Living Walls and Vertical Gardens » Topiary

Russian topiaries

Gavin — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 03:33:00 +0000

Topiary pillars

A reader from Russia, Vadim, emailed me about some of the amazing topiary work he’s done there. Some of the work includes huge topiary pillars that surround a patio outdoors as well as some very interesting topiary designs of animals such as deers and bears. Usually I don’t post topiaries on here unless it’s to do with a design of a living wall, but these topiaries are amazing and all hand made by Vadim. I thought it’s something most of you would be interested in seeing.

From Vadim himself:

I studied landscape design.
Then dabbled in Topiary haircut.
From this came the creation of sculptures.
Unlike other I do sculptures for the overgrowth with a detailed drawing of the animal’s head.
This allows you to get the overgrowth of a spectacular figure in the garden.

Here’s a link to his site (it’s in Russian but has pictures). If you’re interested in his work and want to contact him his email is kvnru at mail dot ru

Topiary pillars

Garden Bear Sculpture

Garden Bear Art

Large topiary deer

Garden deer

Garden topiary

Designer Living Walls and Topiary

Gavin — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:02:34 +0000

Gas Design came up with a unique look for their client: Louis Vuitton. Gregory Polletta and Sung Jang designed the project to show how Louis Vuitton’s building is “alive” and so people could experience that “aliveness” every day they own something from Louis Vuitton. Behind the topiaries are nets of water and fertilizer that feed the plants and a gardener is dispatched every so often to trim the topiaries. Here’s a couple different pictures of the same building with different topiary/living wall looks:

Topiade living wall

Living wall with lights

Patterned living wall

Vertical garden

Louis Vuitton Topiary

The topiade is a lay-over facade structure that’s part topiary design, part living wall design. They strove to renew an existing Louis Vuitton building without a huge construction undertaking. The end result is a great-looking design that is able to be changed frequently through a modular topiary system.

Massive vertical gardens and topiaries from China

Gavin — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:07:58 +0000

These pictures are from the Olympic Topiary Gardens in China from a while back. 80 botanic gardens from more than 25 countries worked together to come up with these amazing designs. Topiary gardens and living walls are very similar. For topiaries, they typically involve a wire mesh that forms the shape of the garden. Sphagnum moss is stuffed inside the wire mesh and then the plants are grown out of the moss. Sphagnum moss is known for its ability to retain water and resist diseases which makes it a great growing medium. For large structures such as this, generally a very skilled welder and artist has to weld thick metal structures together, then potentially weave small gauge wire to hold in the moss properly. Piping and pumps are used to get the water to all parts of the topiary gardens. These pictures were from lifeinthefastlane.

Living wall

Vertical garden

Vertical topiary garden

Topiary dolphins

Topiary butterfly

Somehow, there are even more pictures than that of these gardens. They’re all stunning. Here’s a youtube video of some more pictures of these topiary gardens.