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Topiary is thehorticultural practice of trainingperennial plants by clipping thefoliage andtwigs oftrees,shrubs andsubshrubs to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes,[1] whether geometric or fanciful. The term also refers to plants which have been shaped in this way. As an art form it is a type ofliving sculpture. The word derives from theLatin word for an ornamentallandscapegardener,topiarius, a creator oftopia or "places", a Greek word that Romans also applied to fictive indoor landscapes executed infresco.
The plants used in topiary areevergreen, mostlywoody, have smallleaves orneedles, produce dense foliage, and have compact and/or columnar (e.g., fastigiate) growth habits. Common species chosen for topiary include cultivars of European box (Buxus sempervirens), arborvitae (Thuja species),bay laurel (Laurus nobilis),holly (Ilex species),myrtle (Eugenia orMyrtus species), yew (Taxus species), and privet (Ligustrum species).[2] Shaped wire cages are sometimes employed in modern topiary to guide untutored shears, but traditional topiary depends on patience and a steady hand; small-leaved ivy can be used to cover a cage and give the look of topiary in a few months. Thehedge is a simple form of topiary used to create boundaries, walls or screens.
European topiary dates fromRoman times. Pliny'sNatural History and the epigram writerMartial both creditGaius Matius Calvinus, in the circle ofJulius Caesar, with introducing the first topiary toRoman gardens, andPliny the Younger describes in a letter the elaborate figures of animals, inscriptions, cyphers andobelisks in clipped greens at his Tuscan villa (Epistle v.6, to Apollinaris). Within theatrium of a Roman house orvilla, a place that had formerly been quite plain, the art of thetopiarius produced a miniature landscape (topos) which might employ the art of stunting trees, also mentioned, disapprovingly, by Pliny (Historia Naturalis xii.6).
The clipping and shaping of shrubs and trees inChina andJapan have been practised with equal rigor, but for different reasons. The goal is to achieve an artful expression of the "natural" form of venerably aged pines, given character by the forces of wind and weather. Their most concentrated expressions are in the related arts of Chinesepenjing and Japanesebonsai.[citation needed]
Japanesecloud-pruning is closest to the European art: the cloud-like forms of clipped growth are designed to be best appreciated after a fall of snow.Japanese Zen gardens (karesansui, dry rock gardens) make extensive use ofKarikomi (a topiary technique of clipping shrubs and trees into large curved shapes or sculptures) andHako-zukuri (shrubs clipped into boxes and straight lines).
Since its European revival in the 16th century, topiary has been seen on theparterres andterraces of gardens of the European elite, as well as in simplecottage gardens;Barnabe Googe, about 1578, found that "women" (a signifier of a less than gentle class) were clippingrosemary "as in the fashion of a cart, a peacock, or such things as they fancy."[3] In 1618William Lawson suggested
Traditional topiary forms use foliage pruned and/or trained into geometric shapes such as balls or cubes,obelisks, pyramids, cones, or tiered plates and tapering spirals. Representational forms depicting people, animals, and man-made objects have also been popular. The royal botanistJohn Parkinson foundprivet "so apt that no other can be like unto it, to be cut, lead, and drawn into what forme one will, either of beasts, birds, or men armed or otherwise." Evergreens have usually been the first choice for Early Modern topiary, however, withyew andboxwood leading other plants.[citation needed]
Topiary atVersailles and its imitators was never complicated: low hedges punctuated by potted trees trimmed as balls on standards, interrupted by obelisks at corners, provided the vertical features of flat-patterned parterre gardens. Sculptural forms were provided by stone and lead sculptures. In Holland, however, the fashion was established for more complicated topiary designs; this Franco-Dutch garden style spread to England after 1660, but by 1708-09 one searches in vain for fanciful topiary among the clipped hedges and edgings, and the standing cones and obelisks of the aristocratic and gentry English parterre gardens in Kip and Knyff'sBritannia Illustrata.[citation needed]
In England topiary was all but killed as a fashion by the famous satiric essay on "Verdant Sculpture" thatAlexander Pope published in the short-lived newspaperThe Guardian, 29 September 1713, with its mock catalogue descriptions of
