Garden Lifestyles & Ideas

Create your own Topiary Plants & Create a Mediterranean Garden

Welcome to the first in our series of garden lifestyle. Ideas and projects to inspire you however large or small your garden.
We will be adding new projects and gardening ideas each month, covering everything from our first subject, 'Creating your own topiary' & 'How to create a Mediterranean Garden' to 'Building a garden deck' & 'Entertaining / Cooking Outdoors', and building a diverse and inspirational resource for every keen to avid gardener, novice or experienced.

Topiary today
Topiary is a fantastic way of adding evergreen structure to a garden. The list of topiarized shapes now includes abstract, geometric bobbles and discs and pyramids, arches and 'lemon juicers' and balls on cubes, steam trains and racing cars and even Sumo wrestlers. Traditionally yew and box have been used, but there are many trees and shrubs that can be shaped however you want.
If you've never tried it before, start with a bit of topiary spotting. Look at books and gardens to see what's possible, listing your favourite plants. There are plenty of books packed with good photos (see further reading below), but you can't beat seeing the scale of some of the best topiary designs.
Most of the best topiary gardens are very grand, with some pieces of topiary dating back hundreds of years, but topiary doesn't always have to be aristocratic. You can use classic examples for inspiration and copy, amend and scale down.

Create your own Topiary
Start by buying two 30cm-high box cuttings (one for practice snipping). Either shape the plants now, or let them fatten and grow if you want something bigger. For a spiral, use string tied to the top and circled around and down to outline the shape, and get cutting with some topiary shears.

Or you can buy a 3D frame, available in a huge range of shapes, to stand over the plant to help you grow more complex figures. Note that shapes requiring sharp angles mean you need small-leaved plants.

Hedging is an easy way to introduce geometric topiary into your garden. Take your privet hedge and give it a smooth, crisp finish and cut out windows and doors, or turn the top into a battlement. You can even create evergreen pillars and arches to highlight the entrance to a special part of your garden.

At a low height, you can use rows of young box plants to create mini-walls to hedge in flower and vegetable beds. Why not create a traditional knot garden, flowing, sinuous, embroidery-like pattern of evergreens, which is invariably best seen from a window high above.

Or, you could aim a little higher. One topiary variation is the skilled manipulation of trees into a tall hedge. This is known as pleaching. Limes are traditionally used for this purpose and you can buy them already trained. Why not create an aerial 'hedge' on 2m-high bare legs to edge and shade a path? This injects a formal, stylish presence.

For more informal, equally spectacular topiary, try Japanese cloud pruning. Use the likes of Japanese holly (Ilex crenata) and reduce it to a few bare architectural stems (stripped of leaves), leaving a ball of green at the end. This looks beautiful and impressive adding an abstract formality to a garden and makes a great sculptural focal point.

But topiary is now big business, and if you don't want to wait to see the results of your careful planning and pruning, there are many specialist nurseries that will be able to provide you with what you are looking for.

Create A Mediterranean Garden - Italian or Greek style

With a few special plants/trees and the right furniture and decorations, you can turn your garden into an Italian or Greek getaway. Themed gardens are so inspirational because it makes it easier for gardeners to choose from among the many varieties of plants, flowers, and trees in nurseries. Other popular themes are seaside and wild meadow.

Mediterranean is great because most of the plants are evergreen and look good all year round unlike a meadow garden that does not show color all the time.

Design is everything when creating a themed garden and below are some suggestions:

Tall Trees - Create a false perspective by using tall trees planted at a diagonal to make the garden look longer. Try to use Italian cyprus and Juniper. Italians actually clip these trees to make them look more compact. You must clip only on the green. Cutting on the brown will prevent re-growth.

Lower Hedges - Lavenders are great to use for the lower hedge. In summer, they have just the flower and some that have just finished. When they have just finished flowering, cut them back because if you don't, they get straggly and ugly. You also can use rosemary for a hedge.

Grapevine - This adds to the entire Mediterranean feel. It is almost impossible to kill a grapevine, making them great for covering up the garden and giving it a shady space. You do not need to prune them.

The Vista - The focal point of the entire garden is in the middle at the end of a walkway. At the vista, put an oleander and a statue. A vista makes you want to walk down the garden.

Finishing Touches - Using Mediterranean accessories, like wine glasses, small round table and chairs and an urn adds to the effect.

Key plants for topiary:
Box (Buxus)
Holly (Ilex)
Shrubby honeysuckle (Lonicera nitida)
Hornbeam (Carpinus betulus)
Leyland cypress (x Cupressocyparis leylandii)
Portugal laurel (Prunus lusitanica)
Yew (Taxus baccata)