Hands off my hedge lady’s privet parts

A TOPIARIST has complained that drunks keep having sex with his ornate “privet lady” hedge.

Designer and silversmith Keith Tyssen, 84, has been carefully cultivating the privet hedge in the shape of a nude “goddess” for more than 30 years at his Sheffield home.

But, he has been woken regularly in the middle of the night by drunk passers-by “interfering” with his creation.

Mr Tyssen, who has exhibited his jewellery at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, told The Daily Telegraph: “Drunk passers-by climb on top of her and pull apart her legs.

“It’s too banal to talk about what they do to her. Even the girls go crazy and hysterical with laughter as they jump around on her.” The hedge, which he named Gloria, started out as a male sculpture but was transformed over time into a “sexy goddess”, he said.

It was planted in 1985 as a companion piece to a Chinese dragon on the other side of Mr Tyssen’s driveway, but has attracted considerable unwanted attention in recent years.

He said: “Most people are amused and the students from the university often come with their parents to pose in front of it for their graduation photographs.

“It’s a local figure of fun and amusement. That’s how I like it, but it’s awful how it gets molested in such vicious ways.”

He said the hedge was seriously disturbed two or three times a year as “drunken revellers fool about after losing their ability to be sensible at 4am or 5am.

“That’s when I get woken up.” Mr Tyssen says that his Chinese dragon, which features a single giant eye and an undulating backbone, has escaped the attention of latenight passers-by, and that he has considered putting up a sign or alarm to Keith Tyssen’s figurine is based on Saliera, below, a sculpture by Benvenuto Cellini try and protect his “privet lady”. The artist and silversmith, who is still producing silver and pewter works from his studio, says it is hard to find the time to repair the hedge after each assault.

“It takes a long time to grow her back to the right shape after each attack. She never quite recovers and always seems to be scarred or broken in some way.”

Mr Tyssen lives near a student area of Sheffield, but does not blame highspirited local students, saying that he thinks the culprits are local “street wanderers” who lack the “intellectual motivation” to appreciate his topiary.

“I don’t think they even understand it. It’s more intellectual and requires them to think about the art aspect.

“The students are far more appreciative,” he said.

Mr Tyssen trained at the Royal College of Art in the 1960s and was a contemporary of cutlery and metalwork designer David Mellor. The hedge was influenced by a 16th-century gold sculpture by Benvenuto Cellini called Saliera.

He said: “The hedge is a fun relaxation. It’s not my serious work, it just morphed into something as I wanted to make the lady as sexy as possible – which is difficult as she is just a privet hedge. If there are just a few leaves out of place she loses it.

“I have to clip her very carefully every week. She needs a lot of attention. She possibly doesn’t get enough.”