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Topiary at Downside

With the garden back to its ‘bare bones’, you can see its structure which means it’s a great time to consider where the addition of Topiary would be best.  We’re well stocked with Box, Yew and standard Bay.  Check out our Topiary page under our Plants Section  and visit us between 9-5 any day to see what will work best for you.

Topiary has been used historically in many different European gardening styles, from early Roman to modern day.  It is the art of training plants (typically evergreen shrubs and trees) into intricate or stylized shapes and forms, thus creating sculpture – from box balls to yew ‘peacocks’.   Did you know the word comes from the Latin word for an ornamental  landscape  gardener, topiarius, a creator of topia or “places”.  Common species often chosen for topiary include box, pleached hornbeam, yew and bay.

And if you’re busy tidying up your own existing topiary, spare a thought for Chris Crowder, the head gardener at Levens Hall in Cumbria, whose work includes tidying up over 100 trees,  restoring bushes to their original shape and restoring the living sculptures,  some of which are over 300 years old!  See the on line article from The Daily Mail