He speaks of having a hippodromus, a kind of circus consisting of many paths separated by box hedges and ornamented with topiary work.
The late sixteenth century furnishes abundant evidence of the growing taste for the topiary labyrinth in the architectural works of Androuet du Cerceau, one of the great builders of the French Renaissance and architect to Catherine de Medici.
It will be noticed that a person standing on the erection is precluded from mapping out the maze therefrom, by reason of the tall topiary upgrowths at various points, designed, no doubt, with this object.
The basin which formerly occupied the centre was replaced some years ago by a block of yew surmounted by topiary figures.
A topiary work of similar title, "The Siege of Troy," was one of William's pet horticultural adornments at Kensington Palace.
See Pope's paper in the Guardian (173) for some rather elaborate foolery about topiary work.
There is a quaint charm in the results of the topiary art, in the prim imagery of evergreens, that all ages have felt.
The Common Yew is hard to kill, and easy to prune into various shapes, as topiary work suggests.
It was not hedges they were, but walls--massive fortifications, ten feet high and five thick, and all clipped I I never saw such examples of topiary work.
It would be as unjust to blame me on this account as it would be to blame Mr. Hugh Thomson for introducing topiary into one of his exquisite illustrations to Sir Roger de Coverley.
Through the great number of formal gardens laid out within a few years in America, the topiary art has had a certain revival.
In English gardens many specimens of topiary work still exist, maintained usually as relics of the past rather than as a modern notion of the beautiful.
Mr. Hunnewell writes thus of his garden:-- "It was after a visit to Elvaston nearly fifty years ago that I conceived the idea of making a collection of trees for topiary work in imitation of what I had witnessed at that celebrated estate.
The height of topiaryart in America is reached in the lovely garden, often called the Italian garden, of Hollis H.
Many were laid out by competent landscape gardeners, and were kept in order by skilled workmen, negro slaves, who were carefully trained from childhood to special labor, such as topiary work.
The object of topiary when carried to excess was to take a tree, preferably a yew tree, and by careful trimming to make it look like something else, say a peacock standing under an umbrella.
The object of educationaltopiary is to take a child, and, by careful pruning away of all his natural propensities, make of him a miniature grown-up.
The Dutch therefore should not bear all the odium of the topiary style of gardening which they are said to have introduced into England and other countries of Europe.
It was Pope, however, who did most to bring the topiary style into contempt and to encourage a more natural taste, by his humorous paper in the Guardian and his poetical Epistle to the Earl of Burlington.
It must, indeed, be admitted that he who should now lay out a large park or pleasure-ground on strictly geometrical principles or in the old topiary style would exhibit a deplorable want of taste and judgment.
These topiary hedges were known to the Romans, with whom the topiarius was the ornamental gardener.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "topiary" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
