Topiary Park

Georges Seurat painted A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte in the 1880s, building the image from countless tiny dots of color in the technique known as pointillism. It shows a crowd of Parisians at leisure along the banks of the Seine on a summer afternoon, and it is one of the most recognized paintings in the world.

The Columbus artist James T. Mason had the singular idea of recreating that scene not on canvas but in living plants. Working with his wife Elaine, he designed and planted a garden in which the painting's figures, animals, and boats would be sculpted from shrubbery, arranged in the same composition, beside a pond made to echo the river. The park opened in the late 1980s as the only topiary interpretation of a painting anywhere.

The garden holds dozens of topiary figures, the strolling and seated people of Seurat's painting, along with topiary dogs, a monkey, a cat, and boats set upon the pond that stands in for the Seine. When the shrubs are in full leaf, the figures take on a soft, lifelike presence, and standing among them feels a little like stepping inside the canvas.

The park is designed so that from the intended vantage point the arrangement lines up much as the painting does, the figures receding toward the water. Because it is living sculpture, it is never quite finished: gardeners clip and shape the topiary continually, and the figures fill out, thin, and change with the growing season.

The park occupies land that was once the grounds of the Ohio School for the Deaf, and the setting gives the garden a sense of enclosure and calm just steps from the bustle of downtown Columbus. A visitor center and the surrounding lawns frame the topiary and offer places to sit and take in the scene.

Central Ohio, where Columbus grew, lies in country that was the ancestral homeland of the Shawnee, Wyandot, and Lenape peoples, forcibly removed from Ohio in the 1800s, whose descendant nations continue today, largely in Oklahoma. The park is a small, modern grace note in a city built on that older ground, a place where art, gardening, and public space come together.

The topiary is at its best from late spring through early fall, when the shrubs are fully leafed out and the figures look their most vivid and lifelike. Summer is the peak, a green tableau best seen on a bright day, and gardeners keep the figures trimmed to shape through the growing months.

Fall brings cooler air and the last full flush of foliage before the shrubs go dormant. In winter the figures stand as bare frameworks of branches, more sketch than picture, which has its own quiet appeal but lacks the lush fullness of summer. For the fullest effect, plan a warm-season visit.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.