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 about the job. The days are hard, but the clipping and the quietness of working with just the tools and the plants is so much fun.

There are two things people want from me – to transform their topiary by clipping it well, and to teach them how to do it.

There is only so much time and energy for the first one of these.

But the second, I was trying to work out how to spread the knowledge of how to make topiary as far and wide as possible. Videos have been made, zoom classes have been given, workshops have been taught. But a book has a different strength to it, in that it can be looked over and gone back to.

In ‘This Little Art’ by Kate Briggs she talks about how reading is sometimes putting the book back down on your lap, then looking up into the distance and dreaming, inspired by what you have just read. She says this is reading too. (I’m paraphrasing here, she wrote it in a far more affective way (and possibly she is paraphrasing from an essay by Roland Barthes, now I come to think about it?) But I can’t check the sentence because I gave the book away, so thrilled as I was with it, that I wanted to share that with somebody else…)

But this is what I want for people who read Modern Topiary. To have it in their back pocket when they are in the garden, and go back to it as they try things out, as they learn and think about what standard and potential they might possibly be able to reach with their ‘green architecture’.

The style of writing (and the reason it took six years to complete!) is straight-forward. Each chapter can be read in just a couple of minutes.

But what I have tried to do is find a ‘sticky’ syntax (careful with the adverbs, light on the qualifiers, the most active and precise of verbs, transition words used for a reason, to signal a tonal change or the flipping of an idea…) strong images, the use of humour and rhythm in the work that rewards looking over the book again. And again. The way a (great) poem offers up more and more each time.

(I’m aware this blog post doesn’t match that… but it is a blog post, not something I drafted again and again over years. You glance at this, but the important part is to go read Modern Topiary.)

This is also the reason the book has been made free to read. Now everyone has access to this information. Access to sharp, clean tools and a hedge to clip might prove harder… but how to do it? That is here, for everyone to learn.

In turn this books allows me closure on this part of my life. These are the lessons learnt from this stage. Now it is time to move on.

That doesn’t mean I’m not doing topiary anymore. It means I have to do more interesting topiary. And improve my skills, both the technical and the creative.

Which is daunting. But exciting as well!

I wonder what kind of topiary and green architecture for gardens I can develop in the next ten years of my life? Something that captures carbon? Helps the birds and the bees? Provides fragrance to people who sit in the garden enjoying a cup of tea?

The book has an unusual structure for a gardening book too. I did not want photos, and many of my clients are private too, are uncomfortable with sharing the topiary in their garden online. Also, this is a book that is written to be helpful – not garden porn! – I don’t want people drooling over a photo, a passive consuming of garden media. I want people outside getting their hands dirty (and, if they are too keen and unfocused, running the risk of lopping off a finger!)

That’s the idea of the book.

But there are illustrations. These are on the left hand side of each page. The short (poetic?) text is on the right. Some people will get lots from the text. I would. But others think differently, and so will spend time mulling over the illustrations, the potential ideas embedded in these shapes.

Having text and image, and sometimes they go together, other times they are contrasting, is a way of asking the brain to work out why this has been done. Why is this placed here? (This look of text and image together was inspired by Cain’s Jawbone. Certainly there to get you thinking..!)

Everything in the book is deliberate (six years to finish folks!) but always with the goal of being helpful. The foundation skills to learn the craft of topiary is all there. Then the white space in the book is there to give space to dreaming. To the development of thoughts on topiary culture. To the art.

I hope this is clear. Go read Modern Topiary. Go do some pruning!