WE’RE GOING TO do some pruning, but not the same old straight-forward kind. Instead we’re going to talk topiary, and its transformative powers—not just on the plant that is the subject that’s getting clipped, or on the garden that the living sculpture will eventually adorn, but potentially on the creator, too. Topiary artist Mike Gibson and I talked about the horticulture and the artistry in what he does, and also about the therapeutic properties of making topiary.
Mike Gibson has been engaging with plants since his childhood in Ohio. Starting in late 2021, he contributed to the restoration of Pearl Fryar’s famed topiary creations at the Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden in South Carolina. Mike now lives in Columbia, S.C., where he operates Gibson Works LLC. He was one of the experts profiled in Amy Stewart’s 2024 book “The Tree Collectors,” has been featured on the HGTV show “Clipped,” and is a popular lecturer and teacher of all things topiary.
Read along as you listen to the June 23, 2025 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).
talking topiary, with mike gibson
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Margaret Roach: Welcome, Mike. I’m so glad to meet you finally.
Mike Gibson: Hi. Thanks for having me. It’s quite the pleasure.
Margaret: Yes. I’ve known about your work for a number of years, and so it’s great to finally connect. And you’re by no means new to this subject [laughter]. You’ve been at this for a while, huh?
Mike: Yeah, it It’s been about 31 years. I know that sounds crazy, but-
Margaret: But who’s counting, right?
Mike: Who’s counting, right; 31 and counting. But yeah, I started young around 7 years old, and I know that sounds really wild to people like, oh yeah, right. But no, my parents were creatives, and my father was an artist and taught me how to maintain the already perfect geometric shapes he had around the yard. And I kind of just never stopped cutting up trees and shrubs since. I just got a little bit more creative, that’s all.
Margaret: So you grew up in Ohio, now you’re in South Carolina. I was like, I mean, I almost burst out laughing when I heard that you were ambidextrous. What a good idea for someone who wants to do topiary [laughter].
Mike: And I feel like I thought everyone was ambidextrous. I didn’t think it was a hidden talent until I started realizing like, “Oh, no one else is using both of their hands to create and do things.” So I guess it’s a hidden gift. Got to thank the Creator for that one, because it comes in handy.
Margaret: Yeah. Amazing. And you’re largely in your topiary skills. I mean, has this been something that you’ve just sort of learned and taught yourself or-?
Mike: Yeah, just been teaching myself over the years; trial and error at a young age. As I got older, just kept experimenting and learning about different topiary artists around the world and different techniques, and kind of just been incorporated into my own style over the years.
Margaret: On your website homepage, at the start of a little sort of biographical section of text, it describes you as, and I’ll quote, “an artist focused on sacred geometry and topiary.” And the sacred geometry part really stopped me. It caught my attention and I was like, “Ooh, I need to ask about that.” So tell me about sacred geometry.
Mike: Sacred geometry is just this harmonious design of the universe, that everything is connected, right? And I do a lot of my creations and topiary sculptures based off of a lot of the principles of sacred geometry, like the Fibonacci sequence, which is basically the golden ratio, the golden spiral. So when you think of a nautilus shell or any type of spiral in the universe, it’s all based off of this sequence called the Fibonacci sequence. So I incorporate that into my techniques.
It’s actually one of the five techniques to the Gibson Method for creative pruning that I use. And sacred geometry is one of them. You have storytelling, sacred geometry, Nikawi (which is a Japanese-style pruning), directional trimming, which is very important, and illusion topiary. And to create all those together creates this illusion where I can hide things within from different perspectives. So yeah, sacred geometry is really important to the techniques of what I do.
I believe it’s what sets me aside from a lot of other topiary artists in the world, because it allows the creations to just really flow, but be adventurous. Think Dr. Seuss-wise; it can really think outside of the box and create things really cool.
Starting earlier and young, I got tired of doing just regular geometric shapes, which is an art in itself, but I wondered what else is out there, what else can I do? And I stumbled across a book of sacred geometry and started deep-diving into it, going to the library and taking all these different books on sacred geometry and learning about these different shapes, and the lotus flower and dodecahedrons and icosahedrons and different polygonal shapes. And that helped open my mind to the possibilities of what you can do with topiary. And the possibilities are endless.
Margaret: Well, like I said, it really caught my attention because the way I describe my approach to horticulture, besides slightly insane [laughter], is “horticultural how-to and woo-woo.” So a fusion of the sort of spiritual connection, the intimacy, and the technical. I need to know some of the basic technical stuff, yeah; how to do something. But I’ve got to also feel it. I’ve got to connect to it. I’ve got to see it, as you said, all these big connections and how everything fits together intimately. The complexity, but also, wow; I’ve got to see the wow.
