Part 6

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.

It is not my intention to try to explain the various ways of training all the different shapes I have pointed out. That in itself would require a chapter; as the different ways of training a yew or any other tree are so numerous, to attain what is practically the same end, that the person responsible for the work will have to be guided greatly by circumstances and according to the particular tree he has got to work upon. In every Topiary garden there should be at least four or five different arches of various designs. There are very few things that are more effective in any garden than a few well trained arches, and in the Topiary garden, if they are not more effective than in the modern garden, they are at any rate more in keeping with the general surroundings of the place. If it has been decided to train several arches in the garden, each one should be quite a different shape from its neighbour. There is such a variety of different shapes to be seen in almost any garden where arches are trained, that there is no occasion for two arches in one garden to be similar in design.

When the shapes have been carefully thought out, let no time be lost in making a start on the clipping and training of them, especially if the trees are far enough advanced in growth to begin work on. It is simply loss of time to allow the trees to keep growing, year after year, when they might be having some training done to advantage towards the clipping and shaping of them. It is a very great mistake to allow young trees to grow for several years after they are large enough to be fit for training. As soon as ever a tree is large enough to begin work on according to the shape the tree is intended to be, a start should be made, or else it will be found when the work is begun, that some branches that have taken three or four years to grow will have to be cut away altogether, after serving no other purpose than exhausting in an unnecessary manner the strength of the tree; whereas if the tree had been clipped sooner, these branches could have been utilised in forming its various parts, or else removed from the tree.

In the making of a Topiary garden, nothing should be done to the trees in a hurry; but on the other hand, no more time should be lost than can possibly be avoided in hastening on the work of shaping, and in getting the garden furnished in the quickest possible time. No young shoots or branches should be cut away that can possibly be used in the construction of the various shapes; but in the training of young trees special care should be given to them, and particular notice taken that they are not allowed to make too rapid growth. In a very few years trees will be injured to a great extent through being allowed to grow too quickly. More especially does this apply to hedges. No matter how much it is desired to get a hedge quickly grown in a certain place, whether for shelter or anything else, it is the greatest possible mistake to sacrifice strength and substance to a desire to promote rapid growth, a result that is certain to occur if a hedge is allowed to grow eight or ten feet before it is stopped. Nothing should be done to a hedge in the way of clipping the same autumn or winter it is planted, and perhaps not even the following autumn; but each year afterwards it should be stopped, and never allowed to make more than three or four inches of growth each year. By following the system of stopping the growth every year, the length of time required to grow a hedge eight or ten feet in height is greatly extended. But the result will amply repay the extra time that has been taken to grow it; you will get a hedge full of strength and substance, and well furnished with young growths from top to bottom. But if the other system is followed of allowing the hedge to get to its full height before any clipping is done, you will have a hedge that is lacking in strength and substance, easily blown out of shape by every wind, and also one that it is very difficult to clip in anything like a proper way, on account of its many strong branches growing towards the outside, that should have been removed to make room for a thicker growth. Each year when the work of clipping is being done, a sharp look-out should be kept for all small branches or shoots that are inclined to grow towards the outside of the tree or hedge, and these must be removed whenever they are seen. In equal force does this apply to both hedges and trees, and it is a part of the work in a Topiary garden which if not carefully attended to, will very soon cause a great deal of harm. Those shoots in the course of a few years will grow into strong branches, and become a regular nuisance in the way of keeping them constantly tied in; and eventually it is possible that they will have to be removed altogether, as it is not always easy to keep branches of that description tied back within the general level of the hedge. Nothing, moreover, gives a worse appearance to a hedge or tree than one of these bare branches projecting beyond the general level, perhaps entirely devoid of young growth. In the case of one of these branches that I have described having been allowed to grow for some years, and then found necessary to be removed by being cut out altogether, the disfigurement that will be caused to the hedge or tree will be very apparent for some years afterwards; whereas, if such branches had been removed each year as they made their appearance, no disfigurement would have resulted through their removal; rather would the growth be improved to a great extent, inasmuch as, where each shoot or branch is cut off a number of young growths will break away, which will help to give the hedge a firm and compact appearance, a thing that is greatly to be desired in all clipped hedges or trees. For the general work of clipping and training trees in the Topiary garden, I would strongly recommend that the old-fashioned shears be used. There are several different makes of clipping shears to be got now. Some of them have been given a trial here; but for general purposes they were not found to be very well suited to the work. There are exceptions, of course, where they might be used with advantage, as, for instance, in the case of a privet hedge, where the surface is smooth and even and the growth soft and easily cut. But for all general purposes, the old style of shears is the best. It is very often the case that in the work of clipping a well trained tree, it is necessary to cut the growths off one by one, and it is in a similar instance that the old-fashioned shears with their sharp points have the advantage over the newer make of machine.

