While 2022 is a year filled with more natural-looking garden trends, the topiary garden hasn’t lost its popularity. The art of topiary first became popular in ancient Rome - back when Julius Caesar was in charge. And it wasn’t short-lived: the first written accounts of topiary art are dated around 44 BC (!). And even now, millennia later, topiary gardens and topiary art kept their popularity: outdoors and indoors. 

 

The ancient craft of topiary art 

For centuries, the craft of (cloud-)pruning has mesmerized many gardeners and provided garden designers with the perfect art for modern landscape designs. 

 

The varieties suitable to practise the craft, on the other hand, have constantly evolved. But even now, centuries after the first piece of topiary art was created, there are some qualities each, and every topiary-suitable plant has: they have small leaves, grow quickly and have a dense branching pattern.

 

The best plants for topiary gardens 

We’re proud to share some of the newest discoveries that make creating a topiary garden possible for anyone. 

 

Lonicera Garden Clouds® is a series consisting of Lonicera that makes any topiary project possible, as they’re naturally easy to prune into shape. The glossy, delicate foliage of the Garden Clouds® is beautifully coloured, and even more surprising are the colourful young shoots. After three years, Garden Clouds® is about 90 cm high and 60 cm wide. The Garden Clouds® endure a place in full sun as well as in the shade. Plant them in well-drained soil. This evergreen is particularly suitable as a garden plant and for landscaping—hardy to -18 °C. 

 

Taxus might be the most known, needled evergreen shrubs used for topiary projects. Taxus media Eleganza is a new Taxus with a uniform, bushy, ascending growth. This makes it suitable for hedges and cloudy massives. With its fine needles, it has a beautiful, elegant look. Whereas the drawbacks for most Taxus are the poisonous berries, this male plant does not carry these! Making Eleganza an excellent addition to the Taxus range, with a good growth power and fine needles. 

 

Thuja has flat leaves and can take on different sizes and plant forms: making it the ideal variety for all your topiary needs. Thuja Totem Smaragd, for example, is a beautiful, green conifer that grows naturally in an oval ascending form. The branching is very dense, and Totem Smaragd grows approx. 150 – 175 cm high and 40-50 cm wide. The best thing is that Totem Smaragd is widely applicable because it can be planted in the sun, in partial shade or shade.

 

Picea is perfect for Christmas, but these slow growers with dense foliage are fantastic for topiary projects with pyramidal or conical shapes. For example, Picea Perfecta or Picea Christmas are very hardy, grow pyramidal, and are happy in both sun and partial shade. 

 

Some of the best topiary plants are also among the best hedge plants, which makes sense, as the desirable qualities are the same for both subjects. Cherry laurel such as the Prunus Bonaparte® cultivar is ideally suited for topiary. Bonaparte® has a dense, upright growth habit and neat, uniform plant shape, making it easy to prune. The same goes for bushy, upright, evergreen and very hardy Prunus Tico - growing 150 cm wide and 250 cm tall.