clippers run amok
A couple of topiary-related reports dropped into my consciousness over the last few days.
First, I think it was hort.net that passed on a sighting of a roadside vegetative formation that resembled a giant chicken. The photo was published in the Telegraph, and was purportedly a naturally occurring plant in Cambridgeshire that had managed to grow itself into a sorta-chicken shape. [ source ]
I could swear it was the English subspecies of the chicken that I posted on a couple months ago, a local topiary creation in the Pacific Beach neighborhood here in San Diego:
And then I was reading an interview with Yelp.com’s local San Diego’s manager. When asked what his favorite weird thing on Yelp was, he piped up that it had to be this gonzo bit of topiary in the Mission Hills neighborhood of town. Although it’s only a few miles from where I live, the house is a little off the beaten track, and I’ve never been by it.
And for a more immersive and interactive look, check out Google Street Views.
Or better yet, visit the house at 3549 Union Street. I’ll be paying a visit soon myself. There will be pictures.
It’s such a great mishmash of geometrical shapes and gunslingers and real and imagined creatures, and as it stands it’s a great piece of folk art. (Could it be inspired by the topiary at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania?)
But I could having all sorts of fun with the basic idea: maybe using several kinds of plants, or refining the shapes into more definite forms and layering a more fanatical sense of order that you see in a lot of topiary. But whatever you do it’d be a shame to lose the sense of humor and barely-controlled chaos of the original!
February 14 2009 05:34 am | Categories: gardening • landscape design | Tags: Cambridgeshire • San Diego • topiary
tina on 14 Feb 2009 at 7:27 am #
Really different. Happy Valentine’s Day to you.
out of doors on 14 Feb 2009 at 7:31 am #
yay topiary! I’ve been meaning to do a post on it for awhile now, the funny blending of imagination and fanatical control…have you seen Pearl Fryar’s?
susan (garden-chick) on 14 Feb 2009 at 2:44 pm #
The last photo is so crazy, I feel if I were to gaze at it long enough I would find a secret message hidden in the shapes. Sort of like the rumors that if you played the Beatles Sgt. Pepper album backwards it said “Paul is dead” and Led Zepplin albums had something about Satan worship. (But you might not be old enough to have ruined your records trying to discover if this was really true.)
lostlandscape on 14 Feb 2009 at 9:08 pm #
It sounds like you all had a similar reaction to what I did!
Outofdoors–I haven’t seen the Pearl Fryar documentary, but did a post when the film was about to be released. Thanks for the reminder about it–I just added it to my Netflix queue! His work is fun all right, and so is he. The additional layering of the issues of race on top of everything makes it sound like the film could be really compelling.
Susan–Oh god yes I’m old enough. Listeners these days have got it so easy, that they just have to run their .wav files backwards to get the secret messages. I definitely get the idea of staring at the hillside and continuing to see even more things…some of which might even be there…
[ Lost in the Landscape ] » autopiary on 16 Feb 2009 at 6:41 am #
[…] Speaking of topiary, this is the clipped hedge of a neighbor down the street. Another neighbor—one who happens to design cars—thought it looked a bit like some vintage vehicle or roadster. […]
[ Lost in the Landscape ] » gonzo topiary on 12 Apr 2009 at 6:02 am #
[…] posted a couple months ago about the presence here in town of an extreme topiary garden. At that point I hadn’t had a […]