In the 1720s and 1730s, the generation ofCharles Bridgeman andWilliam Kent swept the English garden clean of its hedges, mazes, and topiary. Although topiary fell from grace in aristocratic gardens, it continued to be featured incottagers' gardens, where a single example of traditional forms, a ball, a tree trimmed to a cone in several cleanly separated tiers, meticulously clipped and perhaps topped with a topiary peacock, might be passed on as an heirloom. Such an heirloom, but on heroic scale, was the ancient churchward yew ofHarlington, west of London, immortalized in an engraved broadsheet of 1729 bearing an illustration with an enthusiastic verse encomium by its dedicated parish clerk and topiarist.[5] formerly shaped as an obelisk on square plinth topped with a ten-foot ball surmounted by a cockerel, the Harlington Yew survives today, untonsured for the last two centuries.[citation needed]
The revival of topiary in English gardening parallels the revived "Jacobethan" taste in architecture;John Loudon in the 1840s was the first garden writer to express a sense of loss due to the topiary that had been removed from English gardens. The art of topiary, with enclosed garden "rooms", burst upon the English gardening public with the mature examples atElvaston Castle, Derbyshire, which opened to public viewing in the 1850s and created a sensation: "within a few years architectural topiary was springing up all over the country (it took another 25 years before sculptural topiary began to become popular as well)".[6] The following generation, represented byJames Shirley Hibberd, rediscovered the charm of topiary specimens as part of the mystique of the "Englishcottage garden", which was as much invented as revived from the 1870s:
It may be true, as I believe it is, that the natural form of a tree is the most beautiful possible for that tree, but it may happen that we do not want the most beautiful form, but one of our own designing, and expressive of our ingenuity
The classic statement of the BritishArts and Crafts revival of topiary among roses and mixedherbaceous borders, characterised generally as "the old-fashioned garden" or the "Dutch garden"[7] was to be found inTopiary: Garden Craftsmanship in Yew and Box byNathaniel Lloyd (1867–1933), who had retired in middle age and taken up architectural design with the encouragement of SirEdwin Lutyens. Lloyd's own timber-framed manor house,Great Dixter, Sussex, remains an epitome of this stylised mix of topiary with "cottagey" plantings that was practised byGertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens in a fruitful partnership. The new gardening vocabulary incorporating topiary required little expensive restructuring: "AtLyme Park, Cheshire, the garden went from being an Italian garden to being a Dutch garden without any change actually taking place on the ground," Brent Elliot noted in 2000.[7]
Americans in England were sensitive to the renewed charms of topiary. WhenWilliam Waldorf Astor boughtHever Castle, Kent, around 1906, the moat surrounding the house precluded the addition of wings for servants, guests and the servants of guests that the Astor manner required. He accordingly built an authentically styled Tudor village to accommodate the overflow, with an "Old English Garden" includingbuttressed hedges and free-standing topiary.[7] In the preceding decade, expatriate Americans led byEdwin Austin Abbey created an Anglo-American society atBroadway, Worcestershire, where topiary was one of the elements of a "Cotswold" house-and-garden style soon naturalised among upper-class Americans at home. Topiary, which had featured in very few 18th-century American gardens, came into favour with theColonial Revival gardens and the grand manner of theAmerican Renaissance, 1880–1920. Interest in the revival and maintenance of historic gardens in the 20th century led to the replanting of the topiarymaze at the Governor's Palace,Colonial Williamsburg, in the 1930s.[citation needed]
American portable style topiary was introduced toDisneyland around 1962.Walt Disney helped bring this new medium into being - wishing to recreate his cartoon characters throughout his theme park in the form of landscape shrubbery. This style of topiary is based on a suitably shaped steel wire frame through which the plants eventually extend as they grow. The frame, which remains as a permanent trimming guide, may be either stuffed with sphagnum moss and then planted, or placed around shrubbery. The sculpture slowly transforms into a permanent topiary as the plants fill in the frame.This style has led to imaginative displays and festivals throughout theDisney resorts and parks, andmosaiculture (multiple types and styles of plants creating a mosaic,living sculpture) worldwide includes the impressive display at the2008 Summer Olympics in China. Living corporate logos along roadsides,green roof softscapes andliving walls that biofilter air are offshoots of this technology.[citation needed]
Artificial topiary is another offshoot similar to the concept ofartificial Christmas trees. This topiary mimics the style of living versions and is often used to supply indoor greenery for home or office decoration. Patents are issued for the style, design, and construction methodology of different types of topiary trees.[8][9]
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