Want to know the best plants to use for topiary? Here is the common palette, and included are a few trees that love to be pollarded, or espaliered, or can take being cut to the ground or have their leaves stripped from the stem… … not all of these plants will give you the classic topiary forms, but they may be worth experimenting on and discovering how they can be pruned and what impression they leave you with when they are! Box Yew Holm Oak Holly Azalea Ilex crenata Bay Thuja Hebe Portugese laurel Pines (including Scots pine) Robinia Olive …

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A simple blog post today – we offer you a vocabulary to use when looking at ways to prune creatively, then at the end link to places you can buy tools and read more about the work of some of the key players in the pruning world. We hope this vocabulary is useful though – as you never know when you might need to explain the difference between a wibble and a twmp – it may help sell the idea to a client, or unwilling family member who thinks you should just leave that tree well alone… A Shape and Clipping …

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I want to talk about pruning today, as I have spent some time this year with Jake Hobson – a professional pruner. I originally got into gardening by working for a number of tree surgeons, and would spend hours walking around places like Virginia Water with them chatting about how we would dismantle different trees. I appreciated trees, but looking back was oblivious to the role they play in our environment – my job was to take them down or cut them back in a way that would benefit people, and so that is how I viewed a tree. As …

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