Bonus tree of the week this week, to make up for the absence of one last week.
This time, the history of topiary.
Topiary, or the art of pruning trees and shrubs into shapes, was developed in the first century CE, and Gaius Matius Calvinus, a personal friend of the emperor Augustus, is credited with its invention (Pliny, Natural History, 12.6):
C. Matius of the equestrian order, friend of Augustus, invented the pruning of arbours within the last eighty years.
I did hear rumours of there being another reference to Calvinus in Martial's poetry, wasted an afternoon hunting it down, cursed at the internet for being unhelpful, and decided to move on hours later than I should.
This places the development of topiary roughly at some point between the year 0 and 80CE. And, as with anything written by a man who died in the eruption of Vesuvius, securely before that.
By the time that Pliny the Younger, the Elder Pliny's nephew, was writing his many letters to his friends, topiary had become something of an art form. In the last Tree of the Week, we looked at his Laurentine estate. This week, we'll take a tour of his Tuscan (and favourite) estate, again through his words.
"In front, there is a terrace laid out in different patterns and bounded with an edging of box; then comes a sloping ridge with figures of animals on both sides cut out of the box-trees, while on the level ground stands an acanthus-tree, with leaves so soft that I might almost call them liquid. Round this is a walk bordered by evergreens pressed and trimmed into various shapes; then comes an exercise ground, round like a circus, which surrounds the box-trees that are cut into different forms, and the dwarf shrubs that are kept clipped. Everything is protected by an enclosure, which is hidden and withdrawn from sight by the tiers of box-trees. Beyond is a meadow, as well worth seeing for its natural charm as the features just described are for their artificial beauty, and beyond that there stretches an expanse of fields and a number of other meadows and thickets."
And, later in the same letter, on a different terrace, he details more topiary:
"When you come to the end of these various winding alleys, the boundary again runs straight, or should I say boundaries, for there are a number of paths with box shrubs between them. In places there are grass plots intervening, in others box shrubs, which are trimmed to a great variety of patterns, some of them being cut into letters forming my name as owner and that of the gardener. Here and there are small pyramids and apple-trees, and now and then in the midst of all this graceful artificial work you suddenly come upon what looks like a real bit of the country planted there. The intervening space is beautified on both sides with dwarf plane-trees; beyond these is the acanthus-tree that is supple and flexible to the hand, and there are more boxwood figures and names."
Of course, different things leap out to different people when they read the same passage. What leaps out to me, in Pliny's descriptions, are the distinctions he draws between nature and artifice. In his first description, he contrasts the carefully curated animal topiaries with the meadows and fields beyond them, which are no less superior in their beauty (to give a more literal translation). The second passage, from the same letter, compares the veneer of nature to the obvious artifice of topiary, but does not pass any judgement on the beauty of this space. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and Pliny does use the word imitatio to describe this, then this artificial country space must too be beautiful.
But that might not necessarily be the case.
The first example is above reproach - the natural world that edges the artificial one is the genuine article. No problem there. The second one, however, is artifice attempting to return to nature. It is the equivalent of taking a photo on Instagram, applying a filter, and then editing that filter to try to return the photo to looking like it could potentially have no filter. There will always be something out of place in the edit, whether it is a slight over-saturation, a coolness to a previously warm colour, or slightly too many flowers in the field. Pliny's uncle, the Elder Pliny, wrote about
veneers in his Natural History, criticising people for going out of their way to obtain a material, and then to adapt it to look like another material, which was readily available. It was, for Pliny the Elder, false. How he would have reacted to Snapchat filters we will never know. Time travel not allowing, of course.
But what would he have thought of his nephew's favourite garden, at his Tuscan estate? It is possible he would have objected to it on multiple grounds. The false artifice of nature, for one, but also the topiary itself. His description of its origins comes in a section where he describes the abortive methods for creating dwarf plane trees, manipulating nature to a new size through extremely hard pruning. This is not presented as a particularly moral activity, and he contrasts the growing of the trees with an immediate act of cutting them back down (Natural History 12.6).
Topiary, regardless of the Elder Pliny's opinions on it, has continued. It remains a fundamental part of the ornamental garden, a flamboyant means by which one can show off their control of a manicured horticultural arena, next to neatly curated hedges, carefully planted 'wild' flower meadows, and a pristine pond populated with Japanese fish in a landlocked part of the countryside. Controlling nature, it seems, is here to stay.