One man spent 50 years turning a Maryland farm into a fox hunt made of hedges

A Farm Turned Into Living Art

You pull off a country road north of Baltimore and find 22 acres where trimmed hedges do things you do not expect. Life-size animals leap across an open lawn.

Swans float along the edge of a two-acre bowl. One man spent nearly 50 years shaping all of it by hand, with no formal training and no professional help.

The gate ahead looks nothing like a regular garden, and the story behind it starts with a fox hunt in England.

Twenty-Two Acres of Living Sculpture

Ladew Topiary Gardens sits in Monkton, about 30 minutes north of Baltimore, and the grounds hold 22 acres of formal gardens packed with more than 100 topiary sculptures.

Topiary means trimming trees and shrubs into shapes, and here that art fills 15 separate garden rooms, each built around its own color, plant, or theme.

Walk from one room to the next and the layout shifts around you. Both the gardens and the manor house sit on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Self-Taught Man Behind It All

Harvey S. Ladew bought this farm in 1929 and built the gardens himself, room by room, over the decades that followed.

He picked up his love of topiary on a fox-hunting trip to England in the 1920s, then brought that idea home with no formal training as a gardener.

He kept shaping hedges here until his death in 1976 at age 89.

The Garden Club of America later honored him for the finest topiary garden in the country, made without professional help.

Meet the Fox Hunt That Never Stops

Near the entrance, hedges rise into a full fox-hunt scene, frozen in motion.

A fox runs ahead, a pack of hounds chases behind, and riders on horseback leap across the lawn between them. Every figure grows from living Japanese yew, trimmed into shape over years.

You reach this scene before almost anything else in the gardens.

It captures Ladew’s lifelong love of fox hunting in a single frozen chase, and it sets the tone for the wit that runs through the property.

Swans Float on Waves of Hedge

The Great Bowl opens up as a two-acre lawn at the center of the gardens, ringed by hedges of hemlock and yew tall enough to block outside noise.

Twelve topiary swans line the edges, trimmed so they appear to float on waves of hedge. An oval pool sits in the middle of the lawn, and it once served as Ladew’s own swimming pool.

These days, the same lawn hosts outdoor garden concerts.

Every Color Gets Its Own Room

Each of the 15 garden rooms builds around its own color, plant, or theme, and you feel the shift as you move between them. The Yellow Garden glows with gold blooms around a small pagoda.

Other rooms carry names like the Rose, Pink, White, and Iris gardens, each holding its own palette. Two long walkways connect the rooms and open onto sweeping views at either end.

Ladew stood among the first Americans to design a garden this way, room by room.

Churchill’s Hat Grows on a Hedge

The Sculpture Garden shows off Ladew’s sense of humor more than any other corner of the property. Living hedges form Winston Churchill’s top hat next to his V for victory sign.

Nearby shapes take the form of seahorses, lyrebirds, and a heart pierced clean through by an arrow. One even recreates a well known statue of a man walking his dog.

You round one corner after another here, and each turn hides a new shape waiting to surprise you.

A Chinese Junk Sails Through Maryland

The Iris Garden pulls its themes from far beyond Maryland, echoing Ladew’s years of world travel.

About 65 kinds of iris fill the beds here, and a topiary Chinese junk, shaped like a sailing ship, floats on the pool at its center. A large topiary Buddha looks out over a koi pond full of fish.

A Chinese-style gateway leads you onward into the next room. The far-off themes make more sense once you remember how much of the world Ladew saw.

A Ticket Booth Turned Tea House

The Tivoli Tea House stands as one of the smallest and strangest buildings on the grounds, painted pink and built for entertaining guests.

Ladew built it from the salvaged front of an old ticket booth he bought from a London theater.

Inside, a gilded frame borders one window, turning the ordinary view outside into a piece of living art every time you look through it. The whole structure feels like a private joke Ladew built just for his guests.

Step Inside a 1749 Farmhouse

The Manor House began life as a plain farmhouse dating back to 1749, long before Ladew ever bought the land. He filled the rooms with English antiques and fox-hunting art collected over years of travel.

Inside, the Oval Library holds more than 2,500 books and a hidden door that opens straight into the garden outside. Critics have named that library one of the most beautiful rooms in America.

Docent-led tours walk you through the house and share stories of Ladew’s life along the way.

Butterflies and a Woodland Boardwalk

A seasonal Butterfly House lets you watch native butterflies and moths up close, with docent-led tours explaining how each one moves through its life cycle.

Outside, a one-mile Nature Walk winds through woods, wetland, and meadow on land that once served as pasture and a steeplechase course for Ladew’s horses.

A boardwalk and a bird blind sit along the route, giving you a place to stand still and watch birds work the wetland.

No Two Visits Look the Same

What blooms here changes with every visit through the year, so no two trips look quite the same. A six-acre wildflower meadow fills with bees, butterflies, and other pollinators once the weather warms.

Bluebird boxes dot the meadow alongside native plants that keep the whole space humming through summer. You can move through the grounds at your own pace, stopping wherever a room or a shape catches your eye.

Architectural Digest has listed Ladew among the notable topiary gardens of the world.

Visit Ladew Topiary Gardens in Maryland

You can visit Ladew Topiary Gardens at 3535 Jarrettsville Pike in Monkton, Maryland, about 30 minutes north of Baltimore.

The gardens run April 2 through October 31 and close on Wednesdays, with hours that vary and extended Twilight Tuesday evenings in summer.

Adult tickets cost $22, seniors 62 and older pay $18, and children ages 2 to 12 get in for $7.

The seasonal Butterfly House runs from early July through late September, and an on-site cafe sits ready for the afternoon.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

Read more from this brand:

• A free trolley in Quincy, Massachusetts takes you straight into two presidents’ childhoods
• Two presidents were born 75 feet apart in this small city just south of Boston
• This Fox River glass house looks like it’s floating above the grass in Plano, Illinois