Testing for topiary

Watching The Great British Garden Revival on BBC recently has stirred me to try out a little project I've been getting round to for about the last five years! Rachel de Thame visited several gardens known for their topiary, and showed viewers how to create topiary shapes out of box and yew (privet also appeared on the show...). I wouldn't say that I'm massively 'into' topiary; I love neatly clipped spheres, pyramids and cubes, will tolerate spirals but would never want to own one, and loathe with a passion racing cars, peacocks, prancing horses, teddy bears... the list goes on! My taste in topiary is not the purpose of this blog.

Yew (Taxus baccata) is a very popular plant for topiary; it's evergreen, can potentially grow nice and big, takes clipping and will grow nice and dense if maintained. This got me thinking about other plants that share the characteristics of yew, and this brought me to a fairly underused genus of conifers, the Podocarpus.

Podocarpus are all native to the southern hemisphere and are recognised by their typically conifer leaves (like broad needles) and their fruits, similar to yew. Some, such as P. salignus, grow into large trees, and others, such as P. henkelii, are too tender to be grown widely in the UK. Thankfully the ones that I would expect to be suitable for topiary are hardy in the UK, although not widely grown at the moment. I picked three varieties, as seen below- 'Young Rusty', 'Kilworth Cream' and 'Red Tips'

L-R 'Young Rusty', 'Kilworth Cream', 'Red Tips'

So why Podocarpus? The varieties I've picked out all have small needles which I hope will give my shapes a smooth outline, and also Podocarpus share a useful characteristic with yew; both will break from old wood, meaning that if I cut thicker stems dormant buds will break and I will get soft new growth that will then be good to trim into shape.

New shoot breaking

At the moment the three plants have been grown (very well it must be said) to be open and shrubby, so I'll start by shortening the long thick shoots back and pruning them within the framework of the plant and hopefully this will give me lots of soft shoots to trim to shape. I'm hoping that in the not-too-distant future all I will have to do is run shears lightly over the plant to keep it in shape.

A tuft of new shoots on 'Kilworth Cream'

One advantage with Podocarpus is that they come in a (small) range of colours. Yew comes in green or gold, but Podocarpus come in bronze, blue, green, cream and a mustard/orange. Podocarpus also do very well in pots, providing they are watered and fed properly, whereas yew tends to sulk if it's contained long term. There are drawbacks though... I'm very much aware that many Podocarpus usually have a fairly coarse texture and an open habit and are more prone to being shrubby than tree-like. This could give me a couple of problems; it's possible that I won't be able to clip them into a decent shape and keep them dense, but also I'm limited to doing fairly small/low shapes. For me the latter isn't a problem because I want to clip them into a set of spheres, but it does limit their potential to be adopted widely as topiary plants.

I'll let you know how I get on!