Garden Topiary Plant Art

Topiary at Versailles and its imitators was never complicated: low hedges punctuated by potted trees trimmed as balls on standards, interrupted by obelisks at corners, provided the vertical features of flat-patterned parterre gardens. Sculptural forms were provided by stone and lead sculptures. In Holland, however, the fashion was established for more complicated topiary designs; this Franco-Dutch garden style spread to England after 1660.
• Decline in the 18th century
In England topiary was all but killed as a fashion by the famous satiric essay on "Verdant Sculpture" that Alexander Pope published in The Guardian, 29 September 1713, with its mock catalogue descriptions of
Adam and Eve in yew; Adam a little shattered by the fall of the tree of knowledge in the great storm; Eve and the serpent very flourishing.