Heslington, near York, still boasts an ancient Topiary garden, where all the clipped trees are of yew. This, as well as the clipped hedges of Rockingham, and the hedges and clipped trees at Erbistock, date, according to the Hon. Alicia Amherst, from about 1560. Other trees and shrubs were also used by the tonsile artists, and even Rosemary was not omitted. Barnaby Googe (about 1578) observed that the women folk planted it and trimmed it into shapes “as in the fashion of a cart, a peacock, or such things as they fancy.”
William Harrison, Rector of Radwinter, and Canon of Windsor, who wrote “A Description of England” contained in “Holinshed’s Chronicles,” has already been referred to. He was a most observant man and one who in his own picturesque language “had an especiall eye unto the truth of things”; from 1586 to 1593 he was Canon of Windsor, and therefore anything he has to say about gardens is of unusual interest. His keen patriotism shines brightly through all his writings, and his high opinion of his own land is not in any way reduced when he comes to discourse upon gardens, for he writes: “I am persuaded that, albeit the gardens of the Hesperides were in times past so greatly accounted of, because of their delicacy, yet, if it were possible to have such an equal judge as by certain knowledge of both were able to pronounce upon them, I doubt not but he would give the prize unto the gardens of our days, and generally over all Europe, in comparison of those times wherein the old exceeded.”
Early in the succeeding century, however, we come upon some more positive evidence of the use of Topiary work. Lawson, in 1618, shows more clearly that Topiary had become an important branch of the art of gardening, and that the designs carried out by some of the artists were, to say the least of it, remarkable. As indicative of the progress already made, he states: “Your gardener can frame your lesser wood to the shape of men armed in the field, ready to give battell: or swift-running Grey Hounds to chase the Deere, or hunt the Hare. This kind of hunting shall not waste your corne, nor much your coyne.”
In the reign of Charles II. (1669–1685), garden design and garden ornamentation reached a degree of extravagance not previously attempted and not subsequently repeated. This was the time when Le Notre rose to be the most famous gardener in Europe, a time when Louis XI. was King of France (1643–1715). During this period there was a great striving after effect on the part of all possessed of ample means, while both aristocrat and plebeian desired and loved to be dazzled by brilliance or enchanted by the novel and singular. From Johnson we learn that during a residence at the court of France, Charles II. became enamoured of the French style of ornamental gardening introduced by Le Notre. This style differed chiefly from that already in vogue in its magnificence; everything was carried out more elaborately and regardless of expense. “The alleys were lengthened, but still there were alleys, jets d’eau, mazes, parterres and statues, clipt trees and mathematically formed borders as of yore.” It is said that the extravagance in garden ornamentation at Versailles was designed and carried into effect by Le Notre at a cost of two hundred million francs, or over £8,250,000. The great features were huge marble-edged water-basins, elaborate fountains, an abundance of masonry for the terraces, and clipped yew and box, making a sum total described at a much later date by Mr Wm. Robinson, in his “Parks and Gardens of Paris” as “the deadly formalism of Versailles.”
BEECH HEDGE AND BOWLING-GREEN AT LEVENS
Charles II. encouraged elaborate garden design, and, with it, Topiary; it was under his orders that Le Notre himself laid out the semi-circular garden at Hampton Court. Gibson, who made a tour of London gardens in the reign of the “Merry Monarch,” shows by his writings that the chief features of these establishments were the terrace walks, evergreen hedges, “shorn shrubs in boxes,” and orange and myrtle trees.
In the earlier part of the seventeenth century the gardens of Bilton and Chilham were designed, with an accompaniment of clipped trees, while later in the century Sir William Temple, who negotiated the triple alliance between England, Sweden, and the Netherlands, laid out a Dutch garden at Moor Park. He had a large affection for the Dutch style of gardening, but was nevertheless quick to see that big formal gardens and their elaborate designs and masonry cost more to maintain in prim order than many who possessed them could well afford. It was also about this time that the now famous Topiary garden at Levens Hall, in Westmoreland, was laid out by Beaumont, one of Le Notre’s disciples. According to the inscription under his portrait at Levens Hall, Beaumont was “Gardener to James II. and Colonel James Grahme. He laid out the gardens at Hampton Court and at Levens.” It was probably in some alteration of the Hampton Court gardens that Beaumont took part.
Topiary gardening reached its height during the reign of William and Mary (1689–1702). William III., Prince of Orange, brought with him a taste for clipped yews, and also for elaborately designed iron gates and railings. He accentuated the prevailing taste. Turning again to Johnson, we find garden design “was now rendered still more opposed to nature by the heavy additions of crowded hedges of Box, Yew, etc., which, however, by rendering the style still more ridiculous, perhaps hastened the introduction of a more natural taste which burst forth later.” Some further idea of the prevalence of clipped trees is obtained from Celia Fiennes, who, in her chronicles of a journey “Through England on a Side Saddle in the time of William and Mary,” makes frequent reference to alleys of clipped trees and to yew and cypress cut into “severall forms.” William III. commenced the Kensington Gardens, and to alter a disfiguring gravel pit he employed the services of those famous Brompton nurserymen, London and Wise. In our time such a spot would in all probability be converted into a dell, with water and rock gardens, but London and Wise erected a mimic fortification, making the bastions and counterscarps of clipped yew and variegated holly. That this production was “long an object of wonder” can be easily understood, though whether it was one for “admiration” is open to question, notwithstanding that it had many admirers and was known as the “Siege of Troy.”
Vegetable sculpture seems now to have reached its limit of popularity and design. Hazlitt, in his “Gleanings in old Garden Literature,” hits off the situation admirably when he writes: “But it was to the Hollanders that London and his partner were indebted for that preposterous plan of deforming Nature by making her statuesque, and reducing her irregular and luxuriant lines to a dead and prosaic level through the medium of the shears. Gods, animals, and other objects were no longer carved out of stone; but the trees, shrubs and hedges were made to do double service as a body of verdure and a sculpture gallery.”