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 | Categories: gardening • landscape design | Tags: • • • | 2 Comments »