QUEEN ELIZABETH’S CROWN AND JUG, ELVASTON CASTLE
Such was the crusade against Topiary; in its train came swift destruction. Bridgeman and Kent were the landscape gardeners who, influenced by the writings of their time and desirous of instituting a new order of things, brought about the great change in garden design. They not only cleared away the sculptured trees but destroyed splendid, close hedges as well, throwing open to all eyes, and to all the winds, gardens that had hitherto been delightfully enclosed and secluded. Of Bridgeman there is very little information forthcoming, but Loudon tells us “He banished verdant sculpture and introduced morsels of a forest appearance in the gardens at Richmond.” Kent was a versatile Yorkshireman, who was successively painter, architect and landscape gardener; Claremont, Esher, laid out about 1725–1735, was one of his designs. He was the friend of Lord Burlington and, even more than Bridgeman, he carried into effect the ideas of Pope. The great successor to Kent was Brown, who was head gardener at Stowe till 1750, and subsequently, after being employed by the Duke of Grafton, he was head gardener at Hampton Court and Windsor. At this time he became very much in request as a landscape gardener, and so continued well on towards the end of the eighteenth century. His sympathy with Topiary may be gathered from the remark made by Sir Wm. Chambers in 1772, that “unless the mania were not checked, in a few years longer there would not be found three trees in a line from Land’s End to the Tweed.” In the course of about fifty years, from 1740 to 1790, the gardens of England, with a few exceptions, were completely altered, and the style that had been in vogue for full one hundred and fifty years was almost wholly obliterated. Later designers added many improvements, and a more graceful style succeeded that of Kent and Brown, but Topiary as a part of garden design was practically non-existent for about a hundred years. Then commenced the modern revival of the Art.
REVIVAL OF THE ART
“There is a tendency to restore some of the screens which formed so characteristic a feature of the Dutch style, with a view to obtain a greater degree of privacy, and more shelter for both visitors and plants. With this restoration of sheltering hedges and verdant belts has evidently come a desire for examples of Topiary art, and already there are several modern gardens where they are to be found firmly established.”—George Gordon, V.M.H.
“Topiary Work fell into disrepute in the nineteenth century, owing to the persistence with which the more natural styles of gardening came to the front, but even now this phase of ‘gardening’ exercises a considerable fascination upon a large section of the public; witness the interest excited of late years by the exhibits of trimmed trees which have appeared at the London shows.”—Walter P. Wright.
Notwithstanding the wonderful alteration and improvement that have taken place in British gardens since Kent began to make a clearance of Topiary work, several notable collections survived the general slaughter and these are to-day among the most interesting of the varied forms of gardening seen in the country. The gardens at Levens Hall and at Elvaston Castle may be especially particularised in this connection, but for the moment we will deal with the revival rather than the survival of the art.
During the past twenty years the practice of including at least a few specimens of clipped trees in any new garden of pretensions has been steadily growing, and within the last ten years several Topiary gardens of considerable extent have been laid out and planted. These are chiefly in the large establishments of the wealthy patrons of horticulture, and they are so situated that they are in harmony with formal surroundings, or disposed where they form a distinct item of horticultural interest and do not in any way mar the more natural beauties of adjacent subjects.
HENS, DUCKS, PEACOCKS, ETC., IN BOX AND YEW AT J. CHEAL AND SONS, CRAWLEY
Precisely why there has been a revival of this old art I am not prepared to say. It must suffice that there is such a revival, and a very distinct one, as any one who visits gardens and exhibitions and nurseries frequently will readily discover. At the leading London and provincial exhibitions two old established firms of nurserymen have frequently and extensively exhibited examples of Topiary; these are Messrs Wm. Cutbush & Son, Highgate, N., and Messrs J. Cheal & Sons, Crawley, Sussex; and it may be safely asserted that if there were no taste or demand for clipped trees the respective proprietors would not incur the necessarily heavy expense of displaying this particular line of goods.