This article is taken from the May 2026 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Get five issues for just £5.
Sharpen your shears — topiary is back in fashion. From the new topiary garden at Sandringham to the triumph of the “narrative hedge” at the inaugural Henchman Clipping Awards and from Jools Holland’s ambassadorship of the European Boxwood and Topiary Society (EBTS) to World Topiary Day in May and “Clipfest” for “cliptomaniacs” in June. But did topiary ever go away, or is this renewed focus less about horticultural high fashion and more about a cultural constant of seeking control in chaos?
Topiary was in evidence in the mosaics and garden layouts of Pompeii and flourished here when the Romans ruled. At Fishbourne Palace near Bosham the reconstructed planting of box hedges in the Roman hedge trenches are lovingly tended by volunteers supported by EBTS to prevent their disappearance, since modern archaeological approaches would not allow replanting if they failed.
Topiary was the backbone of Renaissance formality, with the historic patte d’oie or goose foot formation of hedges at Chevening taking precedence over individual trees in the bosquets.
At Versailles, archaeological work in 2024 revealed the different layers of composition of the Parterre du Midi over the centuries. This is now being rebuilt to the original 1668 designs of Mansard and Le Nôtre, with 2½ miles of boxwood unfolding in lines, volutes and palmettes.
Topiary has been a constant through changing fashions, adapting from peacocks at Great Dixter, to a simple curved hedge in a Piet Oudolf new perennial garden or a cloud pruned backbone to wildflower meadows. It only fell out of favour in the face of recent disease and decimation by invasive moths.
Box blight Cylindrocladium buxicola appeared in the late 1990s, a fungal pathogen which attacks plants weakened through continuous clipping and damp conditions. This has recently been exacerbated by infestations of box caterpillar Cydalima perspectalis.
Striped green and black caterpillars that hatch inside a shrub and feed inside thick white webbing, they eat 100 times their own body weight before pupating.
The moth arrived in Germany from East Asia in 2007 and the UK in 2008, and it has taken our native Jackdaws, blackbirds and other songbirds a while to adapt to eat these unpalatable plunderers. In the meantime, gardeners have tried alternatives such as the small-leaved holly ilex crenata, but it is less handsome than round leaved box and has a propensity to drop all its leaves in stress.
The reason a box renaissance can now take place is the breakthrough advances in blight-resistant box breeding and expanded knowledge of managing blight and moth.
At Versailles, Herplant’s Renaissance hybrid boxwood has been chosen. Bred for its appearance, its resistance to disease and possibly to the boxwood caterpillar too, this new hybrid has also been chosen for Paleis Het Loo, where Steven Oostendorp, the “Buxusdokter”, has been incorporating Herplant’s blight resistant hybrids into the baroque patterns.
For those that have kept their original plants thus far, the chosen mitigations vary. Diluted whey, a by-product of cheesemaking, makes an excellent spray against blight, increasing the plant’s resistance to the fungus. Neem oil has also been successful, together with clean tools and collection of clippings.
Contrary to the cult of clipping on Derby day, EBTS guru Karel Goossens advocates shearing on a cold dry overcast day in late winter before temperatures rise to activate the fungus. My own preference is to cut into the box with secateurs rather than shears, creating a looser shape and allowing in the air. Goossens is also evangelical about controlling the moth.
A nurseryman who has witnessed the caterpillars munch through whole historic gardens, he insists that all responsible gardeners protect the wider box population by spraying their box at specific times with the caterpillar-digesting organism bacillis thuringiensis, crucially between October 10-15th and again if needed in mid-July, August and September.
What is it that makes us love topiary? From simple cones to elephants on parade, it embodies a paradox: a living attempt to simulate the static, a simple way to reawaken our sensory engagement with the natural world, in what David Abraham refers to as “tuning our relationship”.
Traditional topiary is not merely about shape but about time: the slow training of plants, the refinement of proportion, the patience required to maintain consistency. Our historic gardens and their clipped box form anchors of continuity, a shared identity and tradition and snippets of fun.
