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The view from the end of Nicky Wilson’s garden is incomparable. Southwards, over the rooftops of Wilkieston village, loom the Pentland Hills; east, beyond rolling green fields, lies Edinburgh; and towering 30 feet above her head is the vivid yellow bulb of a giant orchid, made of steel aluminium and created by the sculptor Marc Quinn.

“Amazing isn’t it?” said Mrs Wilson cheerily. “Marc positioned Love Bomb opposite the house. He said to me, ‘Scotland has such terrible weather, you’ll want to come out of the house and see something colourful.’”

Mrs Wilson, 42, housewife, mother and owner of nine miniature donkeys, is the moving spirit behind Jupiter Artland, the title she has given to her 80-acre estate in West Lothian.

If the name sounds grandiose, it’s probably deliberate, reflecting an artistic indulgence to match the wildest Victorian folly. In essence she has commissioned more than 20 works by contemporary artists, urging them to respond to the grounds of her 17th-century country home, Bonnington House.

The responses are often of epic proportion. Quinn’s 12-metre orchid is the work of the artist who created the sculpture of Alison Lapper Pregnant for the fifth plinth in Trafalgar Square. In the woods, Temple of Apollo and a head of Sappho represent the last works of the late Ian Hamilton Finlay.

The entrance driveway to the house winds through a terraced landscape moulded by Charles Jencks, a creation so vast it dwarfs even Landform, his best-known work, which fills the grounds in front of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

Even the bollards by the road are by Antony Gormley, and the garden gate, by Ben Tindall, is all twisty vines mingled with blooming metal flowers. “Looks like a flu virus doesn’t it?” Mrs Wilson said. “Don’t write that down.”

The whole enterprise required a vast and unspecified investment, and in return Mrs Wilson makes a pretence of money-making from her enterprise. There is a £5 entrance fee and a small shop (selling maps of the site, which are wrapped around chocolate bars) but by limiting numbers to 100 visitors a day, she admits Jupiter Artland could never hope to break even. “It is madness,” she said. “My husband is almost saintly. There’s not a business idea in it.”

Robert Wilson heads up a family-owned business dedicated to the manufacture of homeopathic medicine, Nelson’s Rescue Remedies. He runs Nelson’s mostly from its headquarters in Wimbledon — and occasionally from “that tree house over there” said Mrs Wilson, gesturing at a distant oak. The remedies are based on wildflower recipes that are said to have an affinity with the human soul. If that claim is open to question, the proceeds are indisputably life-transforming.

Although Mrs Wilson has money in abundance, she also has a vision and that indefinable quality, good taste. She was born and brought up in Edinburgh and studied art at Camberwell and Chelsea art colleges, before embarking on a career as a sculptor. She gave it all up for motherhood after she met her husband. By then she had visited Little Sparta, a garden of artworks created by Hamilton Finlay in the Borders, and knew she wanted to follow its lead — “but with more artists”. At Jupiter Artland, the results are by turn frivolous and profound.

Last weekend the artists involved gathered together to celebrate the completion of their work and watch Cornelia Parker’s Nocturne erupt from a firework display, scattering moon rocks all over the estate. The same sense of fun continues in 134 Proposals, in which part of an old stable block is decorated by 134 suggestions for artworks typed out by Peter Liversidge. One reads: “I propose to vanish into thin air”; another: “I propose to keep an area of Jupiter Artland frozen all year.” Only one (so far) has come to fruition — a road sign pointing at the heavens bearing the word: “Jupiter: 893-964 million kilometers.”

The mood is sombre in the woods behind the house. In Laura Ford’s Weeping Girls, five faceless figures appear to wander through the trees while Anish Kapoor’s Suck is an eerie creation, a giant plughole that seems to drain the life out of the forest floor.

Further on, Andy Goldsworthy’s Stone House — Bonnington stands in a clearing. Beyond its plain wooden door, the earth has been scraped away and every last piece of vegetation removed, exposing only the bubbling shapes of the bedrock beneath. The effect is overpowering, confining the visitor in a small dark room with millions of years of history.

At the edge of the estate, at its highest point, Gormley has re-created Firmament, which was first seen at White Cube in London. It is a giant metal frame in the shape of a falling man and from the foot of a slope, the pattern of the iron bars forms a map of the heavens against the sky; climb to the hill crest and a vast panorama emerges, stretching from the Forth estuary to the Central Highland. “It’s about being human, but having that sense of other,” said Mrs Wilson. “It beautiful work and a beautiful place.”

That much is undeniable. So why Jupiter Artland? Mrs Wilson was matter-of-fact. “Because we are not into ‘sculpture parks’ and because Jupiter is the god of creativity, parties and fun. We are on the side of Jupiter.”

Jupiter Artland is open until July 31 2009, Friday to Sunday, and August 1 to August 31, Thursday to Sunday. Entry is £5. For more information visit click here

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