British Back garden Designer Arne Maynard on Topiary Layout
I nevertheless vividly keep in mind noticing topiary for the 1st time. I was just 3 or 4 many years old, using the bus into the regional market place city around exactly where we lived in Dorset to go buying with my mother. I usually needed to sit upstairs so I could see about the hawthorn hedge of a certain property we handed, enthralled by the remarkable wedding day-cake clipped yew in the entrance backyard. It was so exact, so perfectly fashioned, and I was mesmerized.
In nearly all the gardens I have developed all-around the earth due to the fact I began my follow in 1986, I have made use of topiary to some degree, no doubt influenced by those early recollections. Typically, topiary was thought of a extremely official ingredient, linked with substantial, grand gardens and set out in rigid styles to intensify axes and punctuate official areas. Opulence in backyard garden design, which include the use of these clipped styles, was frequently a symbol of status, signifying wealth and electrical power. Having said that, my preference is for a much more informal, asymmetrical design, working with easy shapes—domes, balls, and layered cones—to convey an component of enjoyable to a backyard garden. This design is influenced by the far more naïve, natural and organic shapes discovered in modest cottage gardens—often launched by gardeners who ended up used by grander attributes and who desired a little whimsy in their areas.
Either way, topiary provides long lasting composition to a garden. In their new guide, Winter Gardens, Clare Foster and Andrew Montgomery eloquently clearly show how planted structure holds the back garden with each other more than the wintertime months, its bare bones uncovered and its power emphasised by a dusting of snow or glistening frost. It is this toughness and elegance that I strive for, applying a assortment of trees and styles to attain a harmonious team of “players” that have you as a result of and close to a yard, major the way and marking modifications in its atmosphere or tempo.
I really like that topiary is enjoying a renaissance nowadays. We’re looking at it employed a lot more in up to date backyard design, in which designs like platforms and cubes pick up the design and style and structure of contemporary houses and anchor a more substantial house in its landscape. Equally, topiary can come to feel extremely Elizabethan—an era I am continuously motivated by—bringing scale and antiquity to a home. Domes and balls can soften gateways and transition points. And by clipping native trees, these types of as subject maple, we can reduce the diploma of formality, including an element of surprise and naivety. Copper beech is a popular preference in contemporary models, pleached or clipped in levels or spirals, but also satisfies additional historic landscapes and provides more coloration to the yard in colder months as it retains its dried bronze leaves till the new development pushes by means of in spring. Yew and box can add body weight and, grouped closely alongside one another, can enable give a sense of enclosure, secrecy, or suspense.
I continue on to be influenced by gardens that celebrate the artwork of topiary, this sort of as Levens Corridor in Cumbria where a like of clipped trees is a need to for website visitors! Its exuberance and sheer scale beautifully showcase topiary as a horticultural art variety. Even a fleeting check out to this garden—or any of the numerous terrific topiary displays—is a excellent tonic, inviting you to immerse your self in the trees and speculate at their elegance.
This post initially appeared in the March/April 2022 challenge of VERANDA. Photograph by Britt Willoughby Dyer illustrations by Tug Rice created by Dayle Wood penned by Arne Maynard
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