(gentle music) - Last year, our daughter told us that she was taking us to a really fun place the next time we came for a visit.

Well, it worked out that our son was able to go along too, and we all visited the Big Stone Mini Golf and Sculpture Garden near Minnetrista, Minnesota.

We had so much fun looking at the sculptures and then playing golf too.

We laughed until our tummies ached, and I just knew we had to try to do a show at this very unique place.

Come along and you'll find out why we had so much fun.

- [Narrator] Funding for Prairie Yard and Garden is provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years in the heart of truck country.

Heartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart.

Farmers Mutual Telephone Company and Federated Telephone Cooperative, proud to be powering Acira, pioneers in bringing state-of-the-art technology to our rural communities.

Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a non-profit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

The Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008.

And by Friends of Prairie Yard and Garden, a community of supporters like you who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a friend of Prairie Yard and Garden, visit pioneer.org/pyg.

(upbeat music) - Most of us have family members that love to golf.

Some are really good, but it takes a lot of skill and luck to drive, chip, and putt for par.

However, even regular people like me can enjoy mini golf with a sculpture twist.

To show what I mean, I called Bruce Stillman, the owner of the Big Stone Mini Golf Course and Sculpture Garden, and asked if we could please come for a visit.

He said that would be fine.

So we loaded up the cameras and here we are.

Thanks, Bruce, for letting us come to visit.

- You're welcome.

- Tell me, what is your background?

- Well, I started art when I was 15 and metal sculpting.

And when I was 16, I built a bunch of little sculptures and sold them at art fairs and found my niche of what I wanted to do at a very young age and never stopped since then.

- [Mary] What did you use for your sculptures way back then?

- [Bruce] Kind of soft copper and metal and steel wires, cutting it up, making little sports figures or wall hangings of trees and different things.

I actually made a farm scene that ended up looking like this place.

- [Mary] Well, that brings me to the next question.

How did you end up with this property?

- [Bruce] Well, I bought this in '91 and I kind of wanted to do landscape sculpture and it was just a hayfield.

So I kind of called it a blank canvas and started doing landscape sculpture.

The very first one was out of necessity 'cause there was a pile of garbage and I couldn't pick it up anymore.

There was all broken glass and things and I piled it up and made this igloo out of cobblestones, never knowing it would end up being part of the goat pen and goat mountain.

I just kind of, one thing led to another and just kept building things.

And then the practical side of me thought, "Well, why don't you do mini golf fine art?"

You know, make these golf holes like sculptures and the idea worked.

(laughs) - [Mary] How big is this property?

- [Bruce] It's 17 acres, kind of a triangle shape.

Since we got started, it's our 22nd year and we just keep adding things every year.

The mini golf revenue was doing so well that I became an art collector.

So now I collect mostly Minnesota artists and there's 15 different artists have at least one work here.

And we mix it in with farm animals and the gardens and other fun games.

We've got ping pong and giant chess and corn hole and bocce ball.

- [Mary] So were there a lot of trees here when you started?

- [Bruce] Oh, my theory is kind of work with nature.

I started some pine trees, but most of the landscape is volunteer trees, make their way into the sculpture park.

And in the beginning, there wasn't much shade and now we're trimming trees.

- Did you have an idea of what you wanted to develop when you got started?

- Not really, I wanted to do a mini golf and never knew it would be a sculpture park, but I kept getting inspired by what I was doing and it led to the next idea.

And I kind of use feng shui, where to place new artwork.

So it just makes a good flow of what people see when they view all the art.

- [Mary] How did you come up with your name?

- [Bruce] Well, some days I wish I was a jeweler.

I like big rocks and I bought a big hoist, a boom truck and it was part of doing large landscapes.

And that there's a rock quarry in St.

Cloud that would have a lot of big scrap rocks and I collected those.

There's a lot of like refrigerator size blocks.

And that was a building that was tore down in the '60s in Minneapolis called the Metropolitan Building.