Mike: Right. You got to have the wow factor. And that’s what I add. Yeah, I got tired of straight lines and tight curves is really great, but it’s not wowing anybody.
You want to see something wow; you want something wonky, you wanted whimsical that’s going to catch viewer’s eyes and pedestrian’s eyes to turn their head sideways and say, “What am I looking at?” And that’s what I want. I want to stop people in their tracks and have them wonder. I want that wow factor, that wonder factor, that gets people to want to think a little bit deeper, and reflect, and try to understand what they’re looking at.
And you may see a heart, you may see an embrace, you may see the letters love. It just depends from your perspective of where you’re standing at. And that’s the beauty of it. It’s this trompe-l’oeil illusion, where I can deceive the eye by really cultivating a shape from all angles, and everything is appreciated from the right vantage point where I can hide something.
It’s like if you stand on this circle this at 5 o’clock in the afternoon at this angle, you’re going to see this picture within. You can only see it at 5 o’clock when the sun’s starting to set, right at this angle. You’re only going to see it right there. And that’s something that I incorporate into my style of doing topiary.
Margaret: And the geometry of your work is hard for me to describe. It’s not just like standard lollipops, a ball atop a trunk, or cubes and obelisks. And there are spirals, but even those are wild.
By the way. I love that your daughter’s name is Paisley. I wondered if that comes from the topiary [laughter].
Mike: That comes from the topiary, yes.
Margaret: Yeah, I bet. I love that.
Mike: I have a love for paisley. I got married in a paisley suit.
Margaret: I’m totally crazy for them. I have jewelry that’s in the shape of paisleys, brooches, and all kinds of paisley things.
Mike: I’m wearing a paisley shirt right now [laughter].
Margaret: Oh boy. Great minds think alike. But one example, there’s this sort of long, not-too-tall hedge, and I use that “hedge” very loosely, a topiary [above] that you created in a memorial park in South Carolina for Dr. Ronald E. McNair. He was the second black American astronaut to go into space.
Mike: Oh, the Other Worldly. Yes.
Margaret: Only a couple of years after he achieved that distinction, he was one of the seven astronauts who were killed during the failed launch of the Challenger space shuttle in 1986. So this is a memorial to him. And this creation that you’ve done, it doesn’t look like a hedge with rectalinear sides or anything. It’s like, whoa. And so that’s another one where it’s like a whole different dimension. You interpreted it completely differently. And what’s the perspective there?
Mike: Yeah, I was going to say I would love to give a little bit more insight on that. Just, I mean, your listeners can look up Dr. Ronald E. McNair. He’s from Lake City, S.C., a really great, great genius and bright mind that we were fortunate to have on this planet. I mean, he did a lot of really great research on laser technology, did some really great things. So every topiary I do has a story to it. They all have to have this narrative about it.
So doing my research and learning about him and the things that he was able to accomplish, it made me wonder, alright, well, I feel that his soul didn’t just deplete, energy cease to exist. So when he passed away on the Challenger, what happened? I imagine that his soul, his energy, his spirit continued to roam the cosmos. And what I created was from his perspective in the cosmos. This is what he sees: gaseous clouds, nebula all forming together. And the title of this piece is called Other Worldly.
I’m using Ilex vomitoria, that’s Yaupon holly, the common name. And you could just sculpt it like stone. You could do so much with it. It’s probably my favorite shrub to use. This was really exciting to be commissioned by Moore Farms Botanic Garden to be able to create this beautiful creation.
And that’s kind of what I wanted to do. So there’s some spirals in there. There’s a hidden G for Gibson. I kind of throw a signature on some of my work here and there to let people know that it is hidden in there. Sometimes you don’t see it immediately. You have to find the G. Where’s the G? But there’s a saxophone in there. There’s hearts. He played the saxophone.
Margaret: He was going to play the saxophone in space.
Mike: Yes, to make the first recorded saxophone album. Yes. He was going to make an album up there, or a song, so it was going to be really great. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the opportunity, but I wanted to align the saxophone at the right perspective.
So this is his memorial site; it’s actually his burial ground there, and there’s a statue of him. So when you’re in front of where the saxophone is, it lines up perfectly with the statue that is across the parking lot, so it matches up with it. So you have to stand in the right angle and then you can see the saxophone as you’re looking outwards to the statue of Dr. Ronald E. McNair.
So I called it Other Worldly because it was just something that you can’t quite grasp, and you can’t quite understand what you’re looking at; there’s a lot of curves and spinnings and opening areas and vantage points and negative space. And that’s all created very purposefully. It took a lot of time, probably took me maybe 30 hours to create that piece.
