Topiaries

Seeing this mention of a documentary about “A Man Named Pearl” about Pearl Fryar, a self-taught topiary artist, and a modern-day Edward Scissorhands, got me thinking of the wonderful and magical visits my family and I took to several topiary gardens. Watching the trailer is inspirational, particularly the philosophy of the film, regarding overcoming obstacles. It’s now on my short lists of films to see.

The most recent topiary gardens that we visited was Green Animals Topiary Gardens in Portsmouth Rhode Island, my husband’s home state. We wanted to check out our sons’ sister school, Portsmouth Abbey right down the road, at the time when they were attending St. Anselm’s Abbey School.

Side note: here’s an illustration I did as a gift and thanks to the school before our sons graduated and left St. Anselm’s, a school we still strongly support.

This is the oldest topiary garden in the United States and has somewhat of a cottage style feel in comparison to Ladew Gardens, the other topiary gardens that we last visited in 1994. I think we need to go back. Here are some pictures we took — before the digital age, so I had to search and scan.

The boys, now men in my life:

I love this last picture of my now 17 year old son, Jackson. What a cutie, boy I miss those days….

There is a lot of humor and each garden radiating off the middle fountain/ field has a theme – well worth visiting again and not too far from us, just outside Baltimore, MD.