The book of topiary

by Charles H. Curtis; W. Gibson

EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY VIEW OF LORD HAMILTON’S GROUNDS NEAR THE THAMES

Evelyn, the celebrated diarist, who lived throughout the greater part of the seventeenth century, and just over five years of the eighteenth, strongly censured the prevalent method of clipping fruit trees into regular form, as well he might, but he claimed to be the first to bring the yew into fashion for hedges, declaring it to be “as well for a defence as for a succedaneum to cypress, whether in hedges or pyramids, conic spires, bowls or what other shapes.” And further he adds, “I do again name the yew, for hedges, preferably for beauty and a stiff defence, to any plant I have ever seen.” Evelyn’s residence from 1652 to 1694 was Sayes Court, Deptford, a home made famous to students of history because of its occupation by Peter the Great, of Russia, in 1698, to whom it was sub-let by Admiral Benbow. Peter the Great did not take the same care of the garden as Evelyn had taken, and his destruction, in part at least, of a famous holly hedge, caused the owner to regard the Russian Czar as a “right nasty tenant.” An old writer informs us, with reference to Sayes Court, that Evelyn had “a pleasant villa at Deptford, a fine garden for walks and hedges, and a pretty little greenhouse with an indifferent stock in it. He has four large round philareas, smooth clipped, raised on a single stalk from the ground, a fashion now much used. Part of his garden is very woody and shady for walking; but not being walled, he has little of the best fruits.”

The beginning of the end was not now far to seek. One of our greatest modern landscape gardeners, Mr H. E. Milner, has written: “Precise designs of clipped box and yew are not out of place, if the building has a character that is consonant with such an accompaniment.” Not satisfied with a few clipped trees in suitable positions, or with a part of the garden devoted to examples of Topiary, owners and gardeners alike, in the times I have briefly reviewed, seemed to have laboured to fill their gardens with illustrations of geometric figures, in box or yew; with the quaintest patterns and weirdest shapes, caricaturing birds and beasts, and imitating architecture and things of common use. Distorted vegetation met the eye everywhere, and there was little of the natural and beautiful to relieve the general monotony. It was the excessive use of Topiary that led to its own downfall and caused Batty Langley to ask, “Is there anything more shocking than a stiff, regular garden?”

CRUSADE AGAINST TOPIARY

“The Dutch Garden in front of Hampton Court Palace is unobjectionable, because it is in character with that part of the building and as a royal garden it ought to remain as it is, were it only to serve as an illustration of the style of gardening in the time of William and Mary.”—Charles M‘Intosh.

Whenever a fashion runs to extremes its end is not far to seek. On the one hand, a fashion becomes too general for those who have a taste for novelty, and especially for those who can afford at almost any cost to have something not available to the general public.

On the other hand, a fashion carried to excess becomes inconvenient and ridiculous, therefore it at once becomes offensive to those who are regarded as having good taste. And so it came about that when Topiary work had spread itself over all the gardens of the time and could hardly go further either in extent or design, there came the inevitable reaction. The same sort of thing has happened even in quite modern times.

One need not be very old to have seen the famous trained specimen plants that used to grace the highly successful exhibitions at the Royal Botanic Society’s gardens, at the Crystal Palace, and elsewhere. Yet these giants have passed away, and in their places we have larger stocks of smaller and more easily grown subjects—in other words, the fashion has changed. “Bedding-out” reached such a height of fashionable popularity that it threatened to exclude the beautiful hardy perennial flowers from many a garden; it taxed the patience and ingenuity of the gardener and the purse of the employer almost to breaking point—it passed from reasonableness to absurdity. Then came a new order of things; perennials have been brought back and improved; hardy flowers are the fashion.

When Topiary threatened to exclude all else from the garden there arose several apostles of freedom, and these conducted a crusade against the art. Among those whose writings are more or less regarded in these days mention may be made of three—Bacon, Addison, and Pope.