Topiary is the horticultural practice of training by clipping the foliage and of , and to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes,
The plants used in topiary are evergreen, mostly woody plant, have small Leaf or needles, produce dense foliage, and have compact or columnar (e.g., fastigiate) growth habits. Common species chosen for topiary include cultivars of European box ( Buxus sempervirens), arborvitae ( Thuja species), bay laurel ( Laurus nobilis), holly ( Ilex species), Myrtaceae ( Eugenia or Myrtus species), yew ( Taxus species), and privet ( Ligustrum species).[A list of common subjects, including the now rarely used Phillyrea common in 17th-century topiary, forms the second part of Miles Hadfield, Topiary and Ornamental Hedges (London) 1971.] Shaped wire cages are sometimes employed in modern topiary to guide untutored shears, but traditional topiary depends on patience and a steady hand; small-leaved ivy can be used to cover a cage and give the look of topiary in a few months. The hedge is a simple form of topiary used to create boundaries, walls or screens.
History
Origin
European topiary dates from
Ancient Rome times. Pliny's
Natural History and the epigram writer
Martial both credit
Gaius Matius, in the circle of
Julius Caesar, with introducing the first topiary to
Roman gardens, and Pliny the Younger describes in a letter the elaborate figures of animals, inscriptions, cyphers and
in clipped greens at his Tuscan villa (Epistle v.6, to Apollinaris). Within the atrium of a Roman house or
Roman villa, a place that had formerly been quite plain, the art of the
topiarius produced a miniature landscape (
topos) which might employ the art of stunting trees, also mentioned, disapprovingly, by Pliny (
Historia Naturalis xii.6).
Far Eastern topiary
The clipping and shaping of shrubs and trees in
China and
Japan have been practised with equal rigor, but for different reasons. The goal is to achieve an artful expression of the "natural" form of venerably aged pines, given character by the forces of wind and weather. Their most concentrated expressions are in the related arts of Chinese
penjing and Japanese
bonsai.
Japanese cloud tree is closest to the European art: the cloud-like forms of clipped growth are designed to be best appreciated after a fall of snow. Japanese Zen gardens ( karesansui, dry rock gardens) make extensive use of Karikomi (a topiary technique of clipping shrubs and trees into large curved shapes or sculptures) and Hako-zukuri (shrubs clipped into boxes and straight lines).
Renaissance topiary
In the 1550s and throughout Elizabeth I’s reign, topiary gardens grew in popularity.
Knot garden, formed from interlacing box hedges and aromatic herbs, featured square, symmetrical designs inspired by household patterns such as carpets and embroidery.
During the Italian Renaissance, gardens emphasized symmetry and proportion. The parterre developed from the knot garden, featuring clipped shrubs and statues arranged within geometric box-hedged patterns and became a central feature of formal European gardens. French designers expanded these ideas to grander scales, as seen in André Le Nôtre’s work at Versailles. Dutch gardeners became known for intricate geometric and figurative designs and exported their techniques across Europe. By this time, topiary appeared in both formal estates and cottage gardens.
Your gardener can frame your lesser wood to the shape of men armed in the field, ready to give battell: or swift-running Grey Houndes to chase the Deere, or hunt the Hare. This kind of hunting shall not wate your corne, nor much your coyne.[Lawson, A New Orchard and Garden 1618.]
Decline in the 18th century
In England topiary was all but killed as a fashion by the famous satiric essay on "Verdant Sculpture" that
Alexander Pope published in the short-lived newspaper
The Guardian, 29 September 1713, with its mock catalogue descriptions of
- *Adam and Eve in yew; Adam a little shattered by the fall of the tree of knowledge in the great storm; Eve and the serpent very flourishing.
- *The tower of Babel, not yet finished.
- *St George in Buxus; his arm scarce long enough, but will be in condition to stick the dragon by next April.
- *A Privet hog, shot up into a porcupine, by its being forgot a week in rainy weather.
In the 1720s and 1730s, the generation of Charles Bridgeman and William Kent swept the English garden clean of its hedges, mazes, and topiary. Although topiary fell from grace in aristocratic gardens, it continued to be featured in ' gardens, where a single example of traditional forms, a ball, a tree trimmed to a cone in several cleanly separated tiers, meticulously clipped and perhaps topped with a topiary peacock, might be passed on as an heirloom. Such an heirloom, but on heroic scale, was the ancient churchward yew of Harlington, London, immortalized in a 1729 engraved broadsheet bearing an illustration with an enthusiastic verse encomium by its dedicated parish clerk and topiarist.[ "Poet Iohn Saxy upon his Yew-Tree Novr 1729", broadsheet, 1729 reissued 1770 (British Library); the print was the gift of Dorothea, Lady Banks, the wife of the eminent botanist Sir Joseph Banks.] formerly shaped as an obelisk on square plinth topped with a ten-foot ball surmounted by a cockerel, the Harlington Yew survives today, untonsured for the last two centuries.