Margaret: And I want to talk about creating pieces, and visualizing what they’re going to be. And when we approach pruning of any kind—and I would just say I would expect, especially if the end goal was extra-creative and artistic, not just to take out dead, damaged and diseased stuff with basic pruning—we have to know the living plant material we’re working with. The when and where and how far in we can go, and sort of the guidelines of pruning it. And I mean, you can’t cut as far back into limb of a pine, I guess, as you can into, like you just said, the Ilex vomitoria, the Yaupon holly. Different plants respond differently.
So you as this artist, you’re not just conceiving the eventual thing, the sculpture that you want to make, but you have to pick the right plant, and you have to know how that plant responds to where and when you cut, and oh my goodness, it’s like this 3-D chess, this whole…It’s amazing.
Mike: You got to think, got to think 5, 10, 15 years ahead of time [laughter].
Margaret: Yeah, I don’t get it. I mean, my brain doesn’t work that way. I don’t have that part of the brain. And then there’s the therapy part, which I talked about a little bit in the introduction. And so where does that fit in? [Above, a topiary therapy workshop.]
Mike: Growing up in Youngstown, Ohio, I grew up in a very rough neighborhood on the south side. And Youngstown is a very beautiful place, but where I grew up was really interesting.
And one thing that helped me survive was working in the yard; working in the landscape. It was something that kept me focused. I realized how calming it was. I used to have to work in the yard as a punishment: “Go rake the leaves, go pull leaves.” [Laughter.] But after a while, it was something that became very calm. Even if my father, my parents, saw that I was upset or something, they would tell me to go outside, be in nature; go outside and mow the grass, go cut something. And I found it to be so relaxing.
So years later, once I would say COVID hit, this is when the therapy started really coming out more, because I started realizing, well, everybody is dealing with all the stress from COVID. And the lingering effects of that, even still today, five years now later, is still affecting us. But I realize, well, I’m very happy all the time; I’m very calm. Yes, it is strange world that you have to navigate in now, but it’s like, man, I’m so happy and why am I happy? Because I do topiary every day.
I’m pruning, I’m creating, I’m having that sense of accomplishment from being able to stand back and say, “Wow, I created that.” Now something my father instilled in us: I have three older sisters, so he instilled that into my siblings and I that once we did the yard as a family, we would stand back at the curb and look at what we did. Look how beautiful our property is now.
And we grew up in the ‘hood. People didn’t do their lawns, they weren’t cutting their grass until I went door to door and started cutting their grass and cutting their bushes. But up until then, nobody was doing it. We were one of the few that really had a nice landscape. My mom was into the flowers. My sisters were doing that. We’d mulch; we always had red mulch. It was just a lot of things and components with that.
So after COVID hit, I realized, wow, I need to spread this joy to others. So I started doing topiary-therapy workshops, and I started teaching others around the country how to not only create a topiary, something small like a 2-foot Thuja occidentalis, like an ‘Emerald Green’ Arborvitae. Just something that’s upright that’s only about 2 feet, 3 feet tall, nothing too big.
And we would create a simple shape, maybe a quick spiral, or pompoms, and I would give them the tools they need to go forth and continue this journey of creating. And it’s so therapeutic. It’s a stress-reliever. It’s something about clipping.
There’s so many scientific studies and psychological studies about the connection between nature and effective pruning, and how that affects us as human beings. So there’s horticultural therapy, and I started reading more about that and getting all these books on.
I’m so self-taught in so many different areas, but I felt that I needed some more information, and I stumbled across therapeutic horticulture. And there’s a course at North Carolina State University and North Carolina Botanic Garden has a joint course. I took this course over the past year and a half, and now I have my certificate in therapeutic horticulture. So I’m a THP, as we would say, therapeutic horticultural practitioner. So I can add that to the end of my name now. It’s not PhD, but THP works just as well.
And now I travel the country, mainly at botanic gardens and art museums, and I conduct these topiary-therapy workshops and connect people back with nature and use it as a catalyst to heal people from their traumas, their stress, whatever you’re going through. It can heal and help you in so many different ways.
I feel like topiary is a game-changer, because I also feel that the more topiary in any given space produces more love and more peace. So go out there and clip some topiary, people, learn about it, understand it, and it can change your life. [Below, some of Gibson’s work at the South Carolina State Museum.]
Margaret: So you said there’s a particular Thuja that you would say is project Number 1 for beginners; I forget what one you said. You just mentioned an easy one to get started with to make a simple shape.
Mike: Yeah. I feel like a Thuja occidentalis ‘Emerald Green’ Arborvitae is; it grows naturally in a spiral form. And I teach people that and they’re like, “What do you mean I don’t see it?” Well, you’ll start to see that there’s more growth either starting from the bottom left or the bottom. And once you notice this, that there’s more growth heavier on one side, and you can see it gradually going around. If you can follow the pattern, there’s a pattern. That’s that sacred geometry. There’s a pattern in everything, in every plant. But you have to look, you really have to look.
