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Topiary as Living Sculpture - Part I

© Kathy Reiffenstein

This is the first of a two part article on topiary

Topiary, defined as the art of clipping shrubs into ornamental forms, has been called living sculpture. From the Latin word topiarus, meaning landscape gardener, this artful form of gardening traces its origins to 1st century AD Roman gardeners. Over the ensuing 2000 years, it has fallen in and out of fashion, but its peak of popularity was from the late 14th century through the 18th century when Renaissance gardeners in both Britain and Europe looked to ancient Rome and Greece for inspiration. Topiary saw another surge of popularity in the elaborate estate gardens of the Victorian era. After a downturn at the beginning of the 20th century, we’re once again seeing a revival of this ancient art.

In spite of the prevalence of informal garden designs today, the formality and geometric orderliness of topiary does have a part to play, particularly in your container garden. It is ideally suited to container growing and makes an excellent accent piece in any garden. Use it sparingly for decorative effect or make a dramatic statement with many neatly clipped shapes and forms. Although the amazing topiary sculptures in a public garden may leave most of us certain that we couldn’t create anything so complicated and beautiful, merely understanding a few simple guidelines and techniques will allow you to create amazing shapes of your own.

TOPIARY SHAPES

Whether light-hearted and whimsical or formal and structured, most topiary is fashioned from bushy, small-leaved evergreens with slow to medium growth. There are many shapes possible, ranging from simple balls to elaborate dragons, horses and peacocks. Visit this site to see some examples. Basic geometric shapes, however, are the easiest place for a beginner to start...balls, cones and pyramids.

Standards, that is shrubs grown on a single stem with their lower branches removed, are another choice in the topiary category. Standards can be dense, small-leaved evergreens or flowering plants, such as roses or fuchsia. Once the evergreen is shaped into a spherical ball of green on the top of the stem, it’s easy to see why they’re also called "lollipops" or "mopheads".

Other variations of the topiary shape are the cakestand and string of balls. In the string of balls, rather than just one ball at the top of the stem, there are usually three balls of graduated size, with exposed stem in between and the smallest ball at the top. The cakestand design is similar, with 3-5 equidistant tiers or "layers" topped by a ball; tiers are flat rather than round. This site offers excellent pictures of the many different topiary styles.