Creating topiary.

Publisher's gilt-stamped cloth, pictorial dustjacket. Fine. Woodbridge, Garden Art Press, 1992. 8vo. 148 pp. Richly illustrated with photos and drawings. Index. 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.