BERKSHIRE GARDEN TRUST’S
FEBUARY 2025 ZOOM LECTURE
Wednesday 26 February 2025 at 7pm (book by 23rd January please see below) £7 for BGT
Topiary: a history of creative use. Talk by Bruce Ginsberg
We are very pleased to welcome Bruce Ginsberg, a founding member of the European Boxwood and
Topiary Society in the 90’s and its chairman for a number of years. The Society has a large membership
in the UK (even larger in France) as well as being active in Belgium, Holland, Germany. Bruce also
lectures on the philosophy of Zen gardens and east Asian nature aesthetics and is a guest lecturer at
the School of Oriental and African Studies.
Bruce’s garden at Earlstone Photo: B.Ginsberg |
Our talk will be based on a course for horticultural colleges that the European Box and Topiary Society were developing. Bruce will cover the history of the use and cultivation of topiary, ranging from East and West, from Roman times onwards, to contemporary topiary use. |
Bruce says: “I am intrigued by how we separate and structure a piece of space and do something to it,
to hold the eye and open the heart. Colour touches us, and flowers, with their spiral patterning, have
an emotional effect on us that lift the spirit. Gardens are an artifice, a creation, which slow us down
wonderfully and give us 360degree awareness in all directions. Topiary helps structure the space
and focuses us on both the small and intimate, and the boundless endless patterning in all directions”.
| “A garden is a culture, a space that as you walk through it, either speeds you up or slows you down – without one realising it. It plays with us like music and brings us to feel ourselves as part of nature – not separate”. | Bruce’s garden at Earlstone: Photo: B.Kirkham |
| Bruce’s garden at Earlstone: Photo: B.Kirkham | Bruce has his own homemade Jacobean-style garden which is a recreation of the fashionable renaissance garden aesthetic of the time. BGT enjoyed a wonderful visit to Bruce’s Garden in July 2022. |
He also has a large box topiary nursery near Newbury: The five-acre nursery has a huge choice
of box balls, cones, pyramids, spirals and beehives, cloud hedging and more unusual specimens.
https://www.earlstoneboxandtopiary.co.uk.
For more information link to: Berks Gdn Trust BG leaflet Zoom Lecture – Feb 2025
Booking:Please book online before the 23rd January. Please visit our website at www.berkshiregardenstrust.org
and click on “2025 Events”. The tickets are £7 each for both members and non-members. We will send you a Zoom
link for the lecture a few days beforehand. The lecture will last approximately 1 hour, followed by questions.
The lecture will be recorded with the link available for a week to those people who have booked for the event.
