Topiary for barmy gardens

Add eccentricity and a whole lot of extra work to your garden

Topiary, the art of clipping plants into unnatural shapes, is a lot of work but is always attention grabbing. And it was by complete chance on a trip writing my fourth gardening book that my attention was grabbed passing the absolute boss of topiary gardens: Levens Hall. Having never been I had to look.

In most gardens clipped topiary is primarily used in a formal way, such as repeated pyramid shapes or (my nemesis) balls. I have a resistance to repeated topiary for grandeur, it can feel like a garden dead zone except the plant trapped in restrained hell. Give me some quirkiness.

I love eccentric topiary, wonky abstract shapes or weird animals. Why not? Levens Hall smashes crazy topiary out the park.

I’m guessing Levens Hall’s topiary started as a formal idea and has morphed over the long years into something utterly, wonderfully, insane.

No one of sound mind would set out to create a garden with so much work to maintain. But as a standalone curiosity, the audacity of its scale is what sets Levens Hall apart as a globally unique weirdo.

The bigger the topiary or the more you have the more work it is to clip each year. Levens Hall a low maintenance garden it is not. I would not wish this garden’s maintenance on anyone except my worst enemy. The gardeners who manage it are absolute troopers.

I enjoyed Leven’s Hall, it deserves its place as one of the world’s standout gardens, it is so unique because of its topiary. Despite being shown on TV and in magazines all the time, it impressed me with its abstract shapes, wonk and vast number of topiary shapes and fun hedges.

Beneath the topiary are blocks of colourful flowers, deep beds of flowering shrubs and Tropaeolum specieosum climbs up the evergreen trees looking every bit the flame its common name suggests. I really appreciated these details from skilled gardeners.

The rest of the large walled garden contains an old orchard, quieter corners and token patches of vegetables. I was reminded of my deep love for tropical and colourful foliage plants that I no longer grow at home. Bronze leaf cannas tower.

Levens Hall also has the biggest circular pond I have ever seen, so big I couldn’t fit it into a photo even on my phone’s fish eye lens. It is flippin’ mahoosive!

But topiary is the star. If you’re tempted to topiarise, it does work well dotted in among naturalistic gardens. A jaunty shape breaks up the floof of wild planting. Most of the topiary at Levens Hall is yew, which I’d recommend too. Topiary is easy to create, you just clip gently over the years to steer the plant into the shape you want, a dance of growth and shears.

While Levens Hall garden is the polar opposite of what I’m writing about on my trip and topiary is way down on my list of exciting things about gardens these days, I loved this place. Like the other best public gardens, Levens Hall is unapologetic in its all-consuming execution. I felt transported to another time and place. Big but intimate, the garden made me feel I was experiencing the world in a different way, and for a short moment, I was.