Topiary

Classic Bonsai of Japan

Enter the fascinating world of bonsai, the centuries-old gardening art form of cultivating trees as potted plants. Refined to a high art in Japan, bonsai offers not only the familiar gardening delights but also, at its highest levels, a philosophical and aesthetic communion with nature.
Here in CLASSIC BONSAI OF JAPAN, the Nippon Bonsai Association, Japan's preeminent voice of the bonsai tradition, introduces a collection of the finest bonsai pieces to be found in Japan today-some of them presented to a Western audience for the first time. Over 130 full color and 48 black-and-white plates of priceless specimens with informative commentary provide a definitive tour of the bonsai world-from a 15-year-old flowering cherry to a majestic 1,000-year-old Yezo spruce. The notes for each piece offer insights into the balance, style, harmony, and overall aesthetic effect along with comments on the history of its cultivation at the hands of several generations of bonsai masters.
John Bester brings his intimate knowledge of Japanese culture and sensibility to an elegant interpretation of bonsai art specifically adapted to Western readers. Essays on appreciation, history, and aesthetics further invite readers to enjoy this "natural" art on an informed level.
A feast for the eyes as well as a lasting monument to the history of an artistic tradition, this deluxe volume is sure to delight the bonsai enthusiast, garden hobbyist, lover of things Japanese-indeed anyone with an interest in looking at art and nature in unison.

Knot Gardens and Parterres

The Complete Book of Topiary

Presenting all the methods of formal plant shaping and introducing simple, fun, and fanciful techniques for creating informal indoor topiaries, Totally Topiary is clear, comprehensive, and written with an irrepressible passion for the art of making plants into living sculpture.

From hedge sculpture and espalier to indoor creations and an entire chapter on ivy, all major topiary styles both new and old are covered. Over 100 specific projects in the eight different styles are offered for a variety of skills and purposes, accompanied by handsome line drawings that serve as step-by-step models and elegant inspiration.

Each chapter is complete unto itself, recommending plants (Japanese yew is the hardiest for outdoor sculpture, but azalea can be coaxed into a startling pink flamingo), sharing design hints (espaliered fruit trees provide privacy from the neighbors with practical elegance), noting ideal times to plant. They also offer specifics on tools and hardware need, plus pruning and maintenance tips. A wealth of fascinating stories and charming anecdotes places each style in historical context, and helpful features list plant sources nationwide, along with topiary showcases worth visiting. 97,000 copies in print.

Quick and Easy Topiary and Green Sculpture: Create Traditional Effects with Fast-Growing Climbers and Wire Frames

The design possibilities for topiary sculpture are virtually limitless--only the imagination and some basic skills are needed to produce fanciful, exotic, traditional, or wildly individual designs with living plants. This is the book that tells the beginner how to do it. Supplemented by information on appropriate plants, climate zones, international suppliers of plants, and the needed tools, Hendy's book provides the reader with information on how to train plants to grow on wire frames, create inventive wire frames in all manner of shapes and configurations, choose the appropriate tools and materials needed, and help produce stunning topiary designs in weeks, not months or years. It also offers sound advice on the care and maintenance of your living sculptures to keep them green and healthy for years. It is generously illustrated with more than 300 color photographs showing basic steps and techniques, as well as delightful finished products from gardens and homes around the world. --Mark A. Hetts

Includes information on the best plants to use for topiary, each evaluated for its approximate growth rate, minimum temperature requirement, watering, and feeding needs.

The Pruning Book

It is unlikely that the basics of pruning have ever before been assembled so thoroughly or comprehensively than in Lee Reich's The Pruning Book. With clear prose and generous diagrams and photographs, he takes the angst out of pruning for the beginning or experienced gardener. Included are all the basics presented in a step-by-step, friendly way to guide the reader through the pruning of ornamental bushes, evergreens, vines, trees, houseplants, and plants of almost every conceivable variety. Along with the information on basic pruning, he also covers the use, care, and maintenance of pruning tools. A large section of the book is devoted to specialized pruning techniques, such as pollarding, topiary, bonsai, and espalier. Proper pruning can produce enhanced growth, higher food production in food plants, more lavish blooms in flowering plants, healthier plant life, and visionary garden creations through artistic techniques. Reich has provided everything the reader needs to understand the skill and art of pruning for spectacular results in the garden. --Mark A. Hetts

Every gardener knows that pruning makes plants healthier, more fruitful, and more beautiful. But most gardeners wince at the thought of pruning. In The Pruning Book, master horticulturist Lee Reich provides a remedy for "fear of pruning, " making this dreaded task almost fun. In easy-to-read, engaging language, Reich gives specific methods for pruning hundreds of species from the cold climates to the tropics. He covers every type of plant, from ornamental bushes, evergreens, ornamental vines, and edible fruit and nut trees to houseplants. For those with special pruning interests Reich also gives time-tested advice for bonsai, topiary, espalier, and pleaching. He even takes a fresh look at such routine chores as mowing a lawn, including his own strategy for creating "lawn nouveau." With this witty and useful reference, any gardener can learn to like pruning.

