If much-loved children’s author Enid Blyton had still been alive she would have celebrated her 120th birthday last year with the cherry on the cake that it was also 75 years since her first ‘Famous Five’ book was published.
Blyton’s 21 books in the eponymous series have charmed and engaged generations of children. Those children often grew into adults inspired by Blyton with a love of the outdoors and a special interest in plants, wildlife and gardening.
The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) planned a fitting tribute to her this summer across all four of its beautiful gardens. Each garden devised a ‘Five Go on a Garden Adventure’ trail. A range of exciting events and activities was also devised involving exploring, den building, orienteering, bush craft, art, storytelling and story writing. The culmination of all the events in each garden was a mass picnic party on 11 August.
Having successfully worked with the RHS before, the organisers at the Wisley garden came to Agrumi when they decided to realise Blyton’s five main characters – Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy the dog – in topiary. We worked closely together to design and fabricate the characters so that they retained key elements of the personality attributed to them by Blyton. Our plan was to ensure that each figure would be instantly recognisable to the author had she time travelled between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
The photo shows how successful Agrumi’s Head topiarist has been in bringing Blyton’s characters to 3D life through wire and plants.
The Agrumi contribution to the RHS’s tribute was significant and a fitting ‘green’ homage to Blyton the environmentalist and champion of natural things.
If you need some topiary figures for your park or garden then get in touch with us.
The world-class alternative floral art show ‘Chelsea in Bloom’ was back this year for its 12th Anniversary. Produced in association with the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), it transformed the local streets in May when the area’s best retailers, restaurants and hotels adorned their buildings with breathtaking floral displays and competed for the show’s coveted awards.
This year’s theme ‘Floral Safari’ inspired the retailers to explore the creative design potential of exotic animals, savannahs, plains and jungles. Each entrant turned to experts for help and Agrumi was on hand to ensure that two entrants won big.
This private members club on Lower Sloane Street is lucky enough to have an in-house florist – Carter Cherrill. Carter designed the Club’s display to highlight the plight of the African elephant - a majestic animal that is being hunted to extinction. The intention was to use the publicity garnered from the prestigious ‘Chelsea in Bloom’ event to focus attention on this serious ecological issue.
Agrumi was asked to create a 2-metre long topiary female African elephant in typical pose - trunk held high protecting its child. There are key physiological differences between African and Indian elephants and it would have been a serious mistake for Agrumi to misrepresent them. Carter and Agrumi complemented the beauty of the wild beasts with natural planting.
The hard work and attention to detail paid off and the RHS judges awarded the display a silver medal.
Smythson, the Sloane Street-based luxury leather goods retailer, brought florist Amanda Willgrave on board to design their display. She in turn commissioned Agrumi to bring her design vision into reality.
Honouring Smythson’s 125 year-old archive, Amanda wanted to tell a story based on the golden age of travel. The resulting window treatment transported visitors to the African Savannah and the world-famous Giraffe Manor in Kenya. Life-sized mother and baby topiary giraffes, designed and made by Agrumi, flanked the entrances to Smythson’s boutique and welcomed guests into the store. The animals were surrounded by acacia and moss planting complemented with an array of indigenous African foliage and plants. Agrumi also made a separate giraffe head as a focal point for an interior display.
Amanda’s design and Agrumi’s execution of her vision enchanted the public and judges alike and it was awarded 2nd place and ‘highly commended’.
Fifty years ago, June 1967 ushered in the ‘Summer of Love’ to the accompaniment of the Beatles’ masterwork ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’. The album cover featured groundbreaking artwork and has since become an icon in its own right.
Clifton Nurseries in Maida Vale, London (now owned by Gavin Jones Ltd) supplied the plants featured on the original album cover. To mark this important point in UK social and music history and Clifton’s part in it, Gavin Jones Ltd decided to create a plant installation loosely based on the album cover. The installation was destined for display at Chiswick House Gardens (where Gavin Jones Ltd maintain the grounds) and where also the videos for some of the Sgt Pepper’s tracks were filmed.
Looking for an unusual approach towards the display, Gavin Jones Ltd decided to focus on the flowerbed at the bottom of the album cover. Obviously no display of this sort would be complete without the figures of the Beatles themselves and, seeking the best in the business to supply topiary models of John, Paul, George and Ringo based on their images on the album cover, Gavin Jones Ltd came to Agrumi. No further discussion was needed. We grasped the creative intention immediately and were delighted to accept the challenge of literally bringing the 2D album cover to 3D life.
