Arrival of Sandringham in Topiary World Crowns Three-Year Rise in Global Interest

As it prepares to mark the third anniversary of its award-winning celebration, World Topiary Day, the owners of the world’s oldest topiary garden, at Levens Hall and Gardens, are relishing welcoming the newest - King Charles III’s new Sandringham House topiary garden.  

World Topiary Day 2023 will take place just days after the coronation, on Sunday May 14.  This day was founded, in lockdown in May 2020, to help celebrate the love of topiary and bring the topiary world together, in one shared celebration.  The aim was to make topiary ‘cool’ and generate more interest in it, amongst garden lovers across the globe.

Despite Prince Charles having been a visitor to Levens Hall and Gardens, the Cumbrian garden never imagined that, just three years later, he would have transformed part of Sandringham House’s garden, to add another fabulous garden to the topiary family.

Sandringham House’s topiary garden has been planned and developed since January, with 5000 yew tree hedging plants and 4280 herbaceous perennial plants and bulbs planted on what was formerly a lawn.  In Levens Hall and Gardens’ case, the topiary garden has been developed by just 11 head gardeners, over the course of 329 years, with some of the original specimens still in situ.

Whilst Sandringham’s topiary garden will be developed on what was a parterre in the 1800s, the Levens Hall topiary garden was, thankfully, never ripped up to make way for the latest fashion.  For a few hundred years, the property was passed down a female line, with various owners loving the romantic, quirky garden and often living at their husbands’ properties, elsewhere in the country, with their spouse not investing in change at a second property.  The Levens Hall topiary garden luckily managed to stay largely untouched.

For this reason, having not succumbed to the Capability Brown movement and its preference for less formal gardens, the Levens Hall garden is now a Guinness World Record holder, as the world’s oldest topiary garden.  It was this status that led it to believe that it could generate interest in World Topiary Day in various countries.  Its confidence has been rewarded.

In 2022, around 50 gardens celebrated, with over 30 of these in France, thanks to great enthusiasm from the French branch of the European Boxwood and Topiary Society (EBTS), which also involved gardens in Portugal, Spain and Belgium. Levens Hall also directly encouraged gardens in the USA to take part and even a gardens in Australia joined in.

This year, the trend continues, with big-hitters in France, such as the Palace of Versailles, Marquessac and Erignac again participating alongside many of their counterparts and Longwood and Ladew Gardens, in the USA, also continuing to support. 

Levens Hall and Gardens has, however, encouraged 9 gardens in the UK to take part, with these being Mount Ephraim Country House & Gardens, Scampston Hall, Elton Hall, The Manor/Green Knowe, Dorney Court, Hinton Ampner, Plas Cadnant, Wightwick Manor & Garden and Doddington Place

The big coup, however, has been the involvement of the Monumental Garden of Valsanzibio in Padua, Italy, with whom World Topiary Day organisers made contact and discovered huge enthusiasm for the concept. Valsanzibio is home to the highest concentration of boxwood plants in the world and is a garden filled with symbolism; a walk through them representing a journey from falsehood to truth and from ignorance to revelation.

The enthusiasm for topiary seems to be at an all-time high, with Levens Hall and Gardens having seen a significant increase in visitors since founding World Topiary Day and leading the conversation on the art of topiary.  

Rather than viewing topiary as too formal or boring, visitors are increasingly embracing the different rhythm, focus and punctuation that it can bring to a garden.  In Levens Hall’s case, the topiary garden – one of various different themed areas to the garden – has become a magnet, absorbing visitors with the variety of different shapes and forms that they can view within over 100 pieces of topiary, in the delightful, character-filled garden.

On World Topiary Day, gardens across the world will share their news with the hashtag #WorldTopiaryDay and seek to win over more fans to the art form.  Each will do their own thing, from offering talks to laying on jazz in the gardens.

At Levens Hall and Gardens, there will be three special ‘Talking Topiary’ tours led by the 11th head gardener, Chris Crowder, which will explain all about the history of the garden and some of the individual pieces within it, from the Great Umbrella tree, with its 300+ years of history, to the Toppling Wedding Cake. 

The EBTS will also be giving table-top demonstrations, to help those new to the world of topiary learn more about how to get started and how to tend for their shrubs.

And, in a special development, a young textile student from UCLan, Hex Gregson, will reveal a Regency-style dress.  This will be made from a fabric especially printed with a design that she has created, which is inspired by the Levens Hall topiary garden.

Looking on all of this will be Queen Elizabeth I and her four Maids of Honour – pieces of topiary that reference the Elizabethan heritage of Levens Hall but which will no doubt approve of the current monarch creating his own homage to topiary, at Sandringham House.

It would appear that topiary, as a garden phenomenon, is very much on the rise.

For more information, head to www.levenshall.co.uk

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Editors notes

Levens Hall & Gardens is a historic house in the South Lakes, Cumbria, close to Kendal and home to the world's oldest topiary gardens, dating from 1694, created by French garden designer, Guillaume Beaumont. The Hall is a stunning Elizabethan house built around a 13th century pele tower and has close links to the Duke of Wellington, as well as various items which once belonged to him and Napoleon Bonaparte. Levens Park is home to the rare Bagot goats gifted to the Bagot family and a place in which to stroll and enjoy nature. Levens Kitchen is the contemporary new cafe, full of delights for cake lovers and foodies alike.