Darren’s World Topiary Day suggestions
World Topiary Day 2022 is on Thursday 12 May this year – so just a few weeks away now Easter has passed!
If you are keen on topiary, here are Darren Lerigo’s recommendations for how to celebrate or get involved and learn a little more about pruning, and causing havoc with your shears, this World Topiary Day…
World Topiary Day In The USA
Join Darren via Zoom from the Madoo Conservancy, the garden of the late painter Robert Dash, to learn about topiary composition and how to improve your garden with a few of the right cuts.
If you are in the USA – especially near New York! – you can also join Darren at Madoo after World Topiary Day, and join in two workshops he’s running on the Friday 13 and Saturday 14 May.
Where else in the USA can you celebrate World Topiary Day 2022?
Try Ladew Topiary Gardens, a 22 acre space with over 100 topiaries, named one of the top 5 gardens in North America. Just north of Baltimore, the historic house was designed and developed by Harvey Ladew, and it has these wonderful ‘Hunt’ topiaries….
How much fun are these photos! Ladew Topiary Garden opened in April, and has a wonderful garden festival on 7 May.
(I love topiary gardens in winter, when everything is calm and the cold and ice accentuates the shapes you have clipped. Here are some topiary hedges Darren cut in January…
And In The UK?
In the UK you can visit the garden that started World Topiary Day – Levens Hall!
An extraordinary garden that has had only 10 head gardeners – just 10! – tending the topiary since it was laid out in the late 17th Century…. they chose to be mad about topiary on 12 May because that is when the ‘Radish Festival’ use to take place.
See the Levens Hall website for more details about the bizarre goings-on of the Radish Festival (you may already be thinking the privileged, white male ego has something to do with it… and you would be right!) but though World Topiary Day at Levens may not be quite as riotous, I would recommend you visit then and mark this piece of history…
… and marvel at the riotous topiary they have!
Other Gardens To See On World Topiary Day
The European Boxwood & Topiary Society has a fantastic map of every garden opening specifically for the day, so you can easily find somewhere to visit near you. And EBTS France has links to gardens around Europe and the rest of the world.
Busy on the day itself? Don’t despair, Darren recently did a Garden Masterclass chat on Modern Topiary, to give a little food for thought about how and why you might clip.
The perfect accompaniment to your garden visits, but available as and when you have the time!
What About On The Far Side Of The World?
Topiary has got two fantastic enthusiasts in Australia, Lucy and Richard Marshall, who have a garden called Merribee. They are setting up the Australian and New Zealand Buxus and Topiary Society… you can find them on Instagram if you need more information for now.
Darren is very excited about their topiary and hedging festival, which will be on at the same time as these other gardens share their clipped shapes in May!
So there you have it Darren Lerigo’s selection of just some of the things to see and visit on World Topiary Day, on 12 May 2022.
You can read more about Darren and his thoughts on topiary in an article by Clare Coulson ‘Rethinking Topiary: A Garden Tradition, Loosened Upon‘ on the Gardenista website.
