Berkshire
Gardens Trust
Reg.Charity No.1201501

Topiary: a history of creative use​

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A talk by Bruce Ginsberg

Wednesday 26 February 2025 at 7.00 pm

We are very pleased to welcome Bruce Ginsberg, a founding member of the European Boxwood and Topiary Society in the 90’s and its chairman for a number of years.  The Society has a large membership in the UK (even larger in France) as well as being active in Belgium, Holland, Germany. Bruce also lectures on the philosophy of Zen gardens and east Asian nature aesthetics and is a guest lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies.

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Our talk will be based on a course for horticultural colleges that the European Box and Topiary Society were developing. Bruce will cover the history of the use and cultivation of topiary, ranging from East and West, from Roman times onwards, to contemporary topiary use.

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Bruce says: “I am intrigued by how we separate and structure a piece of space and do something to it, to hold the eye and open the heart. Colour touches us, and flowers, with their spiral patterning, have an emotional effect on us that lift the spirit. Gardens are an artifice, a creation, which slow us down wonderfully and give us 360degree awareness in all directions. Topiary helps structure the space and focuses us on both the small and intimate, and the boundless endless patterning in all directions.A garden is a culture, a space that as you walk through it, either speeds you up or slows you down - without one realising it. It plays with us like music and brings us to feel ourselves as part of nature – not separate”.

 

Bruce has his own homemade Jacobean-style garden which is a recreation of the fashionable  renaissance garden aesthetic of the time.  BGT enjoyed a wonderful visit to Bruce’s Garden in July 2022.  He also has a large box topiary nursery near Newbury:  The five-acre nursery has a huge choice of box balls, cones, pyramids, spirals and beehives, cloud hedging and more unusual specimens. https://www.earlstoneboxandtopiary.co.uk. 

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Booking: Please book online before the 25th February .  Please visit our website at www.berkshiregardenstrust.org and click on “2025 Events”. The tickets are £7 each for both members and non-members.  

 

We will send you a Zoom link for the lecture a few days beforehand. The lecture will last approximately 1 hour, followed by questions.  The lecture will be recorded with the link available for a week to those people who have booked for the event.  

 

Queries: Kim Hacker at BerksGTmembership@gmail.com

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Both pictures of Bruce's garden at Earlstone courtesy of B Kirkham