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.
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.
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.