One of the oldest forms of garden sculpture is not concrete, metal, wood or glass. It is live and comes from the garden itself: the topiary.
Topiaries may have existed as far back as the first century. The living sculptures flourished in ancient Rome, faded for a while and came back into fashion during the Victorian era. Topiaries arrived in North America around the late 17th century.
Creating topiary requires pruning, training and trimming a vine, tree or shrub into a shape or onto a foundation. Perhaps the most common and accessible topiary for residential use is potted ivy or rosemary growing around a wire-framed heart or other shape. Another create-your-own topiary starts with a wire-formed foundation, such as a pig or dog shape, within which one grows plant material to fill out the form.
Outdoor topiaries are more complex. Shrubs – and small trees – may be “sculpted” to represent an animal, large object or even a person. Needless to say, creating shrub and tree topiaries can take several years.
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Last year, while attending the Epcot International Flower and Garden Festival at Disney World, I had the opportunity to see the 100-plus topiaries distributed throughout the park, including more than 70 Disney character topiaries.
To create geometric-shaped topiaries, Disney horticulturalists prune a shrub or small tree into a pattern as described above. The Disney character topiaries are far more complicated.
Disney creates two types of character topiaries – shrub and sphagnum moss. In both cases, an artist designs a figure, which is then formed into a steel skeleton frame by a welder.
For shrub topiary, the skeleton is then placed over a plant in a large box. As it grows, the plant – usually a fast-growing evergreen – is trained to follow the shape of the frame. This can take from five to as long as 15 years.
Anyone familiar with the legendary impatience of Walt Disney knows that five years was too long for him, so the talented horticultural cast members at Disney developed a much faster way to create topiary, using sphagnum moss.
To create sphagnum topiary, the steel skeleton frame is filled with a watering mechanism. Each topiary character has its own elaborate, slow-drip irrigation system to assure the proper amount of water. Some parts of the topiary, such as extremities, may dry out quickly, but the main body can remain moist for a longer time and might rot if the entire topiary were watered at the same level.
Once the irrigation system is installed, the frame is stuffed with sphagnum moss. Vines or small, clumping plants are planted in the moss. As the plants grow, they are secured with hair pins to the moss-filled frame. Faces and other features are created using dried moss, palm fibers and seeds. The process takes weeks instead of years.
Whether shrub or sphagnum, the resulting topiaries are magical.