How to Make a Live Topiary

Do stuffy, formal Victorian images come to mind when you think topiary? Topiaries can bring a whimsical and casual look to any room! Creating a live topiary is easy and inexpensive. To create your topiary all you need is a vine, a container filled with potting soil, and some type of form to train your vine on. 

I found a beautiful black tin pail at Michaels to use. To ensure it would not leak, cut a large corner off of an outdoor garbage bag and line the pail with it. Next, fill the pail with good quality potting soil. Plant your ivy into the pail. The particular ivy is English Ivy, and it had a few very long vines already on it. I like choosing vines with long tendrils, because they help give you an instant, already grown look to your new topiary.

The next step is to take your form, like a grapevine wreath, and secure it to your pail with a piece of strong wire. Cut a wire coat hanger with tin snips or wire cutters, bend it, thread it through your form, then bend the ends of the wire to create “feet”. These will help stabilize your wreath in the pail. Push the wired form into the pail and start wrapping the long tendrils of the vine up and around your form.

As the vine grows you will have to occasionally wrap new tendrils around the form, helping it eventually cover the form completely.

Think out of the box!

The form you choose can be any height or shape. Think out of the box and look around your home for interesting shapes. Do you have an Parisian Eiffel Tower form sitting around? How about a wood letter initial? What about horse shoe or a large starfish? The form is up to you! See how fun and whimsical topiaries can be?

This next topiary is made from stainless steel pipe clamps! They can be found in any hardware store, and come in multiple diameters. These below are 6.5 inch clamps. I simply criss-crossed them to create a sphere, and tightened the outer most clamp to hold the sphere tightly together.

Royal Hustler Ivy was planted into a silver tin pail, using the method described above. The sphere was placed on top and then the individual vines were wrapped around the metal sphere.

Spanish moss is tucked around the pail for a finished look, it also helps maintain some moisture in the soil. I can’t wait for it to grow and envelope the entire sphere! Vines are very low maintenance, easy to grow, give you fast results,and just need medium, indirect light and moist soil. Some good vines to choose would be most types of ivy, creeping fig, angel vine, and pink jasmine.

Happy Growing!

For more posts on gardening, plants and flower arranging, you might like these!

Forcing Forsythia / Thanksgiving Centerpiece / How to Grow Plants from Clippings/ Spring Planting - Banana Trees

Kim

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