The waxcap wars ... one of Gormley's figures that will no longer grace the grounds of Chatsworth. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty
Antony Gormley's iron men have triumphed over many things until now - a tiny fungus called the waxcap has ended their proposed summer outing in the grounds of Chatsworth House. Everything looked set for 100 of the life-size nudes based on Gormley's own body to be scattered round the mansion - all, intriguingly, standing at the same height above sea level. Now it's off.
The problem is that 86 of the sculptures were earmarked for the Salisbury lawns, a fabulous sweep of classic "English" grass, which has been largely undisturbed for 248 years (they used to mow it, amazingly, with scythes). Hence the happy conditions for Hygrocybe nigrescens and other waxcaps that flourish on the rich, springy turf.
Gormley and the Duke of Devonshire, who is an energetic sponsor of contemporary art in his ultra-traditional landscape at Chatsworth, were going to dig some very big holes in this mycological paradise. Because the lawns rise steeply behind Wyattville's north wing, some of the iron men would have had only the tops of their head showing, to keep their feet on the same contour as those lower down.
Enter the ecologists of the Peak District national park authority, which normally plays ball closely with Chatsworth because both are in the same "Visit Derbyshire" line of business. All the park's other departments had welcomed the pulling power of the country's best-known sculptor and such a vast set piece; but the waxcap colony is internationally important and, to put it mildly, a great deal more fragile.
It was this David and Goliath side to the potential controversy that explains the duke and Gormley's otherwise surprising acquiescence in abandoning the scheme. Even the park authority itself hints that had the planning application gone to committee, the ecologists might well have been overruled. But world sympathy would probably have gone to the under-fungus.
It seldom stands more than five centimeters high, and its ribbing and slender stalk have a grace which might well be the envy of any merely human sculptor. This wasn't an easy opponent like Sefton council, who mithered about the supposed dangers of Gormley giants on Crosby beach, or the transport people who prophesied collisions and tailbacks on the A1 beside the Angel of the North.
It's a shame that the set piece, known as Time Horizon, could not have been found a less sensitive part of Chatsworth's ample grounds. It is lost to Britain for at least two years now, as it has to be packaged at the end of this summer for a showing in the Austrian Alps.
But fear not. One reason why there hasn't been an uprising of sculpture-lovers in the Peak (apart from sentimentality about the waxcap) is that Gormley and the duke are buddies and something else interesting can be expected at Chatsworth before long.
As it is, there is new sculptural work in the garden this season by Allen Jones and David Nash, and the old dependables have benefited from a winter season dusting down. My favourite is the willow tree fountain, which the first Duke of Devonshire put up in the 1690s. Celia Fiennes saw it in 1696 and exalted "all on a sudden by ye turning of a sluice it rains from each leafe and from the branches like a shower, it being made of brass and pipes but in appearance exactly like any willow." Now there's a thought for Gormley's next generation of iron men.
