Quick and Easy Topiary and Green Sculpture: Create Traditional Effects with Fast-Growing Climbers and Wire Frames

Geared to a specialty audience, this guide to planting and caring for topiaries comes from a garden designer in Great Britain. Handy's discussion spans the gamut of styles and moods-""formal or informal, quirky or imposing."" Basic techniques of making wire frames for a series of examples-from a simple heart to 3-D ""talking head"" shapes-are made easy to understand with illustrated step-by-step directions. Further instructions for training and clipping plants into desired shapes may cause the inexperienced gardener to struggle. Neither quick nor easy, many of these projects assume more than a little horticultural knowledge and will take several years to ""adapt."" The first step in ""Clipping a Cone into a Spiral,"" for instance, calls for ""a bushy, well-shaped box plant approximately four years old from a cutting."" For the patient enthusiast, however, the text lays out the process for creating the likes of a potted honeysuckle peacock, conifer corkscrews or fruit-bearing standards. The concluding plant directory offers information about more than 50 topiary-friendly cultivars. Zone maps are provided for Europe, Australia and South Africa, but not for the U.S.; of the 17 suppliers listed, two are in the States. (Apr.)