The first sculpture in the garden depicts the abduction of Persephone by the Lord of the Underworld, Hades. Persephone was the daughter of the Goddess Demeter, the Goddess of spring and the harvest. One day while picking flowers, she was observed by Hades, the Lord of the Underworld. Unable to resist her beauty, he rose up from the depths and abducted her.

Demeter not knowing what had happened to her daughter, went into mourning. Only Hecate, having the power to witness all that occured on Heaven, Earth and the Underworld, had seen the crime and came forwards to tell the Goddess what had actually transpired. But the news drove Demeter into an even greater depression, and she soon withheld her gifts from mankind. For the next year, nothing grew and mortals began to starve. Finnally unable to bear the lamentations of humanity, Zeus, Lord of the Gods, ordered Hermes to go down into Hades kingdom to see if Persephone could be retrieved.

Hades was willing to let Persephone return to her mothers arms, but not perminantly. During the time she had been with him, the maiden had eaten from a pomegranite, and one could eat or drink food from the Underworld without being made one of its denizens. A compromise was made: Persephone could return to Olympus, but stay there for only 2/3rds of the year. The remaining third had to be spent by her in the Underworld reigning at Hades side as his Queen.

It is said that this is the reason for the winter season; Demeter mourning the loss of her daughter in the final third of the year.

The next sculpture is a statue of Orpheus, playing his lyre for Hades and Persephone, the rulers of the Underworld.

A master musician (and a onetime Argonaut) he had fallen in love with and married the beautiful Eurydice. On the very day of their wedding she was bitten by a snake and died.

Unable to bear this loss, Orpheus ventured into the Underworld to find her and bring her back with him to the land of the living. Playing his lyre as he went, he was able to subdue all of the places gaurdians, and played so sweetly that he drew the attention of Hades Persephone. He then changed his song into a plea for his young wife's return. So wonderful was his playing, that they summoned her from the shadows and agreed to let her leave with him. But one condition was made: he was not to turn around to look at her on his journey to the surface.

At first he was able to do this, but as the trip progressed, he grew uncertain that she was following, and longed for a glance. Finnally, unable to resist the urge, he turned around. Eurydice had indeed been following, but the moment his eyes fell upon her, she vanished back into the darkness forever.

The final sculpture depicts the hero Hercules wrestling with the fearsome gaurdian of Tartarus, Cerberus. After killing his own wife and sons in a fit of maddness set upon him by the Goddess Hera, Hercules had gone to the Oracle of Delphi to find a way to purify himself.

The Oracle bade him to go to his cousin, King Eurystheus and do whatever the man bade him to. Eurystheus set twelve tasks for the hero to complete, each more dangerous than the last. In the final and most dangerous of these, Hercules had to venture down into the Underworld and bring its most fearsome gaurdian, the three-headed Cerberus, back to the surface. Hades gave his permission for the contest on the condition that no weapons were used to subdue the creature. Facing the creature with nothing but his bare hands, the two fought. In the end hercules subdued the beast and carried him back to Eurytheus. His final labor was then to return Cerberus back to Underworld.