If you love gardening – or just a true bucket-list experience – there’s only one thing to cherry-pick this season – the Haircut 100 extravaganza at Levens Hall and Gardens.
Available to October 4, this is a chance to see the world’s oldest topiary garden gain a new dimension beyond its curiouser and curiouser Alice in Wonderland nature. This is when all the compelling behind-the-scenes work takes place at the Guinness World Record-holding garden and it’s a not-to-be-missed treat.
This is the only window of opportunity for witnessing the annual trimming of over 100 pieces of topiary, not shaped in just your standard triangular or globe forms but as everything from Queen Elizabeth and Her Maids of Honour to Darth Vader and a Top Hat.
It is this time or never, if you want to see Homer Simpson getting a short, back and sides and the only time in which to appreciate the cutting-edge skills of the Levens Hall and Gardens gardening team.
This team has perfected the art of trimming back the frizz that has appeared around each piece over the last year and has its own signature moves and techniques.
The ‘elevator move’ sees the gardener raised by cherry picker to the top of pieces such as the two Umbrella Trees, at their highest around 10 metres and both way over 300 years old.
In ‘the lift’ a hydraulic lift provides some height advantage to enable them to tackle centuries-old pieces. ‘The lean’ involves reaching branches and parts of the tree that require trust in a harness.
Then there is the ‘step up’, as the team utilise ladders to tackle those pieces that can be trimmed from rungs, rather than pressurised equipment.
The ‘vroom’ is when the electric trimmers strike up and the ‘clip’ is when closer, more delicate trimming is required. A little finishing spray might need to be applied before the final leaves are cut away, leaving the desired shape. Whilst there’s no reviewing the haircut’s impacts in a mirror, the team do employ the ‘stand back’ technique, to review progress as they go.
Visitors can see all of this drama, as the team move around the garden, from piece to piece. This is a great time to appreciate the arrival of autumnal colours in the wider four-hectare garden and joys such as the heavy caramel-like scent of the Katsura tree. The shrubs and bedding plants at Levens Hall and Gardens are grown for season-long colour and now is the time in which to appreciate some of them at their best.
What visitors will not see at this time is the ‘float and hover’. That is reserved for a time deeper into autumn and winter, when the team get around to tackling the 5-metre high and 5-metre wide, 500-metre long Beech Hedge, also over 300 years old. To trim the top of this requires floating in a harness from a hydraulic lift, with the hedge way below the feet.
But if you want to see all the other trimming, other than tackling the ‘Beech fuzz’, make your plans now. Levens Hall and Gardens is open seven days a week, with gardens open between 10am and 5pm. Garden-only entrance costs £12.45 for an adult £4.50 for a child and £31 for a family of two adults and up to three children, whilst including the exquisite house, with its Elizabethan craftsmanship and treasured items formerly owned by both Napoleon and Wellington, costs an extra £4, £1 or £10 respectively. More information is at www.levenshall.co.uk