Tiptop Topiary


Show off your champion gardening skills with stunning topiary plants, pruned to sophisticated perfection. Follow Life is a Garden’s topiary style guide and get the look this autumn!
Top tip: Most evergreen shrubs can be trained to grow into any shape or direction. All you need is some imagination and a good set of shears.
Get the look
Lollipop: Choose a tall, bushy plant with a strong main stem. Stake the plant well to help it grow upright. Start shaping the head by cutting back stems to about 2 to 3 nodes and clearing the main stem of all other growth. Plant picks: Abutilon, anisodontea, brunfelsia, and Murraya exotica.
Poodle-cut: Go for a slim but bushy plant and stake it securely. Visualise where the dense leaf growth will form the three ‘poodle-cut’ spheres. Shape your balls beginning at the base and clear all other growth. Plant picks: Duranta 'Sheena's Gold', cherry laurel, Cypress, and pittosporum.
Spirals: Choose a slim conifer and challenge yourself with this design. You will need a long, strong stake around which the plant will be twisted, creating the spirals. Complete the look by cleaning around the twists to maintain their spiral shape. Plant picks: Juniperus scopulorum ‘Skyrocket’ and all other pencil conifers.
Try these topiary styles: Parterres, mazes, labyrinths, knot gardens, espalier, frames, hedging, shapes, and cute animals.


More terrific topiary plants
Foliage-dense for pruning: Duranta gold, syzygium paniculatum, ficus varieties, ligustrum undulatum, as well as lemon and lime trees. Feed plants monthly with a 2:1:2 fertiliser and mulch around the base with organic plant material.
Flowering bushes for shaping: Solanum, fuchsias, freylinia, hibiscus, and westringia. Feed plants monthly with a 3:1:6 fertiliser. As soon as they start shooting new branches, cut them back to give them a fuller, more compact shape.
Try these topiary styles: Parterres, mazes, labyrinths, knot gardens, espalier, frames, hedging, shapes, and cute animals.
Cutting-HEDGE Technology


A good hedge goes a long way, especially in terms of privacy, decoration, and formal landscaping. There is a dazzling variety of handy and handsome hedges that will help to highlight, conceal, and even protect your garden. The secret to a flourishing hedge is simple – fertiliser, mulch, and consistent pruning. If you’re still a little nervous about the world of hedging, here is Life is a Garden’s heroic hedge guide to the rescue. Plant fearlessly and level up your gardening game this August.
The handiness of hedge-tech
- Medium and tall-growing hedges create eco-friendly, peaceful privacy.
- Low-growing hedges create boundaries around beds and help to highlight areas.
- All hedges can be used to separate design elements and bring depth to the garden.
- Hedging also helps to protect the garden from the elements, such as wind and hail.
- Thorny hedges pack a painful punch and can easily be utilised as a security feature.
- Maintained hedges are sophistically decorative, blending nature with architecture.


Low-growing hedges
Plant these small hedges to edge your beds, direct visitors along a walkway, create landscaping patterns and designs, box-in feature plants, and accentuate focal points or art pieces in the garden.
- Lavender varieties – try Dentata
- Natal plum (Carisa macrocarpa)
- Spekboom (Portulacaria afra)
- Iceberg roses
- Buxus (Buxus sempervirens)
- Dwarf bamboo (Nandina pygmaea)
- Abelia varieties – try lemon & lime
- Duranta ‘Sheena’s Gold’




Medium height hedges
Plants can be added to increase privacy, corner off sections of the garden, bring in bold decorative elements, add greenery to barren spaces, and assist in reducing outside noise.
- Abelia varieties – try Schumannii
- Buxus Microphylla ‘Faulkner’
- Blousyselbos (Plumbago auriculata)
- Blue honey-bell (Freylinia tropica)
- Star jasmine
- Syzygium
- Natal plum (Carissa macrocarpa)
- Saltbush(Rhagodia spinescent)




Tall and large hedges
Rethink fencing with these living walls that will create privacy, structural intrigue, texture, neat landscaping features, increase garden security, and filter noise pollution in urban areas.