We speak to National Trust gardeners about why their garden's topiary is a cut above:

Blickling Hall, Norfolk
Paul Underwood, Head Gardener

Blickling doesn't just aim to impress; it commands attention. From the first full-on view, it grabs your vision, drawing it down the long drive and lawns, tunnelled by two vast flanking yew hedges, and smack into the house at the end.

© NTPL / Leo Mason

Huge edifices of topiary, the hedges are at least 300 years old. At 5.1m (17ft) high and 4.2m (14ft) wide their dimensions outdo Hadrian's Wall. In length they stretch an impressive 94.4m (310ft). It takes two gardeners (and a hydraulic cherry picker lift) two weeks to clip their pristine edges between August and October (the clippings are used in the manufacture of a drug to treat breast cancer).

© NTPL / Nick Meers

Around the corner, in the Victorian Herbaceous Parterre, towering topiary is replaced by acorn-shaped yews only a few feet tall. Twenty in total, they guard the corners of the four beds, the fountain, and the steps. Towards the temple are four more topiary sculptures affectionately known as the 'grand pianos'. A further two weeks' careful trimming a year for Blickling's gardeners.

back to top

Biddulph Grange Garden, Staffordshire
Andrew Mills, Head Gardener

Yew topiary lends itself to Victorian high drama at Biddulph. A framework of hedging cleverly conceals the garden's compartments of themed gardens from around the world. The illusion is created of moving from country to country (countries include 'Egypt', 'China' and 'Scotland') in a few steps.

When we took on the garden in 1988, it was neglected and the Victorian design partially buried from re-landscaping in the 1920s. Topiary glories such as the 150m (500ft) long Dahlia Walk (once buried under 20ft of soil) and 'Egypt's' pyramid and obelisks have been regenerated or replaced.

© NTPL / Andrew Butler

The Walk is now back to its best; complete with its yew buttressed hedges - the perfect complement to the show-stopping dahlias of late summer. The re-planted obelisks in 'Egypt' have reached 8ft tall, nearly half way to their 20ft height in the garden's hey-day.

Caring for Biddulph's hedges and topiary is a yearly six week labour of love for five of Biddulph's gardeners. Younger yew is trimmed twice a year, in May and September, to thicken it up; more established hedges once yearly. Sickly specimens are fed a pick-me-up tonic of Epsom salts mixed with a good fertilizer. And one tip from Andrew: 'Yew tends to rip when cut wet. Pre-dry it first with a leaf-blower'.

back to top

Chastleton House, Oxfordshire
Lauri McCullen Thorndyke, Custodian

Time has gently worn away at the edges of Chastleton's Topiary Garden. The ring of yew, conceived soon after the house at the dawn of the 1600s, once held a veritable menagerie of elaborately cut topiary animals. A cat, sheep, chicken, horse, squirrel and peacock all lined its walls. Other topiary intricacies, including a ship in full sail and a teapot, made for an eclectic group.

Topiary was a fashion of the day, representing both a family's wealth and the skill of their gardener. Chastleton's owners, the Joneses, lost their money soon after the house was built. As their fortunes changed so did the topiary.

© NTPL / Rupert Truman

Today's ring of topiary is a comfortable collection of undefined lumps and bumps. When the money went, so did the skilled hands, and the upkeep of the garden fell to their owners with local help. This community involvement carried on until 2005, with the same family of local farmers trimming the topiary.

The topiary is gently clipped once a year, usually in early summer to late autumn. And to continue the tradition for whimsy in the garden our current gardener is creating his own topiary signatures in the holly-clipped shapes of a rabbit and a railway engine.

back to top

Chirk Castle, Wrexham
David Lock, Head Gardener

This medieval Welsh castle sits among 18th-century parkland and gardens where substantial topiaries echo the bulk of the castle's walls. The garden is known for its so-called Welsh, or Cromwellian, hats. Planted in the 1870s, over the years they have grown in scale with the castle.

© NTPL / Stephen Robson

Keeping everything in trim is a big job, done once a year between the end of August and October, and everything else tends to be put to one side then.

'Topiary's a classic part of the English garden tradition, and has its practical uses' says David. 'It adds long-term interest, sound-proofing and security, and can often be grown on poor soil. And you don't have to confine yourself to box, yew or holly: consider privet, large or small leafed.'

back to top

Cliveden, Buckinghamshire
Ron Pilcher, Gardener

The Long Garden is the expansive focus of topiary at Cliveden, just one of a series of characterful gardens that make up this Grade I listed extravagance of scale and grandeur.

