Unsung icons: Topiary The cutting-edge of Australian-made design

COMEDIAN DAVID SMIEDT TAKES AN IRREVERENT, BUT APPRECIATIVE, LOOK AT THE CLASSIC THINGS THAT DEFINE YOU-BEAUT AUSSIE LIFE

EVERY NOW AND THEN, Australians succumb to a collective decorating delirium. In this frenzy, we reckon we can improve on what has developed in our backyards over centuries of evolution: think paving over lawn in the name of easier maintenance and the planting of species that require way more water than our dry continent can realistically supply. Shudder we should, Australia, shudder we should. At other times, the green gambit pays off. We speak, of course, of the dark art that is tree shaping, AKA topiary, AKA why is that lilly pilly a poodle?

Now, before you get your buxus in a bunch, it must be said that we, too, love a neat hedge. Elegant, symmetrical and trimmed back, it’s the garden equivalent of a skilful bikini wax. Not least for the fact that we have let ours go a bit over winter. But things did not stop there. Armed with hedge trimmers and a whole lot of imagination, we yearned for shapes that were more fluid yet utterly constructed. As if we were saying to Mother Nature, “you go chill with a kombucha, we’ve got it from here.”

And we did. Before we could even say “ficus”, we had denuded various plants of the foliage on their stalks – the full Brazilian, one could say – and crafted a lush orb of leaves at the top.

A stand of these flora pompoms looked just darling on each side of a stairway or doorway. Better still, they could be trimmed to squat in pots at your feet or soar a metre off the ground on palings that resembled disembodied spheres. In the garden proper, you could really lash out with a series standing sentinel over the shrinking violets. Depending on your perspective and tastes, they either added a sense of formality and geometry to the space or just went full lollipop. Either way was good.

Circles, however, turned out to be a mere ‘gateway drug’ into the grade-As of topiary. These were soon supplanted – see what we did there – with spirals that required craftily hidden wires and a near obsessive level of secateur maintenance. This turned out to be small-scale stuff, both literally and metaphorically.

“Why have a regular old tree in your garden when it could be carved into fantastical shapes?” asked many Australians, back when the craze was at its most fervent. And why settle for just spheres or spirals for that matter? Both amateurs and professionals alike attacked their Lonicera much like green-thumbed Michelangelos on a piece of virgin marble. As with any art, this required practice and, just as happens with a bad haircut, one often had to wait to grow it out before you could remedy the effort.

Animals and topiary have long gone paw in limb. Along with inanimate items such as teacups, koalas, kangaroos and echidnas began sprouting in Australian gardens. Hundreds of prancing horses took on a distinct Dali-meets-scarecrow quality, while so many supportive spouses reassured their horticultural Henry Moores “of course it looks like an elephant reading the newspaper”. And we like to think that in some suburban yoga studio there was a downward dog outside. Or at least there should have been.

No matter what your other interests – viticulture, dinosaurs, steam engines – they could be rendered via wood and leaf. They spoke of a homeowner with both a singular vision and supreme dedication. Beyond the realms of the public gardens where they now reside in diminishing numbers, suburban topiary provided us with a sometimes alarming but always interesting counterpoint against the homogeneity of modern green spaces. Yes, some were bonkers, but they were delightfully so.

The topiary craze was just that, an eccentric’s folly now only maintained by the brave few, and perhaps we are all the poorer for our suburban gardens no longer being populated by these fanciful creations. All of which must have taken serious time, patience and money to conjure. The original hedge funds if you will.

ELEGANT, symmetrical AND TRIMMED BACK, IT’S THE GARDEN EQUIVALENT OF A skilful BIKINI WAX