& shades of green in-between
A prototype robot, developed specifically for the autonomous trimming of topiary, was tested by European researchers earlier this year. It was programmed to shape plants into spheres, cylinders, and cuboids, developed with a view to providing a time-saving device for garden maintenance, as well as a valuable labour-saving asset for the professional horticulturalist. In trials, the robot managed to craft spherical shapes to a reasonable standard, but performance for cylindrical and cuboid topiary proved unsatisfactory. With further modifications clearly necessary, there are unlikely to be topiary-tending robots available for purchase at garden centres this summer. However, the age of the automaton topiary clipper is undoubtably on the horticultural horizon, taking convenience one step beyond robotic lawn mowers.
The robot trial came again to mind this June, when we visited the unique and joyful garden at Great Dixter, family home of esteemed writer and plantsman Christopher Lloyd (1921-2006). Set in beautiful Wealden countryside on the outskirts of Northiam, East Sussex, the celebrated garden offers six acres of outdoor rooms and meadows, which surround the extended late 15th century timbered manor. Expansion of the house began in 1910 under the supervision of influential English architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. Lutyens was commissioned by Christopher Lloyd’s father Nathaniel, a semi-retired pioneering printer who moved to the property with his wife Daisy (née Field), seeking to create their dream home in the Arts and Crafts style and spirit. To extend the existing building, the timber frame of a derelict 16th century yeoman’s hall was transported to the site from Benenden in Kent, to be unified in rambling glory with the original house by incorporating Lutyens’ sympathetically designed modern wing. Lutyens also mapped out the enduring structure of the garden, with a series of enclosed spaces, wide borders, flagstone paths, trademark set-on-edge tile paving and pillars, and circular steps.
Some of Dixter’s most celebrated features include the iconic walls of yew that compartmentalise gardens into individual rooms, and precisely crafted topiary sculptures, first planted by Nathaniel around a hundred years ago. Dark green yew enclosures serve as the perfect backdrop to exuberant planting, offering intriguing living doorways to transport the visitor from one floriferous vignette to the next. The hedges are a work of art in their own right, shaped into staggered monoliths, or sporting crenellated tops (perhaps harking back to the medieval dwelling’s license to fortify), sometimes imposingly angular in form, sometimes soothingly curved. The enchanting peacock garden is crammed with topiary that has evolved over the decades from a menagerie of expertly maintained pheasants, fighting cocks, and blackbirds, to a pride of perfect peafowl. The Topiary Lawn, too, has undergone transformation. In the age of Christopher’s ceaseless experimentation and juxtaposition in the garden, the verdant geometry of multi-layered yew sculptures no longer presided over a perfectly manicured grass sward but became sentinels of a seasonal, softly textured meadow filled with orchids, light and shadow, and a dancing breeze, reflecting the appreciation of wild grasses and flowers Christopher absorbed from his mother Daisy.
These stylised yew features made us muse on the application of the robotic topiary-trimmer. First, the practicalities were considered: how would even the most sophisticated robot cope with the geometric complexities, idiosyncrasies, and evolution of yew sculpture in a garden such as Great Dixter?
This purely hypothetical scenario occupied us further. We thought of how the Arts and Crafts movement embraced materials swept aside by the industrial revolution, championing a return to traditional skills. Any garden founded on such principles was surely no place for technology in the form of a computer-programmed gardener. Still, by the mid 20th century, machines were used to trim topiary at Dixter.
Next was the question of associative value. The planting at Dixter has layers of historic connections to multiple influences including Edwin Lutyens, Gertrude Jekyll (whose principles informed the original planting by the Lloyds), Nathaniel’s passion for topiary, Daisy’s love of wilder elements, and Christopher’s iconoclastic approach to conventional notions of taste and style. Torch bearer, Fergus Garret, Christo’s friend and head gardener, is now steward of a legacy that continues to develop, defy, and dazzle. Wouldn’t the tangible human connection that visitors feel to a succession of formative figures somehow be broken by the blade of the robotic arm?
