Shadowing EBTS Teachers at Clipsham Yew Tree Avenue
Darren and Chris, who run the Learn To Clip course for EBTS, had the chance, thanks to a members kind donation, to offer a small piece of funding to a topiary student to shadow them as they taught for a weekend at Clipsham Yew Tree Avenue in September 2026.
Below are the thoughts of Matt Edwards, the EBTS member and pruner, who will hopefully be teaching a Topiary Drawing class for us in the future… over to Matt…
As part of the lottery funded restoration of Clipsham Yew Tree Avenue, I was invited to assist Darren Lerigo and Chris Poole to restore the designs and redefine the silhouettes of the Yews and Box.It was a wonderful experience on the Saturday, being encouraged and challenged to a high degree, compared to the relatively gentle introduction to the art and crat of topiary on a previous course to this at Waltham Place.On the Sunday I assisted on the teaching and collaborated with fellow advanced course members working on some traditional and contemporary forms.Matt Edwards
About Matt
He’s an award winning garden designer, museum and exhibition designer and qualified teacher and lecturer. He will be offering a beginners training session in drawing and designing topiary to EBTS and in the near future, an advanced course using SketchUp, Procreate and Morpholio Trace on Ipad.
Further info about the drawing courses will be available on the Events page and through our newsletter.
If, like Matt, you are interested in offering a boxwood or topiary related course or would like to shadow our trainers on a course, please get in touch by emailing info@ebts.org
Matt’s work on giving The Anchor a smile, the bottom section had become a straight line rather than a curve
