Modern revival: traditional topiary again fills the squares of the parterre at the ChÃ¢teau de Villandry, France

Squirrel topiary, Rufford Old Hall, Lancashire, England

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Indoor Topiary

Topiary is the art of creating sculptures in the medium of clipped trees, shrubs and sub-shrubs. more...

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The word derives from the Latin word for an ornamental landscape gardener, topiarius, creator of topia or "places", a Greek word that Romans applied also to fictive indoor landscapes executed in fresco. No doubt the use of a Greek word betokens the art's origins in the Hellenistic world that was influenced by Persia, for neither Classical Greece nor Republican Rome developed any sophisticated tradition of artful pleasure grounds.

The shrubs and sub-shrubs used in topiary are evergreen, have small leaves or needles, produce dense foliage, and have compact and/or columnar (e.g. fastigiate) growth habits. Common plants used in topiary include cultivars of box (Buxus sempervirens), arborvitae (Thuja spp.), bay laurel (Laurus nobilis), holly (Ilex spp.), myrtle (Eugenia or Myrtus species), yew (Taxus species), and privet (Ligustrum species.). Shaped wire cages are sometimes employed in modern topiary to guide untutored shears, but traditional topiary depends on patience and a steady hand; small-leaved ivy can be used to cover a cage and give the look of topiary in a few months.

History

Origin

European topiary dates from Roman times. Pliny's Natural History and the epigram-writer Martial both credit Cneius Matius Calvena, in the circle of Julius Caesar, with introducing the first topiary to Roman gardens, and Pliny the Younger describes in a letter the elaborate figures of animals, inscriptions and cyphers and obelisks in clipped greens at his Tuscan villa (Epistle vi, to Apollinaris). Within the atrium of a Roman house or villa, a place that had formerly been quite plain, the art of the topiarius produced a miniature landscape (topos) which might use the comparable art of stunting trees, also mentioned, disapprovingly, by Pliny (Historia Naturalis xii.6).

Far Eastern topiary

Clipping and shaping of shrubs and trees in China and Japan has been practised with equal rigor, but to entirely different esthetic aims: the artful expression of the "natural" forms of venerably aged pines, given character by the forces of wind and weather. Their most concentrated expressions are in the related arts of Chinese penjing and Japanese bonsai.

Japanese cloud-pruning (illustration) is closest to the European art: the cloudlike forms of clipped growth are designed to be best appreciated after a fall of snow.