hedges that i actually like

I’ll have to admit that I’ve never been a huge fan of hedges, partly because I’ve never lived in a house that had one of those clipped con­trap­tions that strad­dles the lines between gar­den­ing, archi­tec­ture and sculpture.

But then I ran into the work of the Bel­gian land­scape designer Jacques Wirtz who uses hedges in sur­pris­ing, inter­est­ing ways. He’s a major fig­ure in Europe, but isn’t well doc­u­mented in gen­eral gar­den books. The image to the left is from, as you might imag­ine, a book called The Wirtz Gar­dens, which appears to be the only work cur­rently out devoted to his work. The cur­rent book­seller prices start over $150 and quickly go up to sev­eral times that–At this point this is prob­a­bly a book for col­lec­tors only!

The cover image here shows hedge­work that flut­ters some­where between typ­i­cal hard-edged prun­ing and more asym­met­ri­cal Japan­ese styles (like “cloud prun­ing”). For an even bet­ter exam­ple, if you have access to Mak­ing the Mod­ern Gar­den by Christo­pher Bradley-Hoyle with Mark Grif­fiths, check out page 174 for a drop-dead gor­geous dou­ble hedge. In case you don’t have a copy nearby, let me do my best to describe it: A curv­ing brick walk­way steps gen­tly down a slope; imme­di­ately on either side of the walk­way are ever­green cloud-pruned ever­green box­woods that look bul­bous and deli­ciously amoeba-like; behind the box hedge is a small space, and then behind it is a taller hedge of decid­u­ous beech that’s been clipped in a more tra­di­tional, hard-edged style, with the edges mir­ror­ing the curve of the walk­way. The con­trast of the organic shapes against the geo­met­ric, and the perky light green of the box­wood against the twiggy green-and-brown back­ground of the beech is amaz­ing. This is one hedge design that plays up con­trasts between plants rather than aim­ing for a typ­i­cal hedge hege­mony of mak­ing every plant give up its indi­vid­u­al­ity and con­form to some mas­ter gardener’s plan.

And finally, a hedge from a pri­vate res­i­dence [ source ] that’s fea­tured on the master’s web­site. A hedge that isn’t all about order and conformity–Sign me up!

November 30 2008 05:02 am | Categories: gardening • landscape design | Tags: • • •

2 Responses to “hedges that i actually like”

  1. Eleanor at OutOfDoors on 02 Dec 2008 at 1:30 pm #

    Me too, me too! I love any­time the artis­tic side of prun­ing is explored. Too many hedge boxes and top­i­ary Mickey Mouses have soured peo­ple on it, I think, but there’s beau­ti­ful work being done. Marc Nucera’s work work as a land­scape pruner is promi­nently fea­tured in New Gar­dens of Provence, highly recommended.

  2. lostlandscape on 02 Dec 2008 at 8:26 pm #

    Eleanor,
    Thanks for vis­it­ing and for intro­duc­ing me to Marc Nucera’s work! It’s beau­ti­ful and really interesting–definitely a more humane treat­ment of plants than tra­di­tional hedges, and a great foil for the sculp­tures he makes. I noticed that the cur­rent Gar­den Design also has some pages devoted to his work. Def­i­nitely worth check­ing out!

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