The Art of Making Topiaries From Start to Finish

Whenever I’m at a farmers market, garden center or nursery, my eyes are immediately drawn to the topiaries. Their tailored forms fascinate me. I know very little about growing and caring for them, so I was delighted to finally pay a visit to one of America’s leading experts in topiaries, Ken Selody at Atlock Farm.

Ken Selody is a garden designer who is a protégé of the late Alan Haskell, a horticulturist who was famous for his topiaries. Ken's call to gardening was inspired by Paul Caponigro's sunflower photography while he studied at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. You might recognize him from dishing out gardening advice on The Martha Stewart Show — Ken previously worked as a contributing editor to Martha Stewart Living magazine before pursuing his love for garden design and growing plants full-time.

Atlock Farm, nestled on an old dairy farm, feels more like someone’s cozy private backyard than a commercial enterprise. The seven-acre farm features ornate greenhouses filled with shrubs, flowers and succulents, plus pots and urns. When we visited, it was cool enough to warrant a fire in the giant metal bowl.

Ken says that any plant that’s grown and pruned into a shape that doesn’t follow its natural growth pattern is a topiary. Common plants for small topiaries are myrtle, coleus and rosemary, but there are many others as well. Ken is well-known for his ball topiaries, where plants are trained on a single, skinny stem with rounded foliage.