Gardeners begin mammoth six-month trim of world’s oldest topiary

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Gardeners at the oldest topiary garden in the world have begun a mammoth six-month trim of more than 100 living sculptures in the centuries-old grounds.

The Topiary Garden at Levens Hall in Cumbria, founded in 1694, holds the Guinness World Record for being the oldest topiary garden in the world and attracts 30,000 visitors a year.

The team of four gardeners at Levens Hall will give the wide range of designs in the garden a “haircut”, from chess pieces and peacocks to trees sculpted to look like Homer Simpson, Darth Vader and Queen Elizabeth I.

The gardeners will remove between six and twelve inches of growth from the trees. When the sun starts to set earlier in winter, the team deploy head torches to keep working into the evening.

The hardest part of the process is trimming the “Great Umbrella”. At 10 metres tall, sculpting this tree requires a cherry picker and the willingness of the gardener to lean out of the basket at a considerable height.

The gardeners at Levens Hall are also growing the 15,000 flowers and plants in their greenhouse for next spring and summer.

This is all done under the direction of Chris Crowder, 61, who has been head gardener at Levens Hall for 38 years. Mr Crowder says the start of the annual trim is “like New Year’s Day” for him.

He is one of only eleven people to have held the role and is the longest-serving head gardener at the stately home since the nineteenth century.

Some of the trees in the garden are more than 330 years old, and more than half are over 150 years old.

The shape of the older trees was defined by the gardeners who planted them over the centuries. Mr Crowder said he remains faithful to these original designs, but each tree has its own “character” and “slowly evolves”.

He takes personal responsibility for new designs. The first two decades of a tree’s growth define its shape for the centuries to come.

Mr Crowder said: ‘The little ones are my babies. I know where I’m going with them so I trim them each year.’

Richard Bagot, 42, owns Levens Hall and its gardens. His family have been involved with the property for five centuries.

Mr Bagot lives there now with Chloe, his fiancee, and their new baby. On Saturdays the house is closed to the public, meaning the family can enjoy the gardens themselves.

During the Covid lockdown in 2020, Mr Bagot founded World Topiary Day, celebrated on May 12. The day aims to celebrate professional and amateur topiary and to encourage people to make their own creations.