Revival
The revival of topiary in English gardening parallels the revived "
Jacobethan" taste in architecture; John Loudon in the 1840s was the first garden writer to express a sense of loss due to the topiary that had been removed from English gardens. The art of topiary, with enclosed garden "rooms", burst upon the English gardening public with the mature examples at
Elvaston Castle, Derbyshire, which opened to public viewing in the 1850s and created a sensation: "within a few years architectural topiary was springing up all over the country (it took another 25 years before sculptural topiary began to become popular as well)".
[Brent Elliott, "Historical Revivalism in the Twentieth Century: A Brief Introduction" Garden History 28.1, "Reviewing the Twentieth-Century Landscape" (Summer 2000:17-31) p. 19.] The following generation, represented by James Shirley Hibberd, rediscovered the charm of topiary specimens as part of the mystique of the "English
cottage garden", which was as much invented as revived from the 1870s:
The classic statement of the British Arts and Crafts revival of topiary among roses and mixed herbaceous borders, characterised generally as "the old-fashioned garden" or the "Dutch garden"[Elliott 2000:19.] was to be found in Topiary: Garden Craftsmanship in Yew and Box by Nathaniel Lloyd (1867–1933), who had retired in middle age and taken up architectural design with the encouragement of Sir Edwin Lutyens. Lloyd's own timber-framed manor house, Great Dixter, Sussex, remains an epitome of this stylised mix of topiary with "cottagey" plantings that was practised by Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens in a fruitful partnership. The new gardening vocabulary incorporating topiary required little expensive restructuring: "At Lyme Park, Cheshire, the garden went from being an Italian garden to being a Dutch garden without any change actually taking place on the ground," Brent Elliot noted in 2000.
Americans in England were sensitive to the renewed charms of topiary. When William Waldorf Astor bought Hever Castle, Kent, around 1906, the moat surrounding the house precluded the addition of wings for servants, guests and the servants of guests that the Astor manner required. He accordingly built an authentically styled Tudor village to accommodate the overflow, with an "Old English Garden" including hedges and free-standing topiary.
20th century
American portable style topiary was introduced to
Disneyland around 1962.
Walt Disney helped bring this new medium into being, wishing to recreate his cartoon characters throughout his theme park in the form of landscape shrubbery. This style of topiary is based on a suitably shaped steel wire frame through which the plants eventually extend as they grow. The frame, which remains as a permanent trimming guide, may be either stuffed with sphagnum moss and then planted, or placed around shrubbery. The sculpture slowly transforms into a permanent topiary as the plants fill in the frame.
This style has led to imaginative displays and festivals throughout the Disney resorts and parks, and
mosaiculture (multiple types and styles of plants creating a mosaic,
living sculpture) worldwide includes the impressive display at the 2008 Summer Olympics in China. Living corporate logos along roadsides,
green roof softscapes and
Green wall that biofilter air are offshoots of this technology.
Artificial topiary is another offshoot similar to the concept of artificial Christmas trees. This topiary mimics the style of living versions and is often used to supply indoor greenery for home or office decoration. Patents are issued for the style, design, and construction methodology of different types of topiary trees.[ Decorative display - US Patent 6237882 Full Text , US Patent 6237882 - Decorative display. US Patent Issued on May 29, 2001.]
Notable topiary displays
File:Topiary in Railton.jpg|Topiary at Railton, Town of Topiary, Tasmania, Australia
File:Topiaryelephant.jpg|Topiary elephants at Bang Pa-In Royal Palace
File:Gurning... (8456271082).jpg|Topiary at Kingston Lacy, UK
File:Hidcote Manor.jpg|Topiary birds at Hidcote Manor Garden
File:Eyrignac Manor - Gardens-02.JPG|Topiary garden at Manor d'Eyrignac, France
File:Henfield-St Peter's Church-path to Church - geograph.org.uk - 132343.jpg|The path to St Peter's Church in Henfield is flanked by topiary
File:Stonehouse, Bush house, Glasshouse - geograph.org.uk - 60354.jpg|Topiary house
File:" Green Pig" - geograph.org.uk - 245244.jpg|A topiary pig in Halton, Northumberland
File:Topiary vijayanrajapuram.jpg|Topiary in the Botanical garden Thiruvananthapuram
File:Dragon hedge.jpg|Dragon shaped hedge, East Rudham
Australia
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Railton, Tasmania, known as Railton Town of Topiary
Asia
-
Mosaiculture 2006 (Shanghai, China)
[ Mosaiculture 2006]
-
The Samban-Lei Sekpil in Manipur, India, begun in 1983 and recently measuring in height, is the world's tallest topiary, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. It is clipped of Duranta erecta, a shrub widely used in Manipuri gardens, into a tiered shape called a sekpil or satra that honours the forest god Umang Lai.