Small hedges of box neatly divide planting areas. Dotted throughout is a series of topiary shapes clipped from yew. Peacocks perch delicately on wide columns, neighboured by tall bottle-shapes and a peculiar specimen that Ron describes as a 'flying saucer'.

© NTPL / Nick Meers

The Long Garden was the creation of the 1st Viscount Aster early last century, no doubt inspired by the Renaissance and 17th-century gardens he had seen during his years as US Minister in Italy.

The topiary is still in good shape today. 'The peacocks look sharper than they have done for years' says Ron. And the task of keeping them "just so" is rewarding if a touch tedious: 'Clipping the low box hedges is harder than tending to the bigger yew topiary, it can be back-breaking'.

back to top

Hidcote Manor Garden, Gloucestershire
Glyn Jones, Head Gardener

One of the country's great gardens, Hidcote dates from the early years of the 20th century, when the Arts & Crafts movement was in its full flowering. Hidcote consists of a series of outdoor rooms, separated by hedging of boxwood, yew, holly and hornbeam. As Glyn says, 'hedging and topiary form the structure of this garden; plants are the ornaments'.

© NTPL / Stephen Robson

Much of Hidcote's topiary is birds, but you'll also find neatly squared off lollipops of hornbeam, holly hedges with pompoms and tapestry hedging of holly and purple beech in the Lilac Circle, at its best in spring when the colour is echoed by the flowering trees.

back to top

Knightshayes Court, Devon
John Lanyon, Head Gardener

Lolloping topiary hounds pursue a sprightly looking fox across the top of a tightly clipped yew hedge at Knightshayes Court. This topiary scene was a whimsical addition, cut in the 1930s, to a hedge planted as part of the garden's original high Victorian design.

© NTPL / Stephen Robson

Nearby, deep archways cut into a castellated square yew hedge lead into the unexpected peace and tranquillity of the Pool Garden. The hedge once enclosed the bowling green. Any ambitions for a game of bowls were ended in the 1950s when the wide, circular pool was dug and planted with water lilies - a loss for bowlers, but a gain for garden lovers everywhere.

At the other side of the house, the walled Kitchen Garden is once again functioning as a nursery for young yews, being grown for topiary. Yews have just been planted to reinstate two lost topiary Talbot hounds' heads (a similar pair guard the side entrance to the garden).

back to top

Mount Stewart, Co Down
Eoin Lane, Formal Gardeners Supervisor

One Irish symbol holds another at its heart in the Shamrock Garden at Mount Stewart. A hedge of Irish yew in the shape of a shamrock encloses a topiary Irish harp.

Mount Stewart's celebrated gardens were the 1920s creation of Edith, Lady Londonderry. The garden was her playground: a unique and whimsical fantasy to mirror her varying tastes.

© NTPL / Stephen Robson

Originally 30 topiary figures crowned the top of the shamrock hedge. Today there are eight, reinstated in the 1990s in Irish yew (the originals died off in 70s). Up to 4ft in height, they are a varied troupe of two royal crowns, a sailing boat, stags, the goddess Diana, the devil and two creatures from Celtic mythology. Red summer planting adds colour and informality.

back to top

Powis Castle, Powys
Peter Hall, Head Gardener

'Not so much topiary, but overgrown fat old hedges' jokes Peter Hall of Powis's bulging yews. 'Though to be serious we're fortunate to have them, they've managed to survive and adapt over 300 years of changing garden tastes.'

The 13 giant yew 'twmps' (as they are called locally) dominate the Top Terrace at Powis, appearing to almost topple over on to the terraces below. They were planted as part of the original formal garden in the late 1600s. Visitors of the time would have found them lining the terrace as a row of pristinely clipped obelisks.

© NTPL / Ian Shaw

When the English Landscape Movement caught light in the mid-1700s, Powis (albeit belatedly) joined the trend for shirking formality. There was even talk of dynamiting the terraces - a plan that was thankfully rejected, perhaps due to the family's dwindling fortunes. The yews were left to grow and assume natural tree shapes.

The fashion swung round again in Victorian times, when control and formality once again became the vogue, and the yews underwent their final transformation into shaped domes.

From August to October, Powis's gardening team trim all the garden's hedges, including the yews. The sloping nature of the terraces means ladders, rather than machinery, have to be used. It's somewhat precarious work but part of a tradition that, as Peter says, is 'somehow an inherent part of the yews' character.'