The Life and Gardens of Harvey Ladew

He played piano with Cole Porter. He rode horseback in the Hollywood Hills with Clark Gable. He partied with Elsa Maxwell. He ate snails with the French writer Colette, in bed. It was all, as he often said, "perfectly delightful."

Few more colorful figures embellish American cultural history than the late Harvey S. Ladew, wealthy socialite, fox hunter, artist, traveler, and -- at his country estate outside Baltimore -- creator of the nation's most admired topiary garden.

In "Perfectly Delightful": The Life and Gardens of Harvey Ladew, Christopher Weeks offers an immensely readable, chatty account of Ladew's life and the glittering world he inhabited. When Ladew bought his Maryland farm in 1929, he had already lived a life few, if any, could equal: born into the upper stratum of New York society in 1887, he spoke French before he spoke English and took boyhood drawing lessons from Met curators. As an adult he gave decorating instructions to Billy Baldwin (the dean of American interior design), lived as the houseguest of the maharajah of Kapurthala, took a camel caravan across Arabia (with travel tips kindly provided by his good friend T. E. Lawrence), weekended at the stateliest of England's stately homes, lent his favorite horse to the Prince of Wales, matched wits with Edna Ferber, Noël Coward, Sacheverell Sitwell, Beatrice Lillie, and Dorothy Parker (in English) and with Jean Cocteau and Colette (in French), hunted fox in America, England, Ireland, and Italy, and (with Charlie Chaplin) saw off Gertrude Lawrence as she sailed from New York.

To this fascinating story of multicontinental revelry, Weeks attentively adds the background and development of Ladew's unique and wonderful Maryland garden, which attracts thousands of visitors each year, and his important role as an early environmentalist. When he began his garden in 1929, Ladew broke new artistic ground, for he was perhaps the first person in America to follow the tenets of English arts and crafts garden design. His achievements were featured in Town & Country, House & Garden, (and its French counterpart, Maison et Jardin), Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. Garden clubs and gardening tourists from four continents strove to outdo one another in praise. This acclaim culminated in 1971, when the Garden Club of America gave Ladew its Distinguished Achievement Award.

To bring readers the remarkable story of Ladew and his gardens, Christopher Weeks draws on photo albums, scrapbooks, garden catalogs, thousands of pages of garden memoranda, an unfinished hand-scrawled autobiography, hundreds of letters, and guestbooks that read like a cross between Variety and Burke's Peerage. Photographs reproduced from Ladew's albums -- some taken by him, some by leading photographers of the day, including many by his friend Horst -- illustrate the text. Scores of interviews with Ladew's friends from New York to Florida help to illuminate this remarkable personality.

Living Sculpture

In recent years a new generation of artists and designers has discovered that garden plants - from moss and grass to fullgrown trees - can become astonishing works of living sculpture. Iconoclast garden designer Paul Cooper has gathered together the best examples of this exciting new art form while overturning many preconceptions about what is possible in the context of both gardening and art, showing that every garden has the potential to include dramatic and lasting sculpture.

New Topiary: Imaginative Techniques from Longwood

It is essential for anyone interested in the shaping of plants for inside and outside decoration. This book will be valued by professional and amateur gardeners for adding that extra bit of theatre which has now become such an important part in our extended inside/outside living. For the first time closely guarded secrets are revealed about the growing stages and maintenance of Longwood's exotic displays, from tiny animals to astonishing creations in chrysanthemums and even self-watering life-size elephants. It will amaze traditional topiary enthusiasts by showing them how classical, formal shapes can be achieved quickly and tastefully. It is a mine of information and inspiration. Years of practical development and research have gone into this book which is a refreshing new look at plant decoration. The snags, pitfalls and the disappointments are eliminated by the confident, step-by-step instructions and ideas of an expert who is the foremost authority in this colourful modem approach to excitin

Taylor's Weekend Gardening Guide to Topiaries and Espaliers: Plus Other Designs for Shaping Plants (Taylor's Weekend Gardening Guides)

Training plants into fanciful shapes is a popular hobby among today's gardeners.

Topiary & Plant Sculpture: A Beginner's Step-By-Step Guide