Stamford Downtown
HedgeFun
Sixteen topiary animals, solar-lit, spread across downtown Stamford for a summer.
ClientStamford Downtown
LocationDowntown Stamford, Connecticut
Pieces16 animals, 5 to 12 feet
MaterialsOutdoor boxwood over structural steel
On showJune – September 2022
The brief
Stamford Downtown runs a public art programme every summer; 2022 was its twenty-ninth year, and the brief was a set of animals that could live on open sidewalks and in parks from June to September. Sixteen pieces, one theme, one engineering standard, one delivery.
A public exhibit is a different job from a garden piece. Every animal had to stand on pavement, in weather, day and night, with people leaning on them and posing with them — and each one had to light itself, because a sculpture on a sidewalk has nowhere to plug in.
Sixteen animals, one standard. Individual pieces from the same family are in dinosaur topiary and bear topiary.
Sixteen pieces that had to survive a summer in public.
The sculptures were built as structural, weight-bearing steel frames interwoven with outdoor boxwood foliage — the same construction we use for any piece that has to stand unattended outdoors, sized here for a crowd rather than a garden.
Each animal carried its own solar lighting, