Topiary garden, hedges require the most skill and care, and only the
most experienced men should be allowed to undertake the work of clipping
them. Hedges in the garden are mostly planted in such a way that their
entire length is visible, and of course the most casual observer can see
at a glance whether they are properly clipped or if there are any shear
marks visible on them. If the hedge is composed mostly of curves, then
of course the clipping is not such a difficult matter. A long, straight
hedge and one that is almost entirely made up of curves, differ in the
same respect with regard to the ease with which they can be clipped,
exactly in the same way as a round or an oval tree. When clipping a
straight hedge a person should never trust entirely to the eye, and
lines should always be used; and for the purpose nothing is better than
ordinary garden lines.
[Illustration:
OLD EXAMPLE OF TOPIARY IN BOX AT COMPTON WYNYATES
]
In the case of hedges that are cut into battlements at the top, these
should have a line stretched lengthways along the ground, another along
the base of the battlements, and another along the top of the
battlements; and whatever size and width the battlements are, say, for
instance, two feet high and two feet in width between them, a stick cut
exactly two feet in length or a two-foot rule should be used to measure
the exact height and distance between the battlements; and if those
precautions are taken, any person with a fair knowledge of the art of
clipping can hardly with ordinary care and attention get wrong; as,
after all, the work of clipping Topiary trees is not so difficult as
might be expected.
There are several points that should always be remembered. Symmetry and
shape are necessary to make a good tree; and this may be said to be the
first and most important factor in the work. Another point is to take
particular care that the shears do not cut off more than is necessary.
By that I mean, never to allow the shears to cut deep enough into the
tree to make a hole. Another very important point to aim at is to give
the tree as smooth and even an appearance as possible after the work is
finished. I am perfectly aware that, in a large collection of yews or
other clipped trees, there are always some that it is impossible to clip
properly, on account of weak growth, or some other cause. For instance,
trees that are growing in a part of the garden where they are fully
exposed to wind and storm are almost certain to get into an unhealthy
condition. The growth becomes weak and stunted, or perhaps the branches
get worked out of place, or even die out altogether. In the case of
trees of that description, no matter how much tying is done or how
carefully they are clipped, they can never be made to have the same
appearance as those that are full of young growth and are in a healthy
and vigorous state.
Where the garden has been planted with mixed trees—such as yew, holly,
boxwood and horn-beam, the clipping should all be done in the autumn so
as to give the garden a tidy and uniform appearance. Autumn is not
generally considered the right season of the year for holly clipping,
but if there are some, more or less, planted among the yews in the
Topiary garden, it is necessary that they should be clipped at the same
time as the other subjects, for the sake of appearance. But if hollies
are planted by themselves in some isolated part of the garden, whether
in hedges or bushes, the work of clipping them should be carried out
towards the latter end of May or beginning of June; then hard clipping
every other year will suffice for them. At Levens we clip the holly
hedges which are not actually in the Topiary garden hard back to the old
wood every alternate year, and other years we merely go over them with a
pair of shears and cut away the long shoots. I am rather of the opinion
that hard clipping of hollies every year is more injurious than
beneficial to the trees.
It is evident to anyone who has seen an old Dutch or Topiary garden,
that, in the formation and laying out of the grounds, boxwood has always
been considered one of the principal features, and in most of them it
remains so to this day.
Where box succeeds well and remains in perfect health, no care or
attention should be spared to keep it so, for there is no edging that
can be used in the garden to be compared with it for beauty. It has,
however, some drawbacks, the principal one of which is the excellent
accommodation it affords to snails and other garden pests; but its
advantages more than counterbalance its defects. Like the hollies, every
other year is sufficient for clipping it, and there is no more suitable
month for the work than June. There should be no clipping done to
boxwood until all danger of frost is gone, as it is extremely dangerous
to clip before that period has passed. There is nothing more injurious
to newly clipped boxwood than sharp frosts. I have seen boxwood that was
over a hundred years old clipped in April, with the result that a few
sharp frosty nights killed the whole of it.
[Illustration:
LEVENS GARDENS
GENERAL VIEW
]
Excepting during the clipping season, there is very little work to be
done to the trees in a Topiary garden, unless it is top-dressing them
with some sort of manure, or keeping a look-out for branches that have
become loose through wind or some other cause. If this occurs, the
branches should be immediately tied back into their places before any
injury takes place to the tree.
There is another danger that should be strictly guarded against in
winter, and that is, the danger the trees undergo in the event of heavy
falls of snow. When the trees are old and large and in every way adapted
for carrying a heavy weight of snow, no time should be lost in getting
it removed as quickly as possible; the sooner the men get to work the
better, even before the snow has ceased if it is at all likely to be a
heavy fall. The labour of having to go over the trees two or three times
must not be considered if they are to be saved from injury. It is much
better to keep constantly knocking the snow off with light switches,
than take the risk of having the trees crushed out of shape and broken.
THE MANAGEMENT AND TRAINING OF YOUNG TREES
In my last chapter I dealt almost exclusively with the management of old
trees. In this chapter I intend to devote the space principally to the
treatment that will have to be followed in the training and shaping of
young trees in the Topiary garden. I shall try to give as clear and
concise an idea as possible to those who are contemplating laying out a
garden, or who may already have done so, in which Topiary work is
intended to be the main feature, although the training and shaping of
young trees does not belong entirely to a garden in course of formation.
Generally in old gardens, trees will be found in the course of being
trained. If the garden has been laid out and the trees carefully planted
on the lines advised in a previous chapter, a record should be carefully
made as to the exact date when each tree was planted and also regarding
the shape that each tree in the garden is intended to represent when it
is finished. A record of that description, made at the period of the
work, will prove of great interest in after years, both to those who own
the garden and to others who are either interested in it or may happen
to visit it. A record of the date of planting and the shapes that the
trees were originally meant to represent, seems to have been a thing
quite neglected during the formation of the old Topiary gardens, which
seems to me to be a very great pity.
To a great extent the general management of young trees is altogether
different from the management required to be given to old trees;
inasmuch as the difficulties are more numerous, and the care and
attention necessary to be bestowed on them more manifold. Our
forefathers with the greatest skill and care laid out and formed the old
established Topiary gardens of the present day, and afterwards year by
year trained and shaped the fine old specimens of the Topiary art now to
be seen in some of the old gardens, so that when a person is walking
through one of these gardens, and examining the quaint and curious
shapes of the trees, he cannot fail to admire them and to reflect upon
the amount of skill and labour that has been bestowed on them. It would
be curious, indeed, if he failed to pause, and consider the amount of
patience the gardeners of earlier years were endowed with. In many
respects the gardener of the present time has the advantage in Topiary
work at least over his brother of one or two hundred years ago. Whether
the gardeners of the present day are more skilled in that special art,
is a question which I am not prepared to answer; but I am certain that
there is no mistaking the abilities of the old gardeners in the art of
training trees. The work they have left behind them proves this beyond a
doubt. The gardener of the present day has more variety of shapes to
choose from, and a larger and more varied selection of trees to work
upon.
If the trees were a good size and well grown when they were planted, the
work of clipping and training them may be commenced the following year,
according to the shape into which it is intended to form the tree. It is
not advisable that any clipping or training be done to the trees the
same autumn or winter that they are planted. It should be deferred until
the following autumn, in order to allow of fresh root action taking
place. Some of the trees can be clipped into certain shapes when they
are quite small; but for other shapes a much larger tree is necessary to
commence work upon. It is a very wise policy to go to a little extra
expense on the original outlay of the trees, rather than buy small trees
that will be of no use whatever for the work for which they are
ultimately intended.
If the suggestion that I made in a previous chapter has been acted upon,
viz., the buying in of the required number of trees some years before
the work of making the garden is taken in hand, and bringing them on in
the home nursery beds until they have become a suitable size, and until
the time arrives when they are required for planting in their permanent
places in the garden, the actual cost of the trees will be reduced to a
minimum, and better and more suitable trees secured than if they had
been purchased direct from some of the nurserymen.
Although no actual shaping need be done to them until they are planted
in their places in the garden where they are to remain, a little pruning
and regulating of the shoots may be carried out. If that is done, it
will be found to be a great advantage in adapting the trees to their
future work. The buying of young trees from the nurserymen and growing
them on in nursery beds in the reserve garden, until they are required
for planting in the garden, is a system regularly practised here, and
one that is well worth a trial.
[Illustration:
A VERDANT PEACOCK
]
To the person desirous of having a Topiary garden there are two courses
open. The first is, he can either train and shape his own trees, or else
he can purchase from one or other of the nurserymen who make clipped
yews a speciality, a ready-made collection. Trees that are clipped into
all manner of shapes can now be purchased from some of the nurserymen
either at home or imported from the Continent. The system of buying
trees that are already shaped is an excellent way of getting a Topiary
garden made and furnished with trees in the quickest possible time. But
it is a plan that is not to be universally recommended or practised. In
the first place, trees of that description generally have the very great
drawback of being very expensive. Only those who have to deal with the
training of yews have any idea how much labour and care is spent on a
tree in shaping it into even the smallest bird; and it therefore stands
to reason that the time and labour nurserymen spend on clipping and
training Topiary trees, and preparing them for the market, must be paid
for by the purchaser. But there is another, and perhaps an even greater
objection in buying trees already trained. Surely the person who loves
his garden and takes a great personal interest in Topiary work, would
never think of planting it with trees that have already been cut into
shapes by other hands. Although there is no question about the
excellence of nursery trained trees, I would strongly recommend that the
person who spends the time and money in forming and laying out a Topiary
garden, should have the patience to undertake and carry through the
training of his own trees. A far greater source of pleasure will be
derived from watching your own trees grow, and from seeing them clipped
and trained each year into the particular shape that it is intended they
should represent.
