Christopher Stocks traces the story of topiary, from its ancient origins to the modern day.
We don’t know who first looked at a bush and thought: ‘That would make a good rabbit.’ But we do know it was a long, long time ago. The Romans certainly indulged in topiarisation, which they seem to have picked up from the Greeks, and it seems likely that the Ancient Egyptians were snipping away even before then. As the garden designer Isabel Bannerman says in her latest…
