Topiary Park is a public park and garden in

Columbus, Ohio Columbus () is the state capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the 14th-most populous city in the U.S., the second-most populous city in the Midwest, after Chicago, and t ...

Discovery District The Discovery District is one of the commercial districts in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It has a high concentration of hospitals and research institutions, particularly those related to biotechnology. The district is roughly bounded by Blo ...

. The park's

topiary Topiary is the horticultural practice of training perennial plants by clipping the foliage and twigs of trees, shrubs and subshrubs to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes, whether geometric or fanciful. The term also refers to plants w ...

garden, officially the Topiary Garden at Old Deaf School Park, is designed to depict figures from

Georges Seurat Georges Pierre Seurat ( , , ; 2 December 1859 – 29 March 1891) was a French post-Impressionist artist. He devised the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism and used conté crayon for drawings on paper with a rough su ...

's 1884 painting, ''

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte ''A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte'' (french: Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte) was painted from 1884 to 1886 and is Georges Seurat's most famous work. A leading example of pointillist technique, executed o ...

''. It is the only park based entirely on a painting. The park is officially named Old Deaf School Park, as it was part of the campus of the Ohio Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, known today as the

Ohio School for the Deaf Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

. It is owned by the city of Columbus and maintained by the Columbus Recreation and Parks Department.

Description

The park is located in downtown Columbus. It features topiaries trimmed into life-size shapes of men, women, children, animals, and boats and arranged to resemble the painting ''

''. Specifically, there are topiaries of 54 people, eight boats, three dogs, a monkey, and a cat. It also hosts 220 trees, including 35 different species. A cast-iron fence surrounds the space. The park hosts jazz concerts. The park is adjacent to the Main Branch of the

Columbus Metropolitan Library The Columbus Metropolitan Library (CML) is a public library system in Franklin County, Ohio, in the Columbus metropolitan area. The library serves an area of 872,000 residents, has a collection of 1,483,433 volumes, and circulates 17,262,267 ite ...

system. The branch was renovated around 2015, with one of the architect's goals being to join the library to the park. The gatehouse, near the southeast corner of the park, is the park's main entrance. The building holds offices, restrooms, and an information desk and gift shop. It was constructed in 1998, designed in brick and resembling a French countryside house to match the park's theme. The building was funded by the City of Columbus, Motorists Mutual Insurance, and the Friends of the Topiary Park.

History

The land was formerly part of the grounds purchased in 1829 for the

Ohio Institution for the Deaf and Dumb The Ohio Institution for the Deaf and Dumb was a deaf school campus in Downtown Columbus, Ohio. The school, today known as the Ohio School for the Deaf, sat on the present-day Topiary Park grounds in the modern-day Discovery District. The main sc ...

. When the school moved locations in 1953, the neighborhood began to decline. Most of the school's buildings burned down in 1981, leading to the development of the park, which helped revitalize the area. In 1984, one of the remaining school buildings, the modern-day

Cristo Rey Columbus High School Cristo Rey Columbus High School (CRCHS or CRC) is a private, Roman Catholic, co-educational high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes plac ...

, was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

. The nomination includes all 10 acres of the former campus grounds. The park was first developed in the mid-1980s as Old Deaf School Park. Topiary Park and its garden was conceived by Columbus artists James and Elaine Mason. It was built as a garden exhibit for the AmeriFlora exhibition that took place in Columbus in 1992, and was sculpted in 1989, along with installation of hills and a small pond, meant to represent the

River Seine ) , mouth_location = Le Havre/Honfleur , mouth_coordinates = , mouth_elevation = , progression = , river_system = Seine basin , basin_size = , tributaries_left = Yonne, Loing, Eure, Risle , tributarie ...

Gallery

File:Columbus, Ohio aerial view of Deaf School Park-crop.jpg, The park c. 1984-87 File:Topiary Park 03.jpg, The park's gatehouse File:Sunday Afternoon.jpg, ''A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte'' File:Topiary Park 01.jpg, Informational sign File:Topiary Park 02.jpg, Historical marker

References

External links

*
Friends of the Topiary Park
(Wayback Machine archive) {{Portal bar, Gardening, Ohio, Trees, Visual arts 1992 establishments in Ohio Downtown Columbus, Ohio Gardens in Ohio Parks in Columbus, Ohio

Description

History

Gallery

See also

References

External links