3 Easy Ways To Create A Spiral Topiary

Writen by David Hoyles

One of the most creative and satisfying centrepieces for your garden is a spiral topiary, guaranteed to attract admiring looks and comments from all that see it. There are easy ways and hard ways to create a spiral. I will describe the easy ways of going about this.

Firstly, you will need to decide upon your choice of plant to use for your topiary.

There are no hard and fast rules here; gardening should be creative and fun and, basically, you can use whatever you want (to an extent)! It might depend on what stock you already have in your garden, or if you have nothing available, it might rest on what your local garden centre or nursery has in stock, combined with your available budget.

It will also depend on how quickly you want the finished article, but bear in mind also that if you choose something that is quick growing you will have to trim it more often. After saying that, the quick growing specimen described below is trimmed only twice a year.

I happened to have a Gold Crest conifer (Cupressus Macrocarpa Gold Crest) growing in my garden. This is a fast growing, lime-green conifer that has a delightful lemon scent that is released when it is cut. It also has a fairly dense habit, so overall it is probably an excellent choice if you want quick results. Also, with it being fast growing it is a pretty cheap conifer. It is a very easy conifer to grow from cuttings, so if you do this it is cheaper still!

This particular specimen was about 1 foot tall when I planted it. Three years later it was 4-5 feet tall. I looked at it one day and thought 'I think I'll turn that into a spiral'. Although it was a little bare initially, 1 year later it was practically perfect due to its quick rate of growth and a bit of trimming.

Usually, conifers of different varieties are used for spiral topiaries as they are the most practical, but other plants and shrubs can also be considered. I'm currently in the process of creating a spiral using Golden Privet (Ligustrum). Green Privet can also be used, of course, and will grow a lot quicker than the golden variety.

I'm creating this spiral using thick, galvanised wire (this is wire that won't rust and is available from your local DIY store). I knocked a stake into the ground and fastened the wire to it by binding it with nylon twine. Depending on how thick the wire is, you might have to bind two pieces of wire to the stake so that you have a double thickness of wire for your frame. The wire was then manipulated into the desired spiral shape. The wire that I used was about 3 feet in length, so it was a case of twisting and binding the pieces of wire together to create sufficient length for the spiral.

As the privet grew, the sides were trimmed but the top was allowed to grow. As it did so, I occasionally tied the shoots loosely to the frame to keep everything in place. Eventually, the wire frame and twine will be covered up with the new growth, resulting in a snake-like spiral emerging from the ground!

So that's one way of making a shrub into a topiary and creating a spiral.

Another way of creating a spiral topiary, as in the Gold Crest example described above, is to wrap a piece of twine, or tape, around the outside of the conifer to create the guideline for the spiral. Then stand back and just make sure that it looks right. Viewed from all angles, is it consistent? When you are sure that it looks alright, start cutting alongside the twine. I used topiary shears to do this but a sharp pair of kitchen scissors will do the job just as well.

Start cutting from the bottom and gradually work your way up to the top. You will be left with a rough outline of your spiral. Keep trimming it on a regular basis to make sure that you don't lose the basic line of the spiral and it will gradually start filling out. Depending on the growth rate of your chosen conifer, you will soon have the perfect spiral.

I usually use a combination of ordinary garden shears and topiary shears when it needs trimming . The only time I would use an electric hedge trimmer with a spiral is at the initial stage, if the chosen conifer was particularly big and I needed to trim it to the basic dimensions. Don't use an electric trimmer on the finished spiral or you're likely to chop something off.

Speaking of which, never under-estimate the dangers involved with using an electric trimmer. Although I'm digressing a bit, I had a particularly nasty accident several years ago when I accidentally cut through the lead and the circuit breaker failed to activate! Now I never touch an electric trimmer unless it's plugged into a reliable circuit breaker and there's a Cable-Protecta fitted to prevent cutting through the lead in the first place. Just a point worth noting.

The third way I created a spiral topiary was by growing a Leylandii (X Cupressocyparis Leylandii) conifer around a circular frame. The frame is about a foot in diameter and it's original purpose was for growing climbing plants against. The Leylandii is extremely quick growing, especially the green variety (3 feet a year when it gets going) so it didn't long to take shape.

In the same way as with the example of the spiral grown against the wire, described above, the leading shoots were allowed to grow and then periodically these shoots were bunched together and tied to the frame. As the side shoots sprouted in due course, they were trimmed to produce a uniform width for the spiral.

It's still growing upwards at a rapid rate and at some stage I need to decide where it's going to stop. It could be quite a big spiral!

So now you know! Decide what type of spiral you want, how quickly you want it to grow, hence what growing stock you will use and get cracking!

David Hoyles reveals further handy gardening tips on his site http://www.privacy-hedge-trees.com and is also the creator of the safety product Cable-Protecta. See his site http://www.cable-protecta.co.uk for more details.