Bushe’s herd of elephants in Islington is so head-turning that it has become a local landmark and tourist attraction with reviews on Google Maps.
“Best hedge in North London,” one reviewer wrote.
“Superb hedge, would recommend visiting if ever in London!” another commented.
“At that point, I realized how popular they were because I had a lot of people coming and taking photos,” Bushe said of his elephant topiary, which he made in 2012. “There’s a continual stream of people.”
Bushe started experimenting with hedges about 15 years ago, when his now-late wife, Philippa, asked him to.
“I had a boring rectangular hedge in my front garden, and as I left the door, she said, ‘Can you cut me a cat or something?’” recalled Bushe, who met his wife at art school when she was 17 and he was 18. “She knew I could sculpt things.”
Bushe attempted to turn the hedge into a cartoon cat, but he found it too tricky. Instead, using an electric hedge trimmer, he turned the rectangular bush into a cylinder, and then into a steam train.
“Because I thought the steam train was a little bit childlike, I did a monster head on the other side of the garden,” said Bushe, who lives in Islington.
Not long after he made the train and the monster head, a man living across the street fell off a ladder while trying to trim his own hedges, Bushe said. Bushe’s wife convinced the man to let her husband finish the job.
“Because it was directly opposite the house, I gave her the cat she was asking for,” said Bushe, who ended up making two cats and a squirrel — each about 8 feet wide by 15 feet tall — out of his neighbor’s shrubs.
Bushe’s ornate front yard hedges quickly captivated tourists and passersby.
“Lots of people admired the cats and squirrel and the train,” he said.
Then came the requests. In 2012, Naomi Schillinger, a gardener, happened upon Bushe’s topiary, and asked him to work his magic on a large overgrown hedge in her nearby neighborhood. The hedge was outside a home managed by a local housing association, and nobody was tending to the garden.
“It was this hugely overgrown hedge,” Schillinger said.
In a matter of hours, Bushe transformed the hedge into a herd of elephants. That’s the one that became a Google Maps landmark, which now has a 4.7-star rating.
“We are very lucky to have such a beautiful bit of public art in our area,” said Schillinger, who refers to Bushe as “Topiary Tim.”
“Everybody loves them. It’s a real part of the neighborhood,” she said.
Over the years, Bushe has completed about 15 topiary projects, all in North London. Several local and international media outlets have featured his unusual landscaping work.
Although it only takes Bushe a few hours to style the shrubs into a sculpture, it takes roughly three years before they get to their intended shape. Plus, they require frequent maintenance.
“I start with a general cut and then it needs time to grow and gain density,” explained Bushe, adding that he visits each sculpture several times a year to trim it and tend to it. “Because they are living things, they don’t always grow in the right way. … It gives it more character if they aren’t perfect.”
Bushe said he does not sketch them in advance or work off a picture. All of his hedges are done freehand.
“I have the image in my head, so I can just find it in the hedge eventually. I cut them to match the cartoon version in my head,” he said, noting that in art college, he made sculptures out of clay, plaster and fiberglass. “It just comes from practicing sculpture, where you start with a block of something and work with it.”
People commission Bushe to turn their hedges into art, and he donates all of the money to causes that are important to him. Prices vary based on the size and complexity of the hedge, but he typically charges about $320 for the initial design, and $100 for each maintenance session, which typically take about two hours.
At first, he raised money for Hft, a U.K. charity that supports people with learning disabilities in England and Wales. Bushe’s sister Martha has Down syndrome, and Hft has been a help to her, Bushe said.
After donating nearly $13,000 to Hft, Bushe pivoted his fundraising efforts to focus on environmental organizations, including the World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, Fridays for Future and the Good Law Project.
“People are constantly trying to get me to do new ones,” said Bushe, explaining that tending to each topiary project requires work, which limits how many he can take on.
While it’s a lot of upkeep, Bushe said he plans to continue creating hedges, in part to honor his late wife, who died of breast cancer in 2017.
“They are a legacy of her, which is nice,” said Bushe, who has three children and three grandchildren. “I think she’d be tickled pink if she knew how much fuss was made over it over time.”
Bushe’s latest hedge design is a reclining nude woman, which he calls the “Henry Moore hedge,” after the English artist known for making reclining figures.
“He’s one of my favorite sculptors,” said Bushe, who plans on crafting a giant rabbit hedge this summer.
Beyond raising money for worthy causes and honoring his late wife, Bushe said, he loves that his hedges make people smile.
“I cannot tell you how many people have come up to me and said how much they enjoy seeing them every day,” Bushe said. “People thank me for brightening their neighborhood up.”
That’s mainly what motivates him to keep going.
“I get a lot of satisfaction out of knowing that people like them,” he said. “It’s a joyous thing.”
