THE MODERN MINT BLOG
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 Vocabulary
Blobs
Balls
Squares
Cubes
Rectangles
Dice
Domes
Cones
Spirals
Crenellation – a space between two merlons in a battlement wall.
Puddings
Multi-stem
Standards
Spheres
Buttresses
Windows
Arches
Wedding Cake
Boxes
Parasol
Goblet
Drumstick
Helter Skelters
Teardrops
Kidneys
Clouds
Rockets
Pyramids
Merlons – the upright bit in a castle fort (see crenallation… or google ‘crenels…) An archer may have peered through it to fire arrows.
Carbuncles
Parterre – a more formal topiary arrangement than a bump, say…
Doughnuts
Bumps
Parachutes
Niches
Batter – sloped side on a hedge, where the bottom is wider than the top allowing light to reach the whole height of the hedge.
Eggs
Slabs
Planes
Broccolli
Peacocks
Humps
Lumps
Bells
Bolls
Tunnels
Candles
Tumpties
Mushrooms
Onions
Liberty caps
Nipples
Espalier
Pleached
Niwaki – meaning ‘garden tree’ – Niwaki: Pruning, Training and Shaping Trees the Japanese Way
Pollarded
Stilts
Stooled
Raised
Layed
Coppiced
Hedge – double, triple…
Flailed
Thinned
Animals
Chess Pieces
Top Hats
Russian Dolls
Plinths
Soldiers
Castles
Faces
Organic
Karikomi – one plant repeated in a great mass… for great effect…
Flat
Semi-flat
Poodle
Pompom
Furniture
Nursery & Topiary Specialists
Jake Hobson – sells tools here at Niwaki.
Nicky Fraser – graffiti artist using hedges. Brilliant stuff!
Charlotte Molesworth – It’s the shape of things to come.
Architectural Plants – where we first heard the term Niwaki.
Earlstone Box and Topiary – field grown box plants near where we lived in Hampshire.
Langley Boxwood – where we sourced little used Buxus ‘Herrenhausen’, a tiny leaved box…
European Boxwood and Topiary Society – publishers of the wonderful Topiarius magazine and brilliant starting place to learn about all things box. Modern Mint are proud to be members!
Tool Vocabulary
We hope this glossary of terms helps you put into words what you are trying to do when you clip. It is, much like the act of pruning, an organic artifact that is growing all the time as new people take up a pair of shears and begin to shape the plants around them.
We hope that you have a go this year, and can help add another word to the growing vocabulary of the pruner!
Why I Wrote The Book Modern Topiary
I have written this book, Modern Topiary, because I wanted a collation of useful information that would give people access to everything they need to know in order to start making topiary. Topiary is an amazing (and niche) line of work to follow – amazing because it offers up opportunities to travel all over the world, making gardens, meeting people… but also, the work is intensely physical, hands-on, yet requires creative thinking in order to solve the puzzle of how to make the shapes you want. This mixture of the craft and the art is what I love the most …
Buxus the Norfolk Terrier In Modern Topiary Book
This is Buxus, our Norfolk Terrier, who I acknowledge in the acknowledgments of the book of Modern Topiary. The book of Modern Topiary can be read, for free, here. There you go. Buxus the dog on ‘doorstep duty’ at a friend’s house in Edinburgh. For those asking what he looked like!
What People Think Of Modern Topiary, The Book
Yesterday I put out the book – Modern Topiary – that I have spent the last six years writing. Download for free a pdf of Modern Topiary here. And what seems amazing to me, is that not only have people actually been reading it, but then responding to it. So below are a number of comments I have been sent from those who read it last night, and this morning…. “Brilliant read, exactly the right amount of info to take in and digest.” Rachel, a gardener “I love your book, the advice is so straightforward and your writing is so …