And then you start noticing the branching and you say, “Oh, I see the branching is predominantly on the left and it goes left to right.” And now you can start cutting and pruning. A great tip I tell people is that you want to move the shrub and tilt it slightly at an angle. So think of a 45-degree angle that you’re tipping this pot away from you and you’re just cutting away from yourself and continuing this spiral going around, and you’re just moving the pot. You don’t necessarily have to move yourself. You want to stay present, you want to stay still. And this is something that’s going to help you in so many different ways. Yes.
Margaret: I know you’re doing a new project in a park near you, I think right now, and you worked with Pearl Fryar at his wonderful garden, but places where people might go to see… Sort of destination topiary visiting in this country, at least any places that is like, some highlights. [Above, Mike with Pearl Fryar; below, a topiary at the Fryar garden.]
Mike: Yeah, there’s some beautiful places around the country I had the pleasure of working with. If you make your way over to the Cummer Museum and gardens down in Jacksonville, Fla., and their English garden, they have a collection of junipers that is called resiliency. They all are shaped in the letter C for Cummer, Ninah Cummer. So there are Cs and different perspectives from every vantage point. So no matter how tall, how small, where you’re at in the garden, if you happen to glance over in the English garden and look at one of these junipers, you will see the letter C. Yeah. So that’s like the illusion topiary.
There’s some sculptural work I’ve done in Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. That’s Alice Walton’s, the richest woman in the world and an heir to Walmart’s art museum. Yeah. So I’ve done some work out there. I’ve done, oh man, let’s see. I’ve worked in Salt Lake City in Red Butte Botanic Garden, there’s some work-
Margaret: Oh, that’s wonderful.
Mike: Oh, I love Red Butte. It’s a beautiful garden. One of my favorites. Oh, it’s just nestled into the mountains. It’s a beautiful space. Cleveland Botanical Garden. I’m trying to think; I’ve created over 700 topiaries around-
Margaret: Non, no; I just wanted to mention a few. That’s cool.
Mike: There’s a few. There’s Fort Worth Botanic Garden. I created some topiary down there in Texas. So there’s some topiary around.
Margaret: So just a few.
Mike: And there’ll be many more. And the reason why I’m doing the topiary-therapy workshops, and why I do the workshops, is I can’t create topiary everywhere. But if I can teach others how to do it, they can then go in their neighborhoods, create topiary, and that can inspire their neighbors to beautify their spaces. And then they’ll beautify and have more topiary in their community, which will create more loving and peaceful cities.
See this domino ripple effect that can happen from there. So if I can keep these workshops all over the world, I can teach more and more people about topiary and its therapeutic benefits, and they can help beautify this world and this planet for future generations.
Margaret: Sort of stay centered on something positive [laughter]. Yeah.
Mike: And I would say one other place that you could see topiary is my own topiary garden I’ve been working on. Oh yeah. I had the pleasure of winning the Sowing Excellence Award from the Idea Center for Public Gardens, the A.P.G.A., which is the American Public Garden Association and the U.S. Botanic Garden. They awarded 19 recipients last year. And I was one of the inaugural recipients for the Sowing Excellence Award to help fund a project.
And I created a sensory therapeutic children’s garden in the heart of Columbia, S.C., at Edisto Discovery Park. I kind of took over this park and revamped it. And I am building an Ilex collection. I want a plant collection there, so I used hollies for those, and I want 330 different cultivars of hollies, and there’s over 1,000. So there’s a lot to choose from, but I just want 330 of them to pay homage back to my area code back home, to 330.
And the area code for Columbia is 803, so that would be a lot [laughter]. There may be 803 topiaries at this space. But I’ve been building this topiary garden since last year and been working on it pretty steadily. And there’s topiary all over the place. And I’m going to keep planting and continue to cultivate this space where people within this neighborhood and from all over the world can come visit and see a great example of what the possibilities of what topiary can be.
Margaret: Well, I’ve been so happy to speak to you, Mike Gibson; thank you for making time today.
Mike: Oh, thank you for having me. It’s such a quite pleasure. I could talk about topiary all day, so thanks for having me.
(All photos courtesy of Mike Gibson; used with permission.)
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MY WEEKLY public-radio show, rated a “top-5 garden podcast” by “The Guardian” newspaper in the UK, began its 15th year in March 2024. It’s produced at Robin Hood Radio, the smallest NPR station in the nation. Listen locally in the Hudson Valley (NY)-Berkshires (MA)-Litchfield Hills (CT) Mondays at 8:30 AM Eastern, rerun at 8:30 Saturdays. Or play the June 23, 2025 show using the player near the top of this transcript. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes/Apple Podcasts or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).
