Topiary Sculpture

Topiary

Topiary is the horticultural practice of training perennial plants by clipping the foliage and twigs of trees, shrubs and subshrubs to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes, whether geometric or fanciful. The term also refers to plants which have been shaped in this way. As an art form it is a type of living sculpture. The word derives from the Latin word for an ornamental landscape gardener, topiarius, a creator of topia or "places", a Greek word that Romans also applied to fictive indoor landscapes executed in fresco.

Sculpture

Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional artwork which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sculptural processes originally used carving and modelling, in stone, metal, ceramics, wood and other materials but, since Modernism, there has been almost complete freedom of materials and process. A wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modelling, or moulded or cast.

topiary

Adjective

1. Of, or relating to art of topiaries.
2. Of a tree or shrub, trimmed in artistic shape.

Noun

1. Art or practice of trimming shrubs or trees in artistic or ornamental shapes, e.g. of animals.
2. A garden decorated with such art.

sculpture

Noun

1. A three-dimensional work of art created by shaping malleable objects and letting them harden or by chipping away pieces from a rock (sculpting).
2. More generally (since modernism), a three-dimensional work of art of any material or of mixed materials, whether sculpted, assembled, found, constructed or created using multiple techniques.

Verb

1. To fashion something into a three-dimensional figure.
2. To represent something in sculpture.