AESTHETICS AND PRACTICE OF TOPIARY ART

Topiary is the art of shaping trees and shrubs by clipping and training.
Topiary can be traced back to the Greeks with their love of the orders and of formality.
From Greece it came to Rome where topiary was used as a perfect foil to the Roman villa.
So topiary may be an ancient art but is nowadays a very modern one, as it has become fashionable again in our gardens, where at present it is reaching high popularity.
Clipped trees and shrubs can be used in many different ways for topiary work, e.g. as boundary lines of a garden or as an internal layout of garden space; for defining pathways and walks or doorways and entrances; for making arches or creating living sculptures and other ornamental shapes; as a setting and a background for special garden objects.
There are sophisticated techniques and principles of clipping trees and shrubs into the different abstract, geometrical or ornamental topiary shapes representing globes, pyramids, animals or other objects.
A good result depends on proper maintenance of topiary plants.

International Conference on Urban Horticulture

E.R. Ruemler

Topiary, topiary art, topiary garden, knot garden, labyrinth, maze, parterre, clipping principles

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2004.643.9