CHAPTER XXXVII. 



TOPIARIAN FOLLIES. 



IN recent years an attempt of nurserymen has been made to make 

 more popular and harmful this outrage on natural form. I read the 

 following in best type in the staid columns of the Observer under 

 the heading " Tree-Sculpture " : 



One may see trees mostly Yew and Box whose foliage ascends in spirals 

 round their stems, like garlands twisted round so many Maypoles ; trees cut into 

 the shape of pillars and surmounted with leafy halls one on top of the other ; 

 trees in the forms of birds standing, sitting, and flying ; trees shaped like 

 pyramids, and even trees representing jugs and basins. 



False forms of tree here, but not a word of the Yew in its natural 

 form, so good that it deserves the name of our native Cedar. This 

 true form may not be seen in many gardens, owing to the misuse of 

 the tree usually clipped. To see the tree in its true beauty we must 

 seek it along the North Downs by the Pilgrims' Way or in a country 

 graveyard. Then in the Times : 



Birds, without base, take about ten or twelve years to grow, and dogs from 

 twelve to twenty years, while other subjects, requiring anything from ten to 

 ninety years, include peacocks, serpents, and serpentine columns, tables, armchairs, 

 sitting hens, geese and ducks, dogs (with and without kennels), ships, horses, and 

 pigs. One man in the North had his crest, a pelican feeding her young, grown 

 in Yew. 



The fact is, a Dutch nurseryman possessing a stock of these 

 distortions gave a dinner to the reporters of the daily and other 

 journals ; these took the man at his own estimate, and so we get 

 many Press puffs of the most impudent outrage ever perpetrated on 

 natural beauty in our gardens. The infliction has come to our 

 gardens from Dutch William mainly. From his day date most of 

 the examples of tree spoliation in our land. Not only does it mean 

 the ruin of tree form, but injury to the gardens too. Ask the gardener 

 at Northiam, Elvaston, Levens, or in any place where this parody of 

 an art is carried out what they think of its effect on the growth of 

 flower and shrub and you may hear the truth that it is very difficult 

 to grow flower or shrub near the misplaced trees. 