It has been very often said, and said with a great deal of truth, that a
person can with care and management train the yew into almost any shape
desired. Even figures or letters are easy to form out of yew. In
handling the yew, you have a kind of tree to work upon that lends itself
in the most convenient way to the work of clipping and training into all
the quaint and curious shapes that are found in the Topiary gardens. The
adaptation of the tree for the work, and the ease with which it can be
twisted and bent into almost any conceivable shape, places it far before
any other for the particular work I am describing. Therefore no fear
need be entertained that there will be any lack of variety of shapes in
the garden; provided, of course, that due care is exercised at the
commencement of the work, and that each individual tree is clipped and
trained to represent an entirely different design or figure, as the case
may be. As a matter of fact, in any garden that contains, say, one
hundred trees or even more, out of all that number no two trees need be
exactly alike. Each can be made to represent an absolutely different
shape. Of course there is no reason, except as a matter of taste, why
each tree should be made to represent quite a distinct shape from its
neighbour. It might be considered a better plan to plant the trees in
pairs, side by side, or on the opposite sides of a walk, and then train
and shape them into pairs resembling each other in every way. Training
in pairs is an arrangement that might find favour with some, and to a
certain extent might be adopted with advantage in the garden, especially
at the ends of paths. If it is decided to clip some of the trees in
pairs resembling each other, they should be those that are planted near
the ends of the path, one on each side. If there are two trees planted
one on each side of the path, the effect is better if they are clipped
into identically the same shape than would be the case if they both
represented something different. But I think, on the whole, if there is
anything to choose between the two styles, the one tree one shape style
should have the preference, if only for the sake of variety.
[Illustration:
SEAT AT THE PRIORY, GLASTONBURY
]
In the matter of shapes, it is no use trying to lay down a hard and fast
rule, as every person who owns, or intends to own, a Topiary garden,
will almost to a certainty please himself as to the designs into which
he will have his trees shaped. However, I will try to give my readers
some little idea of the different shapes it is possible to make out of
the yew tree. In the first instance, almost any letter of the alphabet
can, with comparative ease, be represented; and nearly all of them can
be done with a single tree, although in the case of some letters, two or
even three trees may be required to form the letter as quickly as
possible. In the shaping of the letter A, for instance, two trees will
be necessary for the purpose. Suppose it is intended to make a capital
letter A. In the first place select two well furnished trees five or six
feet in height, and not more than nine inches in diameter at the base,
and plant them as already advised, four, five, or even six feet apart,
according to the size it is intended to make the letter. One at least of
the two trees should have two leading shoots growing from it; one to be
trained straight up to form the inside of the letter, and the other to
be trained across to form the middle of the letter. But, if both trees
are furnished with two leading shoots, one of each can be trained across
to form the cross part of the letter. If two trees can be got, with two
leading shoots, as I pointed out, they will equalise the balance of the
letter better, and give a more even appearance to the tree. In the case
of the letter B, one tree only will be required for the purpose, if the
letter is intended to be, say, eight or nine feet high. To be exact, we
will suppose it is intended to form the letter B, nine feet high. The
tree that is chosen for the purpose should have only one single stem for
half of the way up the tree. It should then branch into three leaders or
main shoots, as from this point three branches or stems will be required
to make up the different portions of the letter. The strongest or main
stem of the tree should be made use of to form the straight side of the
letter. Then utilise the two remaining stems in forming the two halves
of the B. The one that is growing in the most suitable position for the
purpose can be bent round to form the top half; while the other stem is
made to do the same in the case of the bottom part. In very much the
same way the letters C, D, E and F can be trained, or even any letter of
the alphabet. There is not a single letter from A to Z that it is not
possible to train into shape; some are perhaps more difficult than
others to do, but they can all be done, and well done, if they are
carefully handled. The principal thing to remember is the selecting of
trees that are most suitable for the purpose. Always aim at finding
trees with the requisite number of shoots that will be required to form
the different parts of the letter it is intended to make. If it is the
intention of the Topiarist to form one or more letters of the alphabet,
trees for the purpose should if possible be selected some years before
being wanted, and should be prepared for the work intended. Trees that
are so prepared beforehand will immediately they are planted in the
garden be in a fit condition to shape into letters at once. If the trees
are treated in this way, it will in a marked degree do away with the
necessity of keeping the letters for several years in the garden in the
ugly first stages of formation. There must, of course, be always a time
when any tree that is being trained looks unsightly to the person who is
new to the art of Topiary work. In the training of letters especially,
it will be found much safer, and certainly a great deal easier, if iron
frameworks are used. This certainly simplifies the work to a great
extent. By using a light framework, a more equally proportioned letter
can be made than will be the case if the more rough and ready method of
using wooden supports be practised. Of course it is quite possible to
train almost any letter, and succeed in making a fairly good job of it,
with the aid of a little assistance in the shape of a few wooden
supports, etc. But wood is never very satisfactory, for this reason—that
when it is used, it will have to be in most cases green, in order to
make it pliable and easy to bend. Green wood has a tendency to decay
very soon, and the first strong winds that come will very likely break
the supports, and blow the whole thing to pieces, or at least damage it
so as to make it require to be re-trained again. In the process of
training yew or any other tree into letters, the appearance of each
letter will be greatly improved if from one and a half to two feet of
stem be left between the ground and the commencement of the letter. This
stem should be afterwards planted round with small boxwood trees, and
clipped so as to form a pedestal, which may be of any shape desired.
