Editing Topiary (section)

===Renaissance topiary===
Since its European revival in the 16th century, topiary has been seen on the [[parterre]]s and [[Terrace garden|terraces]] of gardens of the European elite, as well as in simple [[cottage garden]]s; [[Barnabe Googe]], about 1578, found that "women" (a signifier of a less than gentle class) were clipping [[rosemary]] "as in the fashion of a cart, a peacock, or such things as they fancy."<ref>Noted in Charles Curtis and W. Gibson, ''The Book of Topiary'', 1904, p. 15.</ref> In 1618 [[William Lawson (priest)|William Lawson]] suggested:
:Your gardener can frame your lesser wood to the shape of men armed in the field, ready to give battell: or swift-running Grey Houndes to chase the Deere, or hunt the Hare. This kind of hunting shall not wate your corne, nor much your coyne.<ref>Lawson, ''A New Orchard and Garden'' 1618.</ref>
Traditional topiary forms use foliage pruned or trained into geometric shapes such as balls or cubes, [[obelisk]]s, pyramids, cones, or tiered plates and tapering spirals. Representational forms depicting people, animals, and man-made objects have also been popular. The royal botanist [[John Parkinson (botanist)|John Parkinson]] found [[privet]] "so apt that no other can be like unto it, to be cut, lead, and drawn into what forme one will, either of beasts, birds, or men armed or otherwise." Evergreens have usually been the first choice for Early Modern topiary, however, with [[yew]] and [[box (tree)|boxwood]] leading other plants.{{citation needed|date=September 2024}}

Topiary at [[Gardens of Versailles|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, but by 1708–09 one searches in vain for fanciful topiary among the clipped hedges and edgings, and the standing cones and obelisks of the aristocratic and gentry English parterre gardens in Kip and Knyff's ''[[Britannia Illustrata]]''.{{citation needed|date=September 2024}}