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Royal Palace at Bang Pa-In in Thailand
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The Terrace Garden in Chandigarh, India, has topiaries in the form of animals by Narinder Kumar Sharma as an attraction for children.
Central America
-
Parque Francisco Alvarado, Zarcero, Costa Rica
South America
Europe
- A premier topiary garden started in the late 17th century by M. Beaumont, a French gardener who laid out the gardens of Hampton Court (which were recreated in the 1980s). Levens Hall is recognised by the Guinness Book of Records as having the oldest Topiary garden in the world.
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Topsham railway station (Devon, England) An example of topiary lettering.
-
Canons Ashby (Northamptonshire, England) A 16th-century garden revised in 1708
-
Stiffkey, (Norfolk, England)
- Several informal designs including a line of elephants at Nellie's cottage and a guitar.
-
Hidcote Manor Garden (Gloucestershire, England)
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Knightshayes Cour] (Devon, England)
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Owlpen Manor (Gloucestershire, England) A late 16th-early 17th century terraced garden on a hillside, reordered in the 1720s, with "dark, secret rooms of yew" (Vita Sackville-West).
-
Great Dixter Gardens (East Sussex, England): Laid out by Nathaniel Lloyd, the author of a book on topiary, and preserved and extended by his son, the garden-writer Christopher Lloyd.
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Much Wenlock Priory, Shropshire
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Drummond Castle Gardens (Perthshire, Scotland)
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Portmeirion (Snowdonia, Wales)
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Parc des Topiares (Durbuy, Belgium)
- A large topiary garden (10,000 m2) with over 250 figures.
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Château de Villandry, France
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Villa Lante (Bagnaia, Italy)
-
Palazzo Giusti
[* Francesco Pona: Sileno overo Delle Bellezze del Luogo dell'Ill.mo Sig. Co. Gio. Giacomo Giusti, 1620 Angelo Tamo, Verona * Francesco Pona: Il Paradiso de' Fiori overo Lo archetipo de' Giardini, 1622 Angelo Tamo, Verona * Paolo Villa: 1993-94, pdf with maps and 200 photos] (Verona, Italy)
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Castello Balduino (Montalto Pavese, Italy)
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Guggenheim Museum, (Bilbao, Spain): A huge sculpture of a West Highland White Terrier designed by the artist Jeff Koons, which is thought by experts and scientists to be the world's biggest topiary dog.
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The Tsubo-en Zen garden in Lelystad, Netherlands is a private modern Japanese Zen (karesansui, dry rock) garden that makes extensive use of so-called O-karikomi combined with Hako-zukuri (see above).
-
Gardens of the Palace of Versailles outside Paris, France
North America
-
Hunnewell Arboretum (Wellesley, Massachusetts)
- 140-year-old topiary garden of native white pine and arborvitae.
-
Ladew Topiary Gardens (Monkton, Maryland)
- A topiary garden in Maryland established by award-winning topiary artist Harvey Ladew in the late 1930s. Located approximately halfway between the north Baltimore suburbs and the southern Pennsylvania border. Ladew's most famous topiary is a hunt, horses, riders, dogs and the fox, clearing a well-clipped hedge, the most famous single piece of classical topiary in North America.
- A public garden in downtown Columbus that features a topiary tableau of Georges Seurat's famous painting Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte
- One of the subjects of the documentary Fast, Cheap and Out of Control (1997) was George Mendonça, the topiarist at Green Animals for more than seventy years: "it's just cut and wait, cut and wait" Mendonça says in a filmed sequence.
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Busch Gardens Tampa, established 1959. 365 acre property featuring large, colorful and detailed sphagnum topiary.
In popular culture
-
In the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp film Edward Scissorhands, Edward proves to have a natural gift for topiary art. Numerous creative works are shown throughout the movie.
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In the Stephen King novel The Shining, topiary animals that move when people are not looking frighten the Torrance family.
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In the children's novel Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston, an overgrown topiary figure of Noah plays a sinister role.
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A real-life topiary artist is one of the subjects of Errol Morris's Fast, Cheap and Out of Control.
See also
-
Bibliography of hedges and topiary
-
History of gardening
-
Tree shaping
References and sources
- References
- Sources
-
Curtis, Charles H. and W. Gibson, The Book of Topiary (reprinted, 1985 Tuttle),
-
Lloyd, Nathaniel. Topiary: Garden Art in Yew and Box (reprinted, 2006)
Further reading
-
Hadfield, Miles. Topiary and Ornamental Hedges: Their history and cultivation. London: Adam & Charles Black, 1971.
-
Francesco Pona. Il Paradiso de' Fiori overo Lo archetipo de' Giardini. Verona: Angelo Tamo, 1622.
External links
