TOPIARY GARDENS
SEE LIVING PLANTS SCULPTED INTO OBELISKS, LOLLIPOPS, EVEN ANIMALS.
The Maine bungalow garden (see previous pages) is populated with sculptural plantings: giant hostas, climbing roses, and spiral topiary arborvitae. Topiary has a long history and, like many decorative effects, it becomes fantastical when taken to extremes. Topiary is the art of training, coaxing, shearing, and clipping plants into verdant sculpture, abstract or representational. It’s not just limited to living statues, but also encompasses trained hedges, mazes, knot gardens, and espaliers—plants trained to grow flat against a wall. The practice may go back to Julius Caesar’s gardener in the first century B.C. During the Renaissance, Italian pleasure gardens were adorned with ornate hedges and shrubs clipped into cones and balls, ships and animals. In Elizabethan England, lavender, rosemary, thyme, and santolina were used to organize medicinal and culinary herbs into a form of flat topiary known as the knot garden. The Dutch have embraced topiary for 500 years. Unlike the French and Italians, the Dutch create small outdoor rooms filled with an array of animal shapes and “green furniture.”
During the 18th century, the “natural” garden was favored over the tight and formal landscapes where topiary had reigned. But the idea survived as a sort of folk art by English cottage gardeners until the Victorians re-introduced topiary and formal carpet bedding. Topiary appeared in Williamsburg, Virginia, around 1690. The heyday of American topiary coincided with the golden age of American gardening during the end of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th. Some gardens begun then are maintained and open to the public today.
LEFT At Ladew, the overall scheme is garden art set in nature. There’s a foxhunt, chess pieces, and a yew Buddha.
OPPOSITE (top) Green Animals in Rhode Island has an enviable location; its historic topiary has been restored. (bottom) At Green Animals, the cuddly bear’s friends include an elephant, a giraffe, camel, donkey, three peacocks, a swan, an ostrich, a reindeer, three dogs, and a hen.