And it was a stone company in Delano that's been closed for 25 years, but it was just stored there.

And it went up for sale like 15 years ago.

So I bought half the building, which was over a hundred of these big rocks and use them in some of the projects.

- [Mary] Now, who keeps all of this up or who does all the maintenance here?

- [Bruce] Well, sometimes I feel like I'm doing the job of three people, but I have one full time staff person, another almost full time.

And he helped organize kids that run the clubhouse for when golfers come, you give them the golf club and we can sell some packaged ice creams and refreshments.

But there's just about a little handful of us running the place.

- [Mary] What are the animals that you have here too?

- [Bruce] Well, we have 10 new baby goats and that makes a total of about 20 goats.

And there's a Scottish Highlander cow, a mini mule and a dozen chickens and a couple of ducks running around.

- [Mary] Do the animals stay here year round?

- [Bruce] Yeah, we kind of put them in the barn in the winter and they're happy to get out this spring and eat the fresh grass.

- [Mary] Well, and I noticed there's a garden too.

Is that yours?

- [Bruce] Yeah, it's part of the idea of just showing fine art in a different environment.

So we have a little apple orchard and vegetable gardens and the mixing with all the games and the art.

- [Mary] And what is the season that you're open here?

- [Bruce] We kind of go from as soon as the weather's nice, people wanna come so mid April to the very end of October.

- Okay, well, I'm kind of wondering, can we actually go and see some of the sculptures too?

- Oh yeah, absolutely.

It's fun to see.

We have a collection of over 70 large sculptures and keep adding to it every year.

- Bruce, you have an amazing collection here.

How many sculptures are there here?

- Well, we have over 70 sculptures now.

I never thought I'd be an art collector, but most of them are all Minnesota artists and it feels good to be able to support some of the best Minnesota artists.

- [Mary] Who has made them?

- Well, it started off with Heidi Hoy-Bronzes.

She was an instructor at the Minnetonka Center for the Arts and my work.

And we, about four years ago, an interpreter with Alex.

He's a artist from Russia.

Showed me pictures of the dog he made out of throwaway tires.

And it's a great durable material and resourcing tires.

And it was, yeah, I liked the piece, so I bought that.

And then he showed me pictures of more work and I said, "Oh, do a few like this."

He needed a place to work, so he sort of became our artist in residence.

So he's building them outside the studio and we collect tires and we have at least 10 of his works here now.

- So are most of the artists from Minnesota or from other countries too?

- Oh, I think 90% of the art are Minnesota, made art from Minnesota.

We have Dick Sonick, who is just a farmer in Southwest Minnesota.

And he, you could see from his horse, just all found farm throwaway scrap metal.

And he built this beautiful horse and he did the chicken on the unicycle.

And Zoran is a well-known artist and works in North Minneapolis, Northeast Minneapolis, and does these big rock sculptures and constructs them.

I got some of his and... - So what are most of the materials that are used in the sculptures?

- Well, for myself and most of the artists, I can tell that it's, they find materials and become creative of what they can do with the material.

Me, especially, like to work that way.

So, I mean, throwaway tires and giant rocks, and then you just kind of figure out what could be made with that.

And for me, I have, one of the first sculptures was a giant tree cut and turned upside down in like a tripod shape.

It was just like working with nature to make this piece of art, but the tree started rotting away.

So then the idea came to me.

I don't know how it came to me, but I put these little metal spirals as a skeleton around the tree to kind of hold the shape.

And my philosophy, working with nature, the tree can rot away in a hundred years, but you'll still have the shape of the sculpture with the metal spirals.

And it was fun to do that.

So I even took a couple other trees and made more of those spiral tree sculptures.

- [Mary] Do each of the artists have their specialties?

- [Bruce] Yeah, pretty much, you know, Alex is with the tires and I work with him on some of the designs.

And Zoran works with big rocks and twisted metal.

Heidi Hoy has bronze.

And we have some mosaic tile by Victor Giuseppe.

