Topiary

 

Episode: #17 11/8/07
Presenter: Trevor Cochrane

Through out time one of mans greatest ambitions has been to control nature. Across the world, the Topiary trend has gotten stronger and stronger. It made a resurgence in Australia about ten years ago when a huge range of compact forms of Lilly Pilly’s started to be released, these plants make having a topiary garden, so much easier then ever before.

Topiary is a four dimensional art from, it works with both space, and time. You can’t help but feel a sense of balance when walking into a Topiary garden. The perfectionism in the shape of a clipped Lilly Pilly is what a Topiarist is really trying to achieve.

When you walk through such gardens, you really do get a sense of balance and control and real order, leaving you with a sense of feeling very comfortable.

When it comes to establishing the garden, it requires some good planning and foresight, maybe a little bit of a sense of the order that is going to come with a bit of time as well. All of this has to be tempered with some gardening knowledge.

The best varieties to use, well in cooler climates it is hard to go past the Buxus or box hedge species, and in warmer climates, well your best bets is one of the compact Lilly Pilly’s like bush Christmas or tiny Trev. All of these plants require four trims a year to maintain shape once they are mature.

Keeping your hedge in shape is really easy; you just need some manual hedge sheers like these. But these aren’t any old hedging sheers; they actually have a gearing drive in them that leverages the power, and because they are lighter they are easier to use.
Cutting, well it is dead simple just a light trim over the top to take off the new growth tips encouraging it to bush out which keeps the plant looking great.

Trevor suggests Hedge sheers by Fiskars when shaping your trees, it is a long process and so less strenuous tools will make the job much easier. For huge gardens, electrical or mechanical hedge sheers make things easier. But in reality, your average house hold garden, you just need a good set of hand held Fiskars hedge sheers.

Establishing a mature topiary garden can be quite expensive, you could easily spend $50,000 on a small garden, you can how ever establish one of these gardens quite cost effectively using small plants. It might take a two or three years, but with careful training, it can be achieved. It also means that you are going to at 20%- 30% to your property value could be $150-200,000.

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