Agrumi’s brief was to incorporate colour in the replication of the Fab Four’s famous military costumes. But, because the installation was to feature at the RHS Chelsea Fringe and Hampton Court after Chiswick House Gardens, it was decided that living flowers would be less robust and long-lived that dyed moss. The final design was made with robust, long-stranded, texturally attractive New Zealand sphagnum moss.
Agrumi’s topiarist excelled himself with the fabrication of these figures and we were proud to play a pivotal role in celebrating the birth of this national and international totem of musical progress.
Clifton Nurseries: Celebrating 50 Years of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Gavin Jones: Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Garden Feature at Chiswick House
You can never have too much of a good thing!
No sooner had we finished our Red Shanked Douc monkey project for the Body Shop than we were contacted by Stephan Hammar one of the gardeners at the beautiful 19 th -century Trädgårdsföreninge in Gothenburg, Sweden.
The park is celebrating its 175 th birthday and the staff particularly wanted to commemorate Ricky and Tony - two chimpanzees that lived in the 1878 Palm House which had been designed and built by the British firm Alexander Shanks & Sons.
Stephan explained that pictures of our “wonderful” Red Shanked Douc monkeys had caught the park staffs’ attention and they commissioned us to make two topiary chimpanzees for the Palm House. The analogy between the Red Shanked Douc and Shanks & Sons seemed serendipitous too.
There are many anatomical differences between the Red Shanked Douc and its more prosaic cousin the chimpanzee. Never ones to shirk a design challenge we carefully researched the physical appearance of the chimpanzee and, as the photo shows, we captured every nuance of limb length, head shape and characteristic body pose.
As usual the project was delivered on time and within budget and it was gratifying to get Stephan’s response thanking us for the “great design” and letting us know that the chimps were “hugely appreciated by our visitors.”
Arts events organisers Fantasy High Street brought Agrumi on board this summer to help them deliver an outdoor arts programme in public spaces around the London Bridge area.
The month-long festival of free outdoor installations – art, workshops and performances – was commissioned to playfully respond to the title ‘Revealed’ by creating green oases in unexpected places around the borough.
Working closely with Fantasy High Street’s Creative Director Lydia Fraser-Ward, Agrumi’s expert topiarist made a series of large-scale flowers demonstrating the process of opening their petals to the sun.
Fabricated from beautiful Star Jasmine plants the topiary helped ‘green up’ this densely populated part of the inner city.
We’re already working on more art meets topiary installations. Watch this space!
We’re broadening our horizons as the Agrumi name increasingly gets checked internationally as well as UK-wide.
Recent States-side commissions include this cheeky monkey and letter ‘H’ for the Hyde Beach consortium at the SLS hotel in Miami.
Celebrated for their energy, style and effortless ‘cool’ in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, South Beach is the new outlet for the company’s offer of mixology, music and fantastic food with pool and beach access.
Hyde Beach chose Agrumi bespoke topiary to enhance their indoor/outdoor space with a little English style.
Other recent U.S. projects include the word ‘Almanak’ in topiary for the eponymous pavilion at the new Nordic-themed Great Northern Food Hall in New York.
This 5,000 square foot space at Grand Central Station is the brainchild of celebrity chef Claus Meyer (co-founder of Noma).
The Kentucky Derby is the U.S. equivalent of Ascot and millinery is just as important there as it is here. The drink of choice tends to be rum or bourbon rather than champagne though.
Agrumi was asked to make a topiary Bacardi bottle for this year’s Derby – a prestigious commission for a prestigious event!
Alan Titchmarsh is probably the UK’s most famous gardening expert and something of a national ‘treasure’. He’s been associated with ITV’s flagship gardening programme since it first aired back in 2014. Agrumi came on board then too when we supplied our first piece for them – a 6’ tall topiary giraffe for ex-nurse Joan.
The programme’s producers have described us as “fabulous topiary makers” and we have been very happy to continue our relationship with them. Our latest contribution was a pair of rearing topiary horses for the episode that aired on 19 July 2016.
Alan decided that they needed a focal point to draw the eye to client Caroline’s new vegetable garden. Caroline used to work for the RSPCA, loves horses and was a keen rider.
Knowing our work, Alan and his team relied on us to come up with topiary horse designs that would please Caroline and provide visual interest in what could otherwise have been an uninspiring section of her garden.
As the photograph shows, our topiary pieces are real stars in this garden – perhaps only outdone by Alan himself!