And we have this one piece from a grad student at the U of M, Yusuf Davali, and he made this chain man.

And he actually built a fire underneath the chain man 'cause his burning spirit was being held down because he went to, he explained, like a strict school and they didn't want him to be an artist, but it's kind of a powerful message.

And I like the piece and we have that here.

- [Mary] Where are the sculptures created?

- [Bruce] Well, they mostly have their own studios somewhere in Minnesota.

I have a workshop here.

So I make them here and Alex makes them here.

And, you know, Heidi Hoy would do bronze casting at the Tonka Center for the Arts.

But that program has ended there now, but they do other classes.

- [Mary] How in the world do you transport some of these things?

- [Bruce] Well, I did end up buying a nice boom truck.

And then there's a telescoping forklift that can pick up a lot of, you know, the heavy rocks and stuff.

- [Mary] Then how do you anchor them into place?

'Cause there's so many people around and children that climb on things.

- [Bruce] Well, from experience, you kind of learn how to make it safe and, you know, people-proof for the most part.

But, you know, when I bought the Metropolitan Building pieces like 15 years ago, they were all just dumped on the hill.

And I took my boom truck and decided, well, let's just make an arrangement until, you know, store them in an arrangement form until I can find a project for them.

And so now kids just kind of climb on it.

It's like an obstacle thing.

And, you know, it's a lot different than, you know, the Walker Art Center.

You'll see a rock sculpture there and do not touch.

And here, you know, I make it so you can climb on it and just let it go.

(laughs) - [Mary] Do you have to do anything with the sculptures in the wintertime or to prepare them for winter?

- [Bruce] Just a couple of the mosaic tile ones we cover so moisture doesn't get into the, and freeze and they can, you know, but otherwise everything stays outside where actually part of our vision is we're doing this log building and to maybe even be open in the winter where the log building could be a warming house and kids can slide on the hills or you can walk around the sculptures, give you something to do in the winter.

'Cause it's, you know, with the virgin snow, it's kind of fun.

And that, you know, it's a lot of work to get that going.

But right now we're have some of Zoran's wood pieces inside.

He calls them time machines because they're these really wild pieces with patterns of Serbian rugs from a thousand years ago make up the designs on the wood pieces.

- [Mary] So then do you have to hose down the sculptures in the spring to take care of them and clean them up at all?

- [Bruce] There's always some maintenance to do on some of the pieces, but they're pretty much maintenance free.

But there's, you know, the golf course and things, you know, need maintenance.

- [Mary] I noticed that some of the sculptors actually move.

- [Bruce] Well, since I was 17, I started with kinetic sculptures, moving sculptures with simple physics, kind of weight and balance and designed some of them to work outside in the wind.

So I haven't done those for a long time, but they were real popular for about 25 years, starting in the '80s, '90s and the first part of 2000s.

And I sold them in galleries all around the country.

And we have Dale Lewis's sculptures.

He does a lot of fun pieces.

He has the pig in the airplane and talking about repurposing materials.

The rhino, if you look real close, you can see it written, EPA certified noise approval for Harley-Davidson mufflers.

So the whole rhino is made out of Harley-Davidson mufflers, but I don't know, maybe they didn't pass because they were all at the scrap yard.

So, but that's him repurposing, some fun material.

- What are some of your favorite sculptures that you have here?

- There's, I like the pig and the chicken.

There's a message with that because the chicken is cooking bacon and the pig is cooking eggs.

And it's just the message you get with that.

I did the rock paper scissors and it's fun when a group of people walk by and all of a sudden one person will yell out, "Oh, rock paper scissors," 'cause they recognize what that piece is about.

Zoran did this basket of rocks, which started off as one giant rock and then he cut it into pieces and carved it with a hot torch.

You can actually carve stone with a hot torch.

It heats up the surface and it expands and just flakes off naturally how the rock was put together.

But just how he made that is, I'm impressed 'cause I don't know how he did that work 'cause it weighs like 33,000 pounds.