Gardens are about much more than the sensual delight of the plants, they are about recognising and absorbing the creators’ passion, drama, humour, innovation, and vision. Gardens give immediate and instinctive connection to communal sensory pleasure and communal sustenance. They also offer a journey of discovery, a novel way of seeing and experiencing the world through another pair of eyes. To walk round a garden is to stroll through the workings of the garden-maker’s mind.
The topiary-trimming robot, however, is a mindless void, devoid of consciousness. It has no pride or passion for its pre-programmed task. When it successfully shapes cylindrical bushes, it feels no glow of pleasure in its accomplishment. When it fails on cylindrical and cuboid designs, it feels no shame, irritation, or resolve to improve. Those sentiments are the preserve of its human developers.
But here’s the thing: if ever there was a place where sentience might spark in the circuits of an automaton, where the lightning transference of input to output might be intercepted by a freak electrical impulse on a non-logical pathway giving rise to sudden experience of emotion, pleasure, passion, appreciation, then Great Dixter in all its genius and glory would surely be exactly the garden where android awareness makes its breakthrough.
The website of Great Dixter Charitable Trust is here: https://www.greatdixter.co.uk
Hedges were laid out by Edwin Lutyens and Christopher Lloyd in the 1920s to create a sense of seclusion, and frame a sequence of views within the space.
The charm of the Peacock Garden comes from the air of stately whimsy, as well as the geometric structure the topiary bestows on riotously pleasing planting.
The Topiary lawn once included Nathaniel Lloyd’s putting green and is now perfectly in the rough, adrift with common spotted orchids, yellow rattle, and ox-eye daisies.
From the front meadow to the entrance porch, nature’s wild beauty is juxtaposed with the artfully contrived theatre of pleasing, playful, and perfumed pots.
The Wall Garden, Sunk garden and Barn Garden are upliftingly vibrant and breathtakingly abundant spaces. Ladybird poppies shout a cheery greeting to the visitor like a buoyant crowd of friends.
Gardens showcase Lutyens’ decorative but functional flourishes with trademark tiles on edge and circular steps. Flagstones and masonry contrast with lush growth.
In the Long Border, Christopher Lloyd introduced a densely woven tapestry of colour and texture, where foliage was as important as flowers, and unconventional combinations were embraced. At rhythmic points, taller plants engage with the space at the front of the border whilst lower specimens have a reoriented presence at the back, adding a greater sense of depth with the element of ‘conceal and reveal’. The orchard meadow sweeping up to the Long border might give the impression of real nature meeting idealised nature, to use the Arts and Crafts distinction. However, a recent biodiversity survey found that the ornamental planting at Dixter supported an even richer variety of wildlife than the healthily-populated meadows, pastures, woodland, and ponds. Idealised nature doesn’t get more real than that.
Over decades, the charming formal rose garden designed by Lutyens began to flag, and replacement plants failed to thrive due to rose replant disease. Christopher and Fergus rejuvenated the entire space to create a walk-in jungle of exotic foliage, with cannas and dahlias smouldering amongst bananas and phormiums from late summer. Today, this immersive experience forces visitors to fully engage with plants, stepping over, ducking under, and peering around foliage, every drifting scent and gentle leaf-rustle seemingly magnified in this green chamber, whilst glimpses of the house nod to the domestic amidst untamed abandon. It is endearing to find the occasional nostalgic rose harmonising with this tropical mix, whilst conifers are an unexpected presence: seemingly personified, transformed into wise old characters from ancient fairytales, they whisper their secrets in a language we have lost.
Information on the topiary-trimming robot comes from the following paper: Bart M. van Marrewijk, Bastian A. Vroegindeweij, Jordi Gené-Mola, Angelo Mencarelli, Jochen Hemming, Nikolaus Mayer, Maximilian Wenger, & Gert Kootstra, (2022). Evaluation of a boxwood topiary trimming robot. Biosystems Engineering, 214, 11–27.