Each horse is handmade and retails at a very reasonable £208.50. Give us a call to see how a piece of our bespoke topiary could animate your garden.
The Body Shop is a great British business that has gone global. It’s well known for its campaigning stance on environmental issues and, as part of this commitment, they’re investing in an ambitious ‘Bio-bridges’ project with the World Land Trust.
Bio-bridges are restored ‘wildlife corridors’ in damaged landscapes that help endangered species to thrive. The first Bio-bridge project has just started in North Central Vietnam where 14.5 million square meters of rainforest will be reinstated through Body Shop investment and donations from customers’ in-store purchases.
The Body Shop works with partner companies that share a similar vision about sustainability and care for the environment. Their PR, Another Word, had no hesitation in coming to us for help with the project’s promotional campaign.
The photo below shows the impressive 1.8m tall topiary Red Shanked Douc monkeys we made for display on Westminster Bridge. The Red Shanked Douc is indigenous to the area of Vietnam where the Bio-bridge is located and on the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list of endangered species.
The topiary animals were fabricated at our New Forest nursery with our usual care and attention to anatomical detail. The difficulty was obtaining permission from Transport for London to site the figures on the bridge – its structure with the trefoil patterning and paintwork are statutorily protected.
All came good in the end though and Another Word were delighted saying “Just wanted to drop you all a note to say thanks for making today such a success. The client was delighted with production, procedure, media and monkeys. And I know you all went above and beyond to make it a great event.”
1p from every purchase made in Body Shop stores will be going towards the Bio-bridges initiative. We’ll be shopping there – will you?
We’ve transformed the most popular landmarks from #Glastonbury into topiary structures providing 4GEE WiFihttps://t.co/Rte0eTR2Iz
— EE (@EE) June 23, 2016
This year we were able to make our own small ‘hedge lining’ contribution towards the unique sensory experience that is Glastonbury when we were invited to collaborate with EE.
Besides being the UK’s largest mobile network operator, EE is also the Festival’s official communications and technology partner. Phone charging is a crucial part of their Festival offering and they turned to us to help make the free to all, on-site 4G ‘hotspots’ eye-catching.
This year EE had doubled their ‘hotspot’ capacity and went all out to give them extra visual appeal too. We were commissioned to fabricate a series of topiary installations based on the Festival’s most famous landmarks including the Pyramid stage, Arcadia spider and Park Tower. Each installation provided a cover for 4G technology inside.
In the spirit of the natural outdoors appeal of music festivals the world over (and Glastonbury in particular) we decorated each topiary piece with brightly coloured silk flowers and ribbons. We added LED lights to keep the facility attractive at night too.
Flower power and mobile power combined to make uploading selfies to Instagram, sharing memorable moments via Snapchat, checking in on Facebook and joining the conversation on Twitter easy and fun.
This Easter weekend saw Agrumi collaborating with the National Trust and Cadbury’s to provide children of all ages with delicious fun.
It’s the ninth year that the famous chocolate producer has sponsored Easter egg hunts at over 250 Trust properties around the country. Looking for a novel way to publicize the events through a photo shoot the public relations company involved contacted Agrumi for ideas.
As a tribute to the ongoing commitment of Cadbury’s to the event we made eight oversized, 122 cm bunnies and one giant 244 cm bunny in the image of the company’s Easter-focused rabbit logo. Each figure is unique with detachable heads and legs giving the PR stylist great flexibility in displaying them for the camera.
Beneath a covering of expertly applied artificial box plants the figures have been realised through frames made from steel wire. Added together the wire would stretch the length of seven football pitches! Although David Beckham could probably run that in a minute, it took our chief topiary artist rather longer to make the nine bunnies come to life. Nonetheless, we delivered this sizeable commission to Cadbury’s and the National Trust in less than a couple of weeks.
The main photo shoot took place at Stourhead, the Trust’s beautiful Palladian mansion in Wiltshire. Ably accompanied by two adorable children you can see that the bunnies did Agrumi, and the Trust proud and look just like the Cadbury’s original.
Now the 244 cm rabbit is staying at Stourhead while the other bunnies have made their way to the Trust properties at Wimpole, Stowe, Fountains Abbey, Hardwick Hall and Tredegar House to advertise their Easter events and inject more fun into the celebrations. The remaining 122 cm bunny is being used by the Trust and Cadbury’s as a competition prize on social media.
Contact us to see how some glorious Agrumi topiary could boost awareness of your products and company.
