Topiary, The Use Of Trimmed Ornamental Plants For Home And Garden Decoration

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Country of topiary forms

Traditionally, the Dutch are considered the trendsetters for tulips, hyacinths and daffodils. Of course, there is some truth in this, and bulbous plants are especially popular in the country. However, Holland could boldly be called the kingdom of topiary forms: both in cities and in large and small villages, even the tiniest courtyards have neatly trimmed thujas, yews and boxwoods. The climate allows all of them to winter painlessly, and there is probably no other country in Europe where geometric shapes cut out of plants are so popular.

Trees and shrubs transformed into all kinds of figurines, neat lawns and flower beds with symmetrical patterns and extremely flat edges - all these are elements of classic regular parks, which in the understanding of most of us should occupy a very large territory. However, over hundreds of years, the population of Holland has achieved extraordinary skill in the art of projecting elements of classic Dutch parks in a regular style onto the tiny spaces of their courtyards (Holland is a very densely populated country and a plot of 6-8 acres is already considered very large). Thanks to the art of gardeners, this country looks very elegant even in winter.

Contemporary art of regularity

Today the classic Dutch courtyard looks like this: in front of the house, on a site of about a couple of acres, a small, strict lawn is laid out. Neatly trimmed and symmetrically placed green bosquets contain aromatic herbs (the most popular are rosemary and lavender) or heathers with different colored foliage, or annuals. Although the latter - "filling" the space inside the neatly formed low hedges of evergreen shrubs - a completely optional technique.

Many people confine themselves to compiling geometric patterns from green "stripes". The components within each "strip" are cut in exactly the same way, this is strictly taken care of by the owners, who can often be seen in the courtyard with garden shears in their hands. But among themselves, the parts of such a pattern differ in height and often consist of plants of different types.

But a special chic is to use plants of the same genus, differing both in the color of the foliage and in the texture of the crown (for example, denser or less dense), since modern breeders have worked wonderfully well.

A very popular material in Dutch gardens is thuja. The variety of its varieties allows you to achieve the most unusual combinations. For example, many varieties of yellow thuja (for example, Thuja ocidentalis of Sunkist, Rheingold, Wareana Lutescens or Thuja orientalis of Aurea nana, Fastigiata aurea, and others) can set off the bright colors of their "green" relatives. Without any haircut, the almost perfectly spherical shape of the western thuja Little Champion, Woodwardii, Globosa or Danica make up ideal contrasting compositions with pyramidal shapes (for example, Smaragda or Spiralis).

Classic topiary forms (balls and pyramids made of boxwood or berry yew) are interspersed in Dutch courtyards with much more avant-garde options: for example, you can see figurines of a wide variety of animals (hares, bears, dolphins, sharks, etc.) or a bicycle completely made from boxwood.

In the backyard, plants grow more freely, and often the owners decorate the flower beds with figures of funny gnomes, lanterns or carts with a variety of summer houses inside.

Exhibition news

The slender rows of selection delights at spring shows in Holland begin with plants with "fashionable haircuts". The most popular model for this season is a garden bonsai made from thuja, cypress or boxwood.

Topiary masters work directly at exhibitions and, in front of visitors, transform green trees of their usual shape into practically bald trunks with a small number of branches, "fluffing" at the ends with green shoots. Representatives of the plant kingdom cut in this way are in extraordinary demand. Although they will never surpass real garden pine bonsai in solidity …

In Holland, cutting plants for garden bonsai is more of a demonstration of the art of "topiary", while in Russia such trees made from wintering varieties of western thuja could replace the capricious Japanese maple in oriental-style gardens.

My home is my castle

Dutch parks in a regular style were characterized by the presence of separate green rooms, the "content" of which could be significantly different: somewhere it was roses, somewhere it was aromatic plants, somewhere fruit trees.

The average inhabitant of today's Dutch village can rarely afford to "maintain" an entire green room, most often limited to growing 1-2 "walls" on the sides of his site. But these walls are so high and thick that you have to cut openings in them for aisle or small windows for a mailbox or trash can. It looks incredibly funny. Such dense hedges are quite capable of replacing traditional Russian fences.

Of course, Dutch gardeners are not limited to planting well-trimmed bushes. A wide variety of conifers, clematis, among which the most popular are plants with white and green flowers, willows that are very common now in Europe (the latest "willow fashion" is the Salix gracillistyla Melanostachys cultivar, with dark purple earrings, which was declared a plant in March 2003 of the year), bamboo or beautiful modern varieties of deren with different stem colors (for example, the bright green Cornus stolonifera Flaviorea or the bright red C. alba Sibirica) all find their place in the gardens of private sector dwellers in Holland.