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 »

a man named pearl

Open­ing last Fri­day in the­aters in Los Ange­les (and just a few other places) was A Man Named Pearl. The Pearl of the film is South Car­olina mas­ter top­i­arist Pearl Fryar. The doc­u­men­tary doesn’t open here in San Diego until August 22 but the film is on my list. How often is it that you have a film about a gar­dener? (Let’s see…there was Peter Sell­ers in Being There…and then…any oth­ers? Would The Con­stant Gar­dener or Mid­night in the Gar­den of Good and Evil really qual­ify beyond hav­ing gar­dens and gar­den­ers in their titles?)

The film’s site has show dates and a trailer that gives you the best overview of his work. That trailer forms the open­ing part of the first of the clips below, and after­wards it goes into a forum fea­tur­ing Fryar talk­ing about his work in front of an audi­ence. The sec­ond clip is a more extended talk and includes a demon­stra­tion with him fir­ing up his elec­tric hedge clippers…


July 28 2008 | Categories: gardening • landscape design | Tags: • • | 3 Comments »