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Comments
Ron Holzwarth 3 months, 2 weeks ago
In 1990, I moved into a very old home home in St. Francis, Kansas that had been built in 1925. It was one of the 'kit homes' that were very popular during that era. It had two very large yews planted in front of it, right in front of the house. There had been no yard maintenance or cleaning done in many years and the yews were about 15 years old, I was told by the neighbors. They were very large. I was very surprised to trim and clean underneath one of them a bit, and discover a sidewalk underneath it that led to the driveway.
They were both so huge that something had to be done, in the sense of topiary. After thinking about at the possibilities for a few days, I decided that very large rectangular cubes were the answer, with a curved cutout on the corner of one to accommodate the curve in the newly discovered sidewalk.
The yews ended up to be rectangular cubes that were about 7 feet long, 4 feet deep, and one was about 5 feet tall, and the one with the curved cutout was about 4 1/2 feet tall. Something like that, I don't remember exactly.
They were a bit spotty for the first couple years, but then they filled in very nicely, and were admired by many people who had no idea such a thing was even possible.
But there's a problem with doing something like that. Topiary requires endless maintenance. The next purchaser of the home maintained the rectangular yews, except he leveled the tops, that is, he made the tops to be equal heights. I thought that ruined the Art Deco look.
And the owner after that didn't want to maintain them at all, or didn't like yews. Either way, he removed them completely. At least I have a picture of them from when they still looked good.
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