Topiary Trees and Bushes – The Lost Art of Trimming and Pruning

Visitors to theme parks like Disney World will get to seize the opportunity to view firsthand some of the world’s finest examples of topiary trees and shrubs.

The ancient, eye-intriguing art of topiary – with its sheared figures and geometric designs – is truly a lost art.

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Never practiced extensively in America, topiary is found mostly at large theme parks like Disney World because of the significant amount of time required to trim the leaves and branches to intricate figures and the cost of that time.

Four to five hundred years ago, people here were too busy fighting for mere existence to be interested in gardening.

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Exotic plants and greenery (even such now-common ones like the Korean dwarf lilac tree and laurels) were practically nonexistent.

This was due not only to the lack of interest in plants generally but also to the fact that ocean voyages were so long and hazardous that few such plants ever reached new homes.

Person observing an elaborate spiral-shaped topiary tree with a background of conically shaped trees under a clear blue sky.Pin
Photo Credit: Instagram @hortus_loci

As times became more settled and living conditions bettered, people found new leisure. Many began to turn to gardening to beautify their home grounds, limited in their plantings, of course, to the meager native stock available.

Perfectly trimmed geometric hedge topiary in a misty garden setting.Pin
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Along about this time, a utilitarian impetus to gardening appeared. Farmlands were being divided into smaller and smaller parcels as the population increased.

The important problem of how to divide these lands posed itself, barbed wire fencing being then, of course, unknown.

Using living hedges solved the problem –  hawthorn trees, beech, and maple, sheared to size or frames with Ficus pumila growing on them.

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As these hedgerows gained popularity, similar hedges started to be planted in ornamental living quarter areas, with the slower-growing and more decorative yew, boxwood bushes, and holly being used.

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Probably as a relief from the common farmland hedging, these were clipped into Ornamental designs and figures – and the art of topiary was born, an art which was to be avidly pursued for centuries – until its present-day decline.

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Pruning figures and geometric designs is not difficult but takes time and patience.

A branch must be trained just the right way – trimmed here and let grow there – possibly tied a bit to force the right kind of growth at just the right place.



Symmetrically arranged garden with topiaries and purple flowers, leading to a stone fountain.Pin
Photo Credit: Instagram @wilkinson.interiors

Slow-growing boxwood topiaries and yews are more easily cared for than faster-growing privet or Monterey cypress (Cupressus macrocarpa), which requires trimming only once a year and several times each season.

Topiary art in the shape of a seahorse in a residential gardenPin
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But in any event, it takes patience, a steady hand, and a keen eye to clip and sheer the right way and place. Topiary is a delightful sculpture in living green!