achieved this.

Dipping into the Turrill’s visitors’ book, I’ll let people who have already discovered “this haven” have the last word: “Wonderful to see art outside interacting with the environment”, “Exceptional in its beauty and peacefulness” and, from an Italian visitor, “E bellissimo!”