 Don’t Be Timid
Try Topiary!
It may be just the touch
your home needs!
BY RANDY ROGERS
PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHARLIE COOK ASSOCIATES
As the glorious memories of
the holidays begin to fade,
so has the traditional conical
centerpiece of many of our
festivities ... now our search begins again
as we seek to bring new energy and
beauty to our homes and gardens.
During this new year, think about adding a topiary
to your life.
Topiary is the art of clipping or trimming
shrubs or trees into shapes, and now also
includes the use of metal forms, which can
be stuffed with sphagnum moss and soil to
create living shapes.
The Romans applied the word topiarius
to general gardening; however, by the first
century, these conquerors had set out
to conquer the Mediterranean cypress
(cupressus sempervirens) by creating shapes
and trimmed hedges to delight the eye and
give form to the garden.
 By the end of the 15th century, topiary
as an Italian art form developed
under the watchful eyes of the Medici
family. Spheres, cones and columns, as
well as many types of animals, were
sheared into the delightful focal points
of Italian gardens. Their ideas swept
throughout Europe.
The English selected yews as their featured
topiary specimens, and later British
garden architects and designers delighted
in creating vast labyrinths and gardens full of
oversized clipped creatures. The French created
parterres (usually geometrically shaped
hedges to divide and give form to the garden)
from boxwood and fashioned containerized
citrus trees into single trunk specimens.
With busy lives, many imagine the task of
taking care of topiaries to be too time-consuming
and shun the idea of including topiary
in today’s gardens; however, many hardy
shrubs with slower growth habits make easy
selections for this art.
The addition of a single
trunk holly tree with a shaped head for a container
grouping on the patio, or the selection
of a boxwood to give form and dimension to
a natural planting area, can provide the right
touch to create unique garden elements.
Today, topiary gardening has broadened
to include not only shrubbery trimmed into
shapes, but also wire forms, which can be
established in a container or in the garden.These forms are sometimes covered with
ivy or vines to create the shape, or they can
also be filled with sheet moss and potting
soils to create a living sculpture.
 Topiaries can also be decorated for holidays or special
events to create beautiful living centerpieces for your
table or entryway.
Visit local nurseries, and discover the wide selection
of plants which can be sheared into a topiary, or purchase
shrubs which have already been clipped and
given shape.
With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, why not search for that perfect heartshaped
topiary (usually available through local florists) to express your feelings?
Selections of hardy shrubs to use for South Texas topiary
• Yaupon, dwarf yaupon or columnar Will Fleming yaupon
• Burford or dwarf burford holly
• Eagleston, foster or Nellie R. Stevens holly
• Boxwood
• Privet or ligustrum
• Cypress and juniper
• Rosemary
• Selections of hardy vines to cover topiary forms
• Various types of English Ivy
• Pink jasmine (jasminum polyanthum)
• Ficus repens
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