Divide the inside of a dome into coffers that shrink in step with the meridians as they rise, so that their perspective deepens the dome and draws the eye to the light of the lantern.
Rules · Ornament · Site · Plans
Box clipped into figures and letters
Edge the beds before the portico with box, clip box into figures of animals set facing one another, and in the garden beyond cut it into many shapes, even into the letters of the owner’s name.
Pliny describes the garden of his Tuscan villa in order from the house. Before the portico is a terrace with beds edged in box, and box animals facing each other; below, a bank with more figures; then a walk enclosed by clipped evergreens. Beside the house a garden in the shape of a hippodrome is ringed by plane trees, with box cut into shapes and letters spelling his name and his gardener’s, small obelisks of box among fruit trees, and a marble couch with a fountain.
The gardener who did this work was the topiarius, which gives us the word topiary. The letter was read closely in the Renaissance, and Alberti repeats the advice to spell names in box. Box (Buxus sempervirens) suits the work because it is evergreen, grows slowly and tolerates cutting back hard, so that a shape once made holds for years with regular clipping.
Related rules
Give the villa garden porticoes for sun and for shade, grottoes made in imitation of nature with tufa and shells, evergreens planted in straight rows at equal distances, and hedges of box; set vines on columns over the walks.
Lay the ideal garden out on a circular plan in concentric rings, woods outside, then meadows and orchards, then gardens of knots and clipped evergreens divided by walks, with water and the fountain of the goddess at the centre.
On a hillside, cut the garden into level terraces held by retaining walls, join them by stairs and ramps on a single axis that runs from the house, and lead water down the axis from level to level.
Bring water down a slope in a stepped stone channel whose scrolled sides break it into ripples and small falls, on the axis of the garden, so that the water itself becomes an ornament as it descends.
Beside the house, enclose a small garden with walls or high hedges for the owner’s private use, with flowers, herbs, fruit trees and a fountain, apart from the public garden on the axis.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Box clipped into figures and letters”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/pliny-topiary. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.