World
Here’s Where to Find the Most Beautiful Topiaries in the World
I’ve been obsessed with topiary since a family holiday in the 1980s. Packed tightly into a VW Golf, we headed to the English Lake District where a wide-eyed child emerged into the wonderland of the iconic Levens Hall, an Elizabethan manor house boasting the oldest topiary gardens in the world. As I tumbled through the eccentric forms, from layered wedding cakes to the proudest peacocks, it seemed not beyond the realm of possibility that a small white rabbit was turning corners just ahead of me. I returned to school yearning for yew and babbling about box.
Perhaps it was a hint, an inkling of my future. Yet I never imagined that my grown-up self would board the Eurostar every autumn and speed out of high-octane London to Antwerp in search of similarly impressive specimens for my clients and their gardens. I’ve been making this trip for years. You see Belgium is to topiary what Scotland is to whisky—the epicenter of excellence.
The warm climate, ample rainfall, and fertile, alluvial soil have fostered a long-standing tradition of horticulture, not to mention generational expertise in both cultivation and artistry. The lifting season begins in November. This is when the great tree nurseries start scooping out plants as they settle into winter dormancy. Impressive mechanized rootball spades make light work of getting mature yew and box out of the ground; meanwhile landscape designers from across the continent jostle for the best specimens. It’s like some kind of horticultural Hunger Games.
I arrive just ahead of the season to get a head start. In October, I get to see the plants in the beautiful light of autumn, revealing the nuances of their character. And I’m not talking about small balls, dry spirals, or tight cones of suburban garden centers. Size is everything. Anything smaller than four feet doesn’t even touch my peripheral vision. From the restrained and geometric to the fantastical and surreal, I’m here for all of it: the cubes, domes, pyramids, beehives, and buttresses. I’ll take the arches, the pillars, the currant buns, the cake tiers and chess pieces and plinths with varied geometric forms crowning a central stem. They are all the cashmere of the garden wardrobe.
Hornbeams in a Harris-designed garden in Oxfordshire.
At one of Europe’s most iconic specimen nurseries, Solitair, I’m met by Valerie Cools, who runs the family business with her parents and sister, and quickly whisked off by four-wheel drive to crunch down the aisles. I note subtle differences in shape and character. Mass production doesn’t exist here.
I am shopping for projects coming together in the coming year: charismatic single pieces for a playful topiary lawn in Germany envisioned as a musical composition. I search for seven (always an odd number, never an even) tumpy beehives at least as wide as they are high for a project in Devon and a series of giants (four to five meters at least) for a Scottish garden inspired by a large screen we created in Dorset.
A bulbous topiary hedge contrasts the flounce of a meadow in Dorset (design, Charlotte Harris).
There’s a time and place for perfection, but roving through the nursery, I’m reminded of my soft spot for topiary wabi-sabi. Given the choice between a flawlessly rounded dome of yew and one with a bulge here and there, I’ll take the chubby currant bun any day. The indentations are gentle, made with artistry and vision, and when the light is at the right angle or the hoarfrost settles, each comes into its own. I once scooped up seven of these rotund sorts for an estate in Oxfordshire, where they now appear as if they’ve rolled down the lawn and settled fatly there, holding their bellies and enjoying the view of the distant spires.
Featured in our November/December 2024 issue.
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