As soon as I ducked under the overturned yacht sheltering hole No. 8, I declared it my favorite.
My preference had nothing to do with cup placement, green condition, difficulty level, or anything mini-golf-related at all. I just appreciated the way the Chris-Craft Roamer’s hull created a surprise private space, and how the sun streamed in through 100-some multicolored resin-filled holes, making it feel like you were putting inside a disco ball.
That’s the type of art-meets-golf experience that Big Stone Mini Golf and Sculpture Gardens, on 17 acres in Minnetrista, was designed to deliver. Sculptures not only overlap onto the course, they are the course, with strategically placed logs, boulders and artwork mingling to create obstacles, challenges and fine places to sit. It’s all shaded in enough pines and hardwoods to give a relaxing North Woods vacation feel. Add in farm animals, picnic spots, a free s’more setup and lots of outdoor games, and Big Stone holds the promise of hours well spent.
Big Stone is the vision, work and life of Bruce Stillman, who began selling sculptures at the Uptown Art Fair at age 16. In 1991, he laid eyes on the original farmhouse, hills and hayfield — “a blank canvas,” Stillman calls it — of this former dairy farm on the metro’s edge.
Stillman instinctively dreams up unique uses for things, which led to a revelation: Why not mini-golf holes as sculptures? “I decided to do an example at the farm, and once I started, I knew this is where it’s got to be,” he said.
He created hole after hole on intuition, skimming off a pile of felled trees to create Hole No. 1, aka “Dead Tree Forest,” and stripping down and customizing the Chris-Craft standout, cheekily christened “Holey Ship.” The course opened in 2004, and proceeds help finance the sculpture garden.

Just golfing a round
I arrived with my teenage son and three of his friends on a steamy weekday afternoon. The boys promptly began working the course, which meant not only golfing, but also occasionally stump-standing and boulder-climbing.
Parents pushed strollers and ran after young ones. A group of friends chatted and lingered in the dappled sunlight. One person issued a pep talk to the final golfer in their party who faced down Hole 6’s hollowed-out log, angled into a craggy boulder: “Grandma, you can do it!”