THE GENERAL MANAGEMENT OF A TOPIARY GARDEN

In previous chapters I have dealt almost entirely with the general formation of a Topiary garden; the soils and manures that are most suitable for the cultivation and welfare of the yew; and I tried to give my readers some idea of the general treatment required in the management of both old and young trees. In this chapter it is my intention to explain, as clearly as possible, the yearly management of a Topiary garden.

The general routine of work in the Formal or Dutch garden is very much the same as in any other garden, with, of course, the exception of the clipping and training of the trees. That in itself adds a very great amount of extra labour to the general work. But fortunately it is work that requires to be done at the slackest time of the year for gardening, viz., the autumn.

If the garden is an old established one, the arranging and planting of the different beds will have been carried out many years previous, very possibly at the time the trees were planted, at the foundation of the garden, although there is no doubt they will have been subject to many alterations during the years that have elapsed since the time when the garden was first formed. But in this chapter it is with the planting and arranging of the various flowering plants in the beds of a garden that has been laid out on the principle recommended in an earlier chapter of this work—on the formation of the Topiary garden—that I intend chiefly to deal with.

The planting of the beds and their various contents is in the Topiary garden a very important part of the work, and one that requires both a great amount of skill and forethought, as to a great extent on the arranging of the various kinds of flowering plants in the different beds will depend the future beauty of the garden. Of course I do not mean to imply that the arrangement of the various beds is of as much importance as the planting of the trees, as they differ in this respect so far, that once the trees in a Topiary garden are planted, they should under no circumstances whatever be altered; but in the case of the beds, they may be subject to many alterations, as circumstances may occur. The yew by itself is not a very bright or attractive tree, but when you see it planted in the Topiary garden and clipped into all kinds of unique shapes and figures, and all the available space in the beds is utilised for the purpose of massing either herbaceous or bedding plants, the effect is extremely beautiful; it is then that one sees a garden with a charm and beauty about it that is very seldom if ever met with in the more modern garden.

It is quite evident that, in most of the old formal gardens, glass accommodation has never to any great extent been considered necessary. Yet there is nothing of more importance to the gardener in charge of a large Topiary garden than plenty of glass accommodation for storing the various bedding plants during winter and spring. In former years both the persons who owned the Topiary gardens, and the gardeners as well, seem to have depended to a great extent on the different varieties of annuals for the embellishment of their gardens. But annuals in a garden such as the one I am speaking of, never have the same effect among the yews as the more bright and showy bedding plants. I quite agree with a great many people in their contention that glass structures are altogether out of place in the Topiary garden. But provision should be made for them in some way or other, and as a rule some place can be found for the erection of a few houses without clashing with the other features of the garden.

If the garden has been laid out on a large scale, and contains a quantity of large beds, as regards the work of arranging and deciding what each bed is to be planted with, the person who is responsible will have to be guided by circumstances to a certain extent according to the accommodation that is already at hand, or is to be provided for the raising of bedding plants.

In every garden, and especially in the Topiary garden, the beds should be so arranged that they will yield as far as possible a continual show of bloom for as many months of the year as flowers will bloom in the garden. A continual supply of bloom for the longest possible time is the principal object to be aimed at. Of course in the arrangement of the beds it will be necessary to plant some of them with herbaceous plants; others may be planted with roses; as both roses and herbaceous plants look well in any garden. But in the using of perennial plants of any kind, I would strongly recommend that they should be planted more in the background and in large borders, instead of in the more important beds in the garden. These last should be reserved for bedding plants, as no matter whether roses, or any other kind of plants, be used, the same brilliant and desirable effect can never be obtained as is to be had from the more showy and more easily massed bedding plants. In the planting of herbaceous or any variety of plants, exceptional care should be taken to keep the plants far enough away from the trees, so as to avoid all injurious effects from the summer’s growth coming in contact with the yews. If the practice of planting close up to the trees is followed, on purpose to avoid bare patches in the borders, the result will be disastrous to the more important part of the garden, viz., the Topiary work. But as bare patches are always unsightly in the border, they should be avoided as far as possible by planting the very dwarf growing herbaceous plants in close proximity to the trees. It is a plan that can very well be followed in perennial planting, but it is more difficult to manage in the more important work of bedding out for the summer months, especially if large and tall growing plants are extensively used.