The lost art of pruning
Gardens are a special place where one can go to relax and enjoy the beauty that plants give us. I love to visit different gardens, and I find points of interest in each of them. I have been fortunate to visit some amazing topiary gardens, and I find the creativity and precision that goes into the shaping of the plants fascinating.
It is believed that topiary gardens have been around since around 44 B.C. when Julius Caesar’s friend Gnaeus Martin Calvinus started pruning bushes and trees into different shapes. We know that in the 16th century wealthy families started pruning plants to make knot gardens. These were quite the fashion in Europe at that time and many are still in existence at old chateaus and villas and many are copied today.
There are many fabulous topiary gardens that people have created and I just want to mention a few of them. I was traveling in the Dordogne Valley in France one fall and happened upon a garden, Marqueyssac. This garden was quite different from any topiary garden I had ever seen because the shapes were surreal or dreamlike. The overall effect of this garden is stunning, to see all these vivid green, bizarre shapes covering the hillside is a site you will not forget. De Cerval began this garden in 1861 and for the next 30 years, he oversaw 150,000 boxwoods being groomed to look like the sheep grazing in the countryside.
On a trip to England to visit friends who live in the Lake District, I had mentioned to them that I really wanted to see some gardens while there. Picking me up at the airport, we immediately went to Levens Hall, the world’s oldest and one of the finest topiary gardens in existence.
This garden was started in 1690, which was called the golden age of topiary, and is still as glorious as it was then.
The head gardener, Chris Crowder, gave us a tour and for the next two hours, I was mesmerized at this beautiful garden and about how it is maintained each year to keep these marvelous shapes looking their best. They have topiary on display that includes chess pieces, birds, judge wigs, and others designs that fill the garden. This unique collection of ancient box
and yew trees, in abstract or geometric shapes, are underplanted with brightly colored annuals to help make the garden beds come alive with color. In addition to the topiary garden, they have an orchard, a walnut grove and even a croquet lawn, where a tournament was being played.
Chateau de Villandry, in the Loire Valley of France, is another very interesting garden. Started during the Renaissance period, it has had several different owners that have worked to shape the garden into what it is today. Joachim Carvallo scattered 324 yew trees throughout the garden that are now topiaries with a Spanish influence. These topiaries are pruned once a year, a painstaking process that can take up to two hours for
one tree.
Traveling in the U. S., one of my very favorite gardens was created by Pearl Fryar in Bishopville, South Carolina. Fryar began creating topiaries in the early 1980s after visiting a garden center where he saw a topiary for sale. Fryar went home and immediately started shaping every plant in his yard into some unusual form.
Fryar has more than 50 different trees and shrubs, many rescued from a garden center, that he nursed back to health and has pruned into whimsical shapes. He has created all kinds of artistic shapes that make up this eccentric garden. Cedars, Fraser fir, wintergreen barberry, deodar cedar and other plants make up his garden.
He was told he could not make a dogwood into a topiary but, rising to the challenge, he has a lollypop looking dogwood that is unique. This self- taught artist does not prune in the normal sense but what he has created is amazing.
Every time I visit a garden where evergreens have been pruned into interesting shapes, I come home and want to prune one of my shrubs into some fancy shape. I have never done it, but I really have a desire to do so. Maybe one day I will be like Pearl Frye. But until then, I dream of these wonderful gardens I have been fortunate enough to have visited.