One day my Bobcat needed servicing so I bring it into Lano Equipment and I see a pile of these Bobcat treads that some Bobcats have so they don't sink in and they're happy to get rid of 'em and I somehow visioned 'em as a giant turtle shell.

So I made pieces made so strong you can get 25 kids climbing over it any way, which way they want and take their pictures and some kids hang out in the turtle's mouth like the snapping turtles eating 'em up and it's all fun.

- Well, I'd like to see the mini golf course too.

- Well, that's where fine art meets mini golf and let's go take a look.

(playful music) - I have a question.

I know there are winter hardy wine grapes in Minnesota but are there winter hardy table grapes available for Minnesota conditions?

- Yes, in fact, we can grow table grapes in Minnesota as well.

The University of Minnesota has been breeding table grapes as well as wine grapes but we haven't released anything since the 1970s.

So the table grapes available now include Bluebell, which is a black grape, Swenson Red, which is a red grape and then Edelweiss, which is actually a wine grape and a table grape and it's a green grape.

All of them are seeded, all of them are very Concord-like so if you've had grape juice or grape jelly, they have very similar flavors.

We're very excited 'cause we've reinvigorated our breeding program on table grapes and we're about to release three new varieties.

So they include, again, a green grape, a red grape and a black grape.

So first I'm gonna talk about our new green grape.

It is, I think, very exciting.

It has wonderful tropical pineapple flavors.

It's seedless, that's the greatest thing about our three new varieties.

They are all going to be seedless.

The berry's a little bit smaller but it's packed full of flavor.

It has good texture, it even smells tropical.

So it's a really lovely grape that I'm really excited for people to get to taste.

Our red grape is a little bit more mild and flavored.

It has a little bit of strawberry flavor in it and it's about the same berry size and it tastes lovely.

It's a little bit longer cluster and looks a little bit different but it has great flavors.

It's got good disease resistance too.

So I'm excited for people for growing those grapes.

Finally, our black grape, we joke and we call it the blueberry grape.

It's the size and shape of a blueberry.

It has a crunch like a blueberry.

We've even frozen it and made pancakes and cupcakes out of the blueberries or out of the grapes, I call them blueberries now.

So we're really excited for these new table grapes coming onto the market.

You probably, because of the release time and growing, it takes about three years to grow grapes.

You'll probably seeing these available around Minnesota in 2029.

- [Narrator] Ask the Arboretum Experts has been brought to you by the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska dedicated to welcoming, informing and inspiring all through outstanding displays, protected natural areas, horticultural research and education.

- [Mary] Bruce, how did you decide to build a mini golf course?

- Well, I think I had a practical side of me.

I bought this land to do landscape sculptures and somehow came to me that functional landscape sculptures could be made into mini golf fine art.

And I just took it from there.

I built a couple of examples and had to get a conditional use permit from the city.

And I said, if I couldn't correct any problems, I wouldn't do it.

But the community ended up really liking it and for them to entertain their guests whenever they come out here.

- [Mary] How many holes are in your golf course?

- [Bruce] I have 14 holes and thought I would be making more, but I kind of worked into the sculpture park.

So I worked on the sculpture park more than adding more mini golf holes.

I just kind of stopped there until another idea comes.

I'll keep it going at that.

- [Mary] Who designed the course and all of the holes?

- [Bruce] Well, I designed all the golf holes and we have one golf hole where you have to jump the river and there's a giant rock, like a pool ball shot.

You can bounce your ball off the rock.

But if you notice that rock is all kind of polished.

It was the top of the stone mountain that you get the rocks from in St.

Cloud and it was polished by the glacier.

But on our last hole, we have gently down the stream, which is your ball goes into the river and winds all around.

And that's just simple physics that the water will push the ball.

- [Mary] How did you get inspired to create each hole?

- I get inspired from my previous and it just kind of leads to another idea.

Sometimes I surprise myself, where did this idea come from?

