Friday, April 4, 2014

Topiary...crush

Always a fave...Topiaries, I have several inside & in my courtyard garden, I love them in all forms, love the rosemary simple ones as well as the floral varieties. I use them as centerpieces, in the kitchen and I love them on the mantle. They look great in pairs, wonderful en masse & beautiful standing alone. Topiaries go well with rustic French country decor as well as the more traditional & modern interiors.
Topiary is the horticultural practice of training live perennial plants by clipping the foliage of trees and shrubs to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes.  Sometimes geometric or fanciful, the term also refers to plants which have been shaped as an art form...a type of living sculpture. The word derives from the Latin word for an ornamental landscape.
Since its European revival in the 16th century, topiary has been seen on the parterres and terraces of gardens of the European elite, as well as in simple cottage gardens. Traditional topiary forms use foliage pruned and/or trained into geometric shapes such as balls or cubes, obelisks, pyramids, cones, or tapering spirals.

Topiary at Versailles and its imitators were never complicated..low hedges punctuated by potted trees trimmed as balls, interrupted by obelisks at corners, provided the vertical features of flat-patterned parterre gardens. The art of topiary has been in and out of style in England in the last several hundred years...becoming very popular again in the late 1880s until present day...and have been widely used in all forms...in the formal English castle gardens, Country Manor homes and the simple cottage home & garden. 

Sharing with you some of my fave ways to use topiaries...

topiaries in the garden from Karl Gercens
topiary perfection from gershwinandgertie


Topiary love at Rue 27 Maison
Ginny Magher's home in France...
greenhouse topiaries via anurbancottage


flowering hydrangea topiary
beautiful setting from Tone on Tone...
rustic & chic from inspired design
topiaries from Tone on Tone...
Versailles...via the fuller view
Until next time....Cheers

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