gonzo topiary

gonzo-topiary-overview

I posted a cou­ple months ago about the pres­ence here in town of an extreme top­i­ary gar­den. At that point I hadn’t had a chance to visit it, but last week I finally made it.

gonzo-topiary-section-of-slope

The house respon­si­ble for the gar­den perches high above the street. The owner could have cho­sen to plant ground­cover on the long slope, or to ter­race it and gar­den the dif­fer­ent lev­els. Instead they opted to pop­u­late the slope with sev­eral dozen crazy lit­tle top­i­aries. Some of them are geo­met­ric, but most are fan­ci­ful lit­tle fig­ures. Bun­nies, sea mon­sters, Texas gun­slingers, you name it.

gonzo-topiary-smiling-head

gonzo-topiary-space-alien

The plants mak­ing up all the fig­ures appeared to be cape hon­ey­suckle, Teco­maria capen­sis, a plant that isn’t one of the clas­sic top­i­ary selec­tions. But it accepts shap­ing really well, and seems to be a good choice for top­i­ary if you don’t mind a lit­tle bumpi­ness here and there. The plant can have spec­tac­u­lar tubu­lar orange flow­ers, though don’t expect to see many if you’re sculpt­ing a giant bunny out of it.

gonzo-topiary-and-gardener

A spec­ta­cle like this doesn’t just hap­pen, so it was no sur­prise that I found a gar­dener main­tain­ing it. I was hop­ing to see some­one shap­ing the top­i­aries. But instead he was using an elec­tric hedge trim­mer to keep the plants off the stairs that led up (and up and up) to the house. But I guess that’s gar­den­ing for you. There’s a cer­tain amount of the really grat­i­fy­ing work of putting in new plants or admir­ing the flow­ers, but there’s a lot of basic main­te­nance that goes into it as well…

Speak­ing of things top­i­ary, I finally had a chance to see A Man Named Pearl, the 2006 doc­u­men­tary on Pearl Fryar’s amaz­ing top­i­ary gar­den in Bish­opville, South Car­olina. The basic story is inspir­ing: a sharecropper’s son moves into a white neigh­bor­hood where his pres­ence isn’t appre­ci­ated at first; over time he makes a gar­den that is awarded “Yard of the Month”; and then he goes on to shape a col­lec­tion of some of the most orig­i­nal top­i­aries ever clipped. Some of you have seen the doc­u­men­tary already–particularly now that HGTV has broad­cast it. But if you haven’t, it’s def­i­nitely worth a look.

April 12 2009 | Categories: art • gardening | Tags: • • • • • | 7 Comments »