Just inside the East Gate at Edinburgh Botanic Gardens is one of Barbara Hepworth’s earliest large bronzes.  It was installed in 1958 and called Ascending Form (Gloria)   It features two diamond shapes, the larger sitting on top of the smaller, suggesting growth and upward movement. It has been interpreted as the shape of hands in prayer, a reading reinforced by her renewed spirituality during this period of her life, following the death of her son Paul in 1953. 
The sculpture was surrounded by crocuses which did not look in very good condition, perhaps because they were squashed by snow or have finished flowering but most of the yellow flowers are dead. Sparrows are renowned for nibbling yellow crocuses and it is thought that they need carotenoids which they can’t make themselves and yellow crocuses are a good source.