Pleasant Place #6: Topiary

Pleasant Place is a growing collection of publications about the art of gardening. Pleasant Place informs and inspires by offering both practical and in-depth information as well as unexpected approaches to everyday garden tasks and garden design. Through collaborations with experts and artists Pleasant Place caters both to those who grow gardens as well as those who imagine gardens.

In this issue:

The art of trimming and pruning trees and shrubs into fanciful shapes. What’s up with our unrelenting desire to clip and sculpt the natural world into submission?

• Magnum Opus Topiarium – Botanical philosopher Norbert Peeters takes us through the history of topiary and the changing views of nature.
• Le Bal Des Ifs – a comic by artist Fiona Lutjenhuis.
• Topiary in Art History – From holy, to phallic, to terrifying, topiary has been depicted in many ways.
• It may have been a formal garden, once – We talked to the wonderful Chris Crowder, head gardener at Levens Hall, the oldest topiary gardens in the world.
  Niwaki – Alec Schellinx observes the Japanese tradition of niwaki
• What’s Eating Hedges – Writer Eliot Haworth ponders the fight against suburban monoculture. With illustrations by Jordan Herregraven.
• The Shape of Shrubs to Come – A glimpse of the future of topiary by artist Rustan Söderling.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands; 36 pages; 180mm x 240mm