Topiary and the Art of Training Plants - Hardcover

Turn greenery into living sculpture ... concise directions for creating basic geometric patterns or elaborate ivy ponies, chickens and bunnies. This book is a treasure to those who want to embellish their gardens with living sculpture and architecture. The book describes the how-to of plant sculpture and offers practical tips for rejuvenating neglected trees, shrubs and hedges. You'll never look at the common yew again without ... wondering what a clip here, a snip there might yield. -- Rebbeca Cole "Ottawa Citizen" (05/06/2000) The living sculptures in this book may prompt you to pick up hand shears. -- Dan Vierria "Sacramento Bee" (04/08/2000) Want to trim some bushes and get stunning results? Read this book. -- Susan Banks "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette" (03/04/2000) Joyce's handbook offers an instructive tour that will surely fire up the imagination of keen gardeners. -- Alice Joyce "Booklist" (03/15/2000) Technical information such as step-by-step illustrations for creating plant sculptures and landscape plans. -- Brian Lym "Library Journal" (05/01/2000) David Joyce does a wonderful job of teaching about shaping, training and caring for trees and shrubs. -- Linda Turk "Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal" (04/11/2000) Seductively illustrated and photographed book is full of clever ideas for adding geometry and structure to the garden. -- Valerie Easton "Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer" (09/10/2000)

Topiary and ornamental training offers an increasingly popular and low-maintenance way of bringing character and structure to gardens. This work combines design for topiary with technical instruction, and contains a number of ideas and advice on how to grow, prune and train plants to make stylish garden features. It shows how to: sculpt topiary shapes, from single balls and pyramids to birds and abstracts; create patterns for knots and parterres; train fruit trees and climbers to make ornamental avenues and tunnels; and shape mock topiary for quick results.