Have you noticed that hedges are very fashionable at the moment?
They are often planted in geometrically neat rows, from densely leafed bushes such as bruxus (a species of boxwood).
My wife has planted whole of rows of these neat little hedges using (so she tells me) Japanese bruxus.
But for hedges to work they need to be very neatly and precisely trimmed and shaped.
Which brings us to the word ‘topiary’.
This is the art of clipping and trimming shrubs into ornamental or, sometimes, fantastic shapes.
American artist Jeff Koons famously shaped flowering bushes into a giant puppy.
He did this in 1992.
It is now installed outside the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (in Spain).
I mention ‘topiary’ because a great American ‘topiary artist’ has recently died.
His name is Pearly Fryar.
(He was born in 1939, making him 87-years-old when he died).
He has left his famous garden behind him for people to enjoy.
The Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden is a three-acre garden located in Bishopville, South Carolina.
Fryar's garden contains over 400 individual plants.
Fryar's work is said to be a departure from traditional topiary work, and his ‘topiary’ art is considered abstract, inventive, and free form.
If you’d like to have a look, the garden has its own website. Here’s the link: Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden
In fact, if you type in the word ‘topiary’ into Google you can see some amazing pictures of what some people have achieved in shaping hedges.
(In the meantime, we are just trying to get our hedges perfectly straight and the tops exactly level—in a plane, geometric fashion. That’s hard enough!)
‘Topiary’ is recorded in English from 1592.
It came from the Latin word topiārius which literally means (I think!) ‘topical.’
If I’ve got that right, it is difficult to see how some clever clogs sat down in 1592 and decided that the Latin word for ‘topical’ would be the right name for clipping and shaping hedges.
But there you are—just another of those bits of English that are hard to fully explain!
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BY THE WAY...
If you'd like to see my A-Z list of Aussie slang, you'll find it here in the Australian Geographic website -- A-Z list of Aussie slang. Here’s the link: The A-Z of Aussie slang - Australian Geographic
The liveliest part of this website is usually the Q and A page -- be sure to check it out from time to time.
