Growing Beasts: The Art of Topiary

Living sculpture. That’s what topiary is. The fad comes and goes, and from all indications it looks like it’s coming back.

Rosmarinus officinalis 'Irene'
Item # 82674 		Rosmarinus officinalis 'Irene'™
Irene Rosemary

each $5.99
3 to 6 $5.79
7 or more $5.59
  • Topics: Garden Design, Vines
  • Author: Cindy Bellinger
  • Keywords: design, topiary, Other
  • Date: July 2003

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Vines sculpted into whales and dragons? Never! The very idea of topiaries used to make me bristle. It was about as artificial as you could get. But something’s changed. Topiaries are starting to snag my interest. I wandered through our Greenhouse not long ago and some rosemary plants, thick and trimmed into neat looking cones, caught my eye. So now I’m curious, and even getting ready to try it myself. It’ll be in a pot, of course; I’m certainly not ready to trim my gorgeous, full-branched cedar into a horse. Unlike the guy down the road who keeps his elm trees shaped like boxes.

The invention of topiary traces back to about 50 B.C. when a friend of Julius Caesar’s began fashioning vines and trees on the estates of well-to-do Romans. Topiary was often used to soften marblestatuary and columns. Then when Rome fell, so did topiary. The interest in shaping plants didn’t renew itself until medieval times, when fruit trees were trained against the walls of enclosed gardens.

Then during the Italian Renaissance garden design turned to flat topiary, or knot gardens. In the 1500s Dutch gardeners began trimming their trees and shrubs into playful objects like large tables and chairs. In the 1600s a French topiarist favored cones and globes. Finally, topiary arrived in America in 1690, showing up as geometric knot gardens.

But topiary fell out of favor again in the 1700s. When it resurfaced in the 1800s, it was attacked as a symbol of all that was non-natural. Then jumping ahead a century, shaped houseplants began showing up in flower shows during the 1960s and soon tabletop topiaries began appearing everywhere.

Living sculpture. That’s what topiary is. The fad comes and goes, and from all indications it looks like it’s coming back.

For outside topiaries there are several ways plants can be shaped—with external or internal wire structures. The geometric shapes—cones, balls, pyramids, spirals, squares and rectangles—are best achieved by using dense, bushy small-leaved evergreens. This type of foliage can be trimmed without any helping structure. But sometimes, as with the obelisk, a wire frame can be erected around a plant. As the branches grow, they are trimmed to the shape, then the frame is removed.

Often topiaries take years to achieve the intended affect.

Container topiary has its advantages. For one, the pots can be turned so that any uneven stem and leaf growth angling toward light can be corrected. Animal shapes as well as arches and hearts are the more typical container topiaries. Also are standards.

Now, topiary standards aren’t values or principles. They are straight stems or trunks with a round head of leaves at the top. Sort of like a lollipop.

With our high altitude, outside topiary favorites such as boxwood, Japanese privet, and holly can be used only where they are protected from the intense afternoon sun. For full sun, one can use Scotch Pine and any of the numerous shrub and upright junipers.

Inside plants for topiaries include Baby’s Tears, Creeping Charlie, ivy and rosemary.

Hedges trimmed into arches and decorative walls give an impression of order and permanence and are usually incorporated as a pleasing counterpoint to the wildness of unrestrained nature. A series of bushes trimmed into balls can actually add to the fluidity of a garden.

So tree-size teddy bears and desk-size ivy swans can all be yours with a little imagination, work and several years of trimming. Then again you can just buy a rosemary topiary. It can offer instant focal point—inside or out. But it’s certainly not as much fun as doing it yourself.