DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.66025#0287
GARDEN ORNAMENT
269
TOPIARY WORK
MANY are the relics of topiary work in the older of our gardens, and
though much of it has evidently become distorted from the shapes
originally intended, yet enough of a comprehensible form remains to
show how gladly our ancestors availed themselves of the docility of
some kinds of evergreens. The wonderful green walls of yew at Sudeley Castle and
Rockingham show what can be done, not only to ensure shelter, but to gain a kind
of architectural expression, and many are the later examples where stone and tree,
alike moulded into form, are obedient to the designer’s hand. Even where they have
gone quite astray, as in the curious garden at Levens, designed originally by a French
artist in the reign of James II., the many yews, clipped into numerous fantastic forms,
such as could never have been originally designed, give the old garden a rare charm,
though it is a charm of a whimsical and freakish character. The splendid old yew
hedge at Holme Lacy, like a weather-worn rock of vegetation, the surface clipped
and yet showing something of its natural anatomy, is full of delightful interest, and
in the same fine old garden other yew hedges, of lesser height butiof many years’growth,
form the best possible background to borders of hardy ssowers.
In more than one of the gardens of the great Palladian houses there are walls
of yew with circular-headed niches for the reception of sculpture, one of the best ways
of placing sculpture in our gardens. In some of the old manor house gardens there
stand rows of stately yews, each tree at a certain height stretching to right and left
to meet its fellow, so forming a series of great green archways in order that each
arch may give a different view of some aspect of garden beauty.
There are the two forms of topiary work, the one where the purpose is to make
walls for shelter and for some kind of architectural expression, and the other which
is purely ornamental—a survival or revival of the old way of shaping growing trees
into figures of birds and beasts or of twisting spiral or of rounded forms one over another,
looking as if they had been fashioned in a turner’s lathe. These tricks and toys may
easily be overdone, and it may be wise to restrain the shaped work to some points
that call for punctuation, where a green ball or pyramid or obelisk may be rightly in
place and, above all, where it is done by a designer who has an accurate sense of
proportion.
Yew is the tree most usually employed for topiary work, but Box is also excellent
and for walls or close hedges, Holly, Cypress, as well as the homely Privet. Laurel
is a possible shrub for a large, tall hedge but requires special care in trimming ;
it must all be done by hand, not with the shears, for a laurel leaf cut straight across
is an unsightly mutilated object. Laurel, moreover, has the drawback of becoming
somewhat “ leggy ” at its base.
269
TOPIARY WORK
MANY are the relics of topiary work in the older of our gardens, and
though much of it has evidently become distorted from the shapes
originally intended, yet enough of a comprehensible form remains to
show how gladly our ancestors availed themselves of the docility of
some kinds of evergreens. The wonderful green walls of yew at Sudeley Castle and
Rockingham show what can be done, not only to ensure shelter, but to gain a kind
of architectural expression, and many are the later examples where stone and tree,
alike moulded into form, are obedient to the designer’s hand. Even where they have
gone quite astray, as in the curious garden at Levens, designed originally by a French
artist in the reign of James II., the many yews, clipped into numerous fantastic forms,
such as could never have been originally designed, give the old garden a rare charm,
though it is a charm of a whimsical and freakish character. The splendid old yew
hedge at Holme Lacy, like a weather-worn rock of vegetation, the surface clipped
and yet showing something of its natural anatomy, is full of delightful interest, and
in the same fine old garden other yew hedges, of lesser height butiof many years’growth,
form the best possible background to borders of hardy ssowers.
In more than one of the gardens of the great Palladian houses there are walls
of yew with circular-headed niches for the reception of sculpture, one of the best ways
of placing sculpture in our gardens. In some of the old manor house gardens there
stand rows of stately yews, each tree at a certain height stretching to right and left
to meet its fellow, so forming a series of great green archways in order that each
arch may give a different view of some aspect of garden beauty.
There are the two forms of topiary work, the one where the purpose is to make
walls for shelter and for some kind of architectural expression, and the other which
is purely ornamental—a survival or revival of the old way of shaping growing trees
into figures of birds and beasts or of twisting spiral or of rounded forms one over another,
looking as if they had been fashioned in a turner’s lathe. These tricks and toys may
easily be overdone, and it may be wise to restrain the shaped work to some points
that call for punctuation, where a green ball or pyramid or obelisk may be rightly in
place and, above all, where it is done by a designer who has an accurate sense of
proportion.
Yew is the tree most usually employed for topiary work, but Box is also excellent
and for walls or close hedges, Holly, Cypress, as well as the homely Privet. Laurel
is a possible shrub for a large, tall hedge but requires special care in trimming ;
it must all be done by hand, not with the shears, for a laurel leaf cut straight across
is an unsightly mutilated object. Laurel, moreover, has the drawback of becoming
somewhat “ leggy ” at its base.