Creating A Triple Ball Cypress Topiary 🌳

Hi everyone, it's Jeanette from Enthusiastic Gardener. I have been inspired today to take this out, this Van Gogh Tuscan Totem Pole Cypress, because it's never been a favourite of mine. I'm going to take it out and I've been inspired as I said, rather than throw it, because it's not one of my favourites, I'm going to try something. And if it doesn't work out, so be it. But I think it's well worth giving it a go. I should have my gloves on to show you what I have in mind. I'm just going to put it in here for the moment just to keep it straight. I watched a video, HGTV Handmade is the name of the channel, and it just came up on my recommended. And it inspired me because they visited a lovely man on a topiary farm somewhere in the States. I will link the video down below so you can have a look because it's a wealth of information. But he was explaining that topiary, the definition of topiary is any plant that you have trained or managed to grow into a shape that it hasn't decided for itself. So even hedges apparently can be defined as topiaries because we're always trimming them. Yes, so I thought, I don't love this Tuscan Totem Pole Cypress, and I want to move my David Austin Rose, which is just there, which you don't know where I mean, but it's there and I want to put it in this place. And I got this for free, because it was sent out to me in 2020 by mistake, and after quite a few months, they didn't want to come and collect it so I ended up having it for nothing. Anyway, I'm going to give it a go and try and make a, well, double, triple, quadruple ball topiary. Who knows? And I don't know how successful it will be, but it's worth giving it a try. What I'm going to do first of all is, and I'm no expert, so if this turns out nice, if I can do it, anyone can do it. So I'm just going to take off all the lower straggly branches, first of all, and this Cypress is good because it's got one central leader stem, which obviously you can do topiaries on multiple stems, but I think this is a good one to try. Okay, so where it's all straggly, down here, I'm just going to take all these off to a point where maybe I can start forming the first ball. Let's get rid of that. That wasn't staking anything. Right, okay, so let's take all these lowers off. Maybe, I'm going to end with one ball on the top, aren't I? Right, so we've got to this section. Let's move the camera up a bit. So I'm now at this stage, and it actually was quite a way up before it started any reasonable bushiness, which we're now at here. So what I'm going to do is cut maybe, where's my hand, here, take some of those off up a little bit. We could have a little ball starting here, I think. We could have this as our first ball. So what I want to do now is to take off these here to create a little bit more stem before we start the next ball, and we'll shape this after. But I'm going to take off these bits. And I think what will happen is when I cut this, this will be a ball, and then we'll have a bit of a gap. So we need a few more off. You can see now, in fact let's shape this ball now. We'll do it gently, gingerly, that's the word, gingerly at first, because you can't put it back. So that's going to be a ball, we'll come back to that. Let's go up a bit. This is going to bush out, and I will tell you in a moment how I'm going to get it to bush out. That's the secret. I think we'll call this as the next ball. So I'm going to take off the ones above it. So let's try and trim this now, so I can see, I think. Let's trim those, just roughly, and then we can do the top. And this is where the secret lies, which I have discovered. That's going to be the top ball. We will shape it in a minute. Right, so the secret. The secret is, once you cut the central leader, it is never, never, ever going to grow any taller. Because if you want a topiary to grow really, really tall, you must keep the central leader. Once you cut it, it's going to force the lateral outside branches bushy and outwards. So we are going to cut the central leader, and I think I'm going to cut it, where shall I cut it, let's cut it here. So now, this is never going to get taller. We could actually do this as a cutting, and I may, probably will do that, we'll keep that. So here we go, this is the top bit. So we'll give it a bit of a gap of a stem here. Oops. I think I'll take my gloves off, it's easier. Right, I think I should take all these little cones off. Because probably the plant is putting a lot of energy into these little seed heads. So here's where we are at the moment. Not too bad. Bear in mind now that we've cut off the central leader, it will promote the side shoots to bush out. I'm just going to tidy it up now and give it a little more of a rounded look, hopefully. I'm actually pleased, I like it, and I'm going to plant it over where my other topiary was, which died, unfortunately. I think you'll be able to see it a little bit more if I put it over there. Yes, I'm quite pleased. I'm just adding some of my Grow More starter fertilizer. This is the first thing I have planted in 2023. So that's exciting. Where's my bag of soil? Right. My little triple ball topiary from a plant that I didn't like anyway. And over here, where it was, just under that sort of glassy circles thing, that's where I'm going to put my David Ostian rose, which is currently just here. That's a very big rose. It's too big for this spot, it needs to go to the back of a border. So that's what I'll do there. We have lots and lots of little bulbs poking out, so that's going to be exciting. Some of the daffodils are doing very well. If I remember rightly, these were one of the first to come out last year. It says Southern Lover on that little label, but we have lots. So that's very exciting. Last year, I had the most beautiful lavender, French lavender, or it could have been Spanish. It did look pretty. I'll try and find some more of that. Oh, it looks so bare at the moment. Yes, lots more bulbs here as well. So very exciting. Only about 38 days until spring. But there's my topiary. I think it didn't turn out too bad. In fact, possibly better than I imagined. I did imagine there would be four balls though, but I didn't realise how high up I had to start because it was very, very spindly. Anyway, throughout the season, it should hopefully bush up a little bit each ball. It's early days, but I have had such a lot of fun. This is my first time out in the garden this year, really. I mean, I've stood out here, but I don't think I've actually done any gardening since about November. So it's all full steam ahead very, very soon. So thank you for watching. I hope you're having fun in your gardens. If you're not able to get out yet, then you will very, very soon. It's just around the corner. I'm going to be hopefully out in the garden a lot more from now on. Thank you so much for watching. Take care, everyone. Bye.