There are two ways or shapes into which letters can be trained, either
the round or the square. The square way of training them is the one I
would strongly recommend to my readers, from an ornamental point of
view, but it is at the same time the most difficult method. As I
explained in my last chapter, anything with square edges is more
difficult to clip exactly right than a round object.
In the Topiary garden, the variety of shapes that it is possible to
train are so many and varied that I will only give a few of those that
can either be copied from the old gardens, or formed from the
Topiarist’s own ideas. In the first instance, there are the various
shapes of the figures required in the game of chess. Birds of any
description are easy to form into shape in either yew or boxwood. When
they are well trained and properly shaped, nothing has a better
appearance in the Topiary garden than the various shapes of birds. The
shaping of animals is more difficult to manage; but I have seen some
good specimens, notably a lion and crown, the Howard crest, that we have
got in the garden here at Levens. Then there are the various other
shapes that are to be found in the old Topiary gardens, such as
barristers’ wigs, Indian wigwams, summer-houses, helmets, busbys,
bottles of almost any description or size, umbrellas, hats or spirals of
various forms. These may be either trained as single trees, or formed
into arches. Among the newer shapes that I have seen, which have
recently been introduced into the Topiary art, are yachts, boats, jugs,
etc. The different sizes and shapes of jugs are so varied, that any
person who fancies the training of them in his garden need not lack
variety of form, and they are shapes that are, comparatively speaking,
very easy to train. There are also a great many very pretty shapes that
can be formed out of the yew or the boxwood tree without being intended
to represent anything in particular, further than that they are trained
and shaped simply as ornaments to help to add further to the
embellishment of the garden.
It is not my intention to try to explain the various ways of training
all the different shapes I have pointed out. That in itself would
require a chapter; as the different ways of training a yew or any other
tree are so numerous, to attain what is practically the same end, that
the person responsible for the work will have to be guided greatly by
circumstances and according to the particular tree he has got to work
upon. In every Topiary garden there should be at least four or five
different arches of various designs. There are very few things that are
more effective in any garden than a few well trained arches, and in the
Topiary garden, if they are not more effective than in the modern
garden, they are at any rate more in keeping with the general
surroundings of the place. If it has been decided to train several
arches in the garden, each one should be quite a different shape from
its neighbour. There is such a variety of different shapes to be seen in
almost any garden where arches are trained, that there is no occasion
for two arches in one garden to be similar in design.
[Illustration:
LEVENS GARDENS
UMBRELLA, INDIAN WIGWAM AND EAST WALK
]
When the shapes have been carefully thought out, let no time be lost in
making a start on the clipping and training of them, especially if the
trees are far enough advanced in growth to begin work on. It is simply
loss of time to allow the trees to keep growing, year after year, when
they might be having some training done to advantage towards the
clipping and shaping of them. It is a very great mistake to allow young
trees to grow for several years after they are large enough to be fit
for training. As soon as ever a tree is large enough to begin work on
according to the shape the tree is intended to be, a start should be
made, or else it will be found when the work is begun, that some
branches that have taken three or four years to grow will have to be cut
away altogether, after serving no other purpose than exhausting in an
unnecessary manner the strength of the tree; whereas if the tree had
been clipped sooner, these branches could have been utilised in forming
its various parts, or else removed from the tree.