A small and beautiful magazine from Amsterdam, Pleasant Place considers the art of gardening. This sixth issue is themed ‘Topiary’, and it digs into the history of cutting trees and hedges into strange shapes, as well as the most recent developments in this human compulsion, “To force the unruly natural world into submission, as if we were tiny gods on earth.”
 
In this issue:

• ‘Magnum opus toparium’ – a short history of ornamental gardening
• Topiary in art, from the 15th century to the present day
• Visiting the world’s oldest topiary garden and its “dance of drunken characters”
• The ‘cloud pruning’ of Japan’s niwaki, or ‘garden trees’
• The 21st-century scourge of the box tree moth
• And a cardboard topiary garden for you to cut out and construct