Pearl Fryar, topiary artist

Very moved to read about the life of Pearl Fryar, who died on April 4th:

"More Pablo Picasso than Capability Brown, Mr. Fryar was an artist at heart rather than a horticulturist. But he had a gardener’s patience. He envisioned forms in his head — he never sketched, saying that it flattened out his perspective and that his drawings were illegible anyway — and was willing to wait a decade for those forms to be realized. ... Year after year, using gas-powered hedge clippers, pruning shears and a chain saw, he continued to plant and sculpt.

His techniques were his own. He used PVC pipes to create arches between a pair of holly trees, for example, attaching the new growth to the pipes with zip-lock ties and slicing off the rest of the limbs. He did impossible things with dogwood, turning one tree into something resembling a giant snowball. He shaped the top of a 20-foot Leyland cypress — that suburban stalwart and neighbor screen — to resemble a fish bone. Junipers were sheared into animated mounds that seemed to embrace one another, dancing. ... He carved the words “love,” “peace” and “goodwill” into the lawn in eight-foot letters, a 40-foot-wide message that he planted with annuals in the spring and summer and filled with straw in the colder months.

His bemused neighbors started asking for tips as they, too, began pruning and shaping their shrubs. “It’s hard to keep up with the Fryars,” one told the filmmakers."

An image search of Mr. Fryar's garden is a delight; I hope I get to visit it someday.