Product Details
Topiary: Design and Technique

Topiary: Design and Technique
By Christopher Crowder, Michaeljon Ashworth

List Price: CDN$ 47.78
Price: CDN$ 42.13 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $39. Details

Availability: Usually ships in 1 to 2 months
Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca

11 new or used available from CDN$ 24.74

Product Description

From the gardens of ancient Egypt to the arts and crafts creations of Edwardian England, green sculpture has been clipped into shape. With its bold silhouettes, topiary is an icon that defines the hand of man in creating gardens, expressing the gardener’s ideas and firing the observer’s imagination. In this book, informative photographs offer ideas and starting points for creating your personal topiary work, while guidelines to creating specific shapes and designs are set out in simple diagrams that illustrate the stages of transformation from unruly shrub to stylized art form.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #1307610 in Books
  • Published on: 2006-03
  • Original language: English
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 128 pages

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
An age-old art, topiary still thrives today, especially at England's Levens Hall, where Crowder works as head gardener. Given Ashworth's expertise as a garden historian, the two ably and engagingly cover the history and creation of exquisite topiary specimens. Packed with photographs showing a wealth of imposing forms--vast embroidered parterre designs; fanciful creatures; and classic lollipops, spirals, and obelisks--the accompanying text delivers background information and plenty of sage advice. Crowder and Ashworth address the basics and provide design tips with an eye to placement and scale. Guidance on plant selection and planting, clipping by hand and with power tools, and pruning is offered, along with step-by-step illustrations to assist in the creation of a single amusing critter or a complex topiary display involving rigorously trained evergreens articulating an abstract motif. The variety and intriguing beauty of topiary are certain to rouse even the most hesitant gardener to consider a fresh approach to shaping plants. Alice Joyce
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"An informative guide for this artistic craft."  —Current Books on Gardening and Botany, Chicago Botanic Garden

About the Author
Chris Crowder is head gardener at Levens Hall in Cumbria, where he has worked since the mid-1980s. His special interest is in providing this unique 300-year-old topiary garden with a contemporary planting to complement the historic topiary specimens. He is also the author of a book on Levens and its garden. Michaeljon Ashworth is a fine art and sculpture historian, whose main interest and occupation lie in garden history, writing, lecturing and leading garden tours in the UK and Italy.