I saw a boat for sale on the side of the road and that guy repairs boats.

He showed me this giant Chris Craft Roamer steel hull boat, which became our hole number eight.

I turned the boat upside down and cut out a bunch of holes and put in this recycled eyeglass lens material and made that into a unique looking hole.

- [Mary] Now who manages the course?

- [Bruce] I have a one full time, cleans out the greens and helps cut grass and take care of the animals and another almost full time person who schedules the clubhouse for kids to take the money and hand out the clubs and he helps detail maintenance and things.

- [Mary] How many people work here?

- [Bruce] Oh, there's like during the summer, there's four of us every day, whether it's maintenance or a new project or fixing some cobblestones.

- [Mary] How do you advertise?

- [Bruce] In the very beginning we tried some advertising but it's not that effective and so we did a good job and people just talked about us on social media and that's the way the word got out and we did get a few other show features and people learn about us that way.

- So have you had any famous people come to play here too?

- Well, we had some Thailand monks in their full garb and there's a temple, some of them were playing mini golf.

You know, we had Carly Simon's son-in-law and that was an interesting meeting because he's an expert on dyslexic and he talks, he has a TED Talk, which I didn't even know about then but he introduced me to TED Talks and I'm dyslexic.

So that's kind of how I developed all my creativity.

In school, I had a hard time reading but I think I just maybe go right into art and developed art and back then they kind of said it was a learning disability but dyslexia isn't a learning disability.

I think it's just a whole different way of thinking and there's some very famous people, you know, Einstein and Picasso and I can name a bunch but, you know, Steve Jobs.

We're all dyslexic.

- [Mary] So has your unique golf course and sculpture garden received some unusual publicity?

- [Bruce] Yeah, you know, there's been local TV shows and they ended up playing nationally on their broadcast.

You know, at the end of the news series, they have a positive news story.

So, you know, we played nationally and I was getting calls from all over the country, a few calls.

(laughs) - [Mary] So what hours are you open?

- [Bruce] You know, we start our season when the weather permits in mid-April and go to the very end of October and open at 9:30 in the morning till sundown or nine o'clock at night, whichever is earlier, depending on the time of year.

- [Mary] Are there any age restrictions for people that can come?

- [Bruce] Oh, no, no age restrictions.

You know, we have a golf cart in case someone needs assistance 'cause there's a lot of grounds to cover if they wanna view the sculpture park, they can use our golf cart and all kids come and feed the goats.

We sell goat chow and even old people like to feed the goats or, you know, I'm surprised.

- [Mary] Do you sell the sculptures that are here too?

- [Bruce] Oh, some of the artists have worked for sale but I don't sell anything here.

It's kind of set up just in a way that it would leave a gap if I sold something.

And I, earlier in my years, sold a lot of artwork and that's not my goal.

I'm actually looking for the best art I can find and, you know, if it's a good piece, I just wanna add it to the collection.

And it's nice to give the Minnesota artists a venue to show their work 'cause over 50 of the sculptures are Minnesota artists.

- So what are your plans for the future of the golf course or the sculpture gardens?

- Well, I gotta mow the grass today (laughs) but, you know, continue to look for good work and work on the shelter buildings for maybe being open in the winter.

And, you know, there's maintenance and I just enjoy what I do and sometimes the ideas come because I find something and there's no real plan until it inspired me to do it.

- [Mary] Well, thank you so much for letting us come and see your fabulous place.

- [Bruce] Oh, you're welcome and it's fun for all ages.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funding for Prairie Yard and Garden is provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years in the heart of truck country.

Heartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart.

Farmers Mutual Telephone Company and Federated Telephone Cooperative, proud to be powering Acira, pioneers in bringing state-of-the-art technology to our rural communities.

Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a nonprofit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

The Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008.

And by Friends of Prairie Yard and Garden, a community of supporters like you who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a friend of Prairie Yard and Garden, visit pioneer.org/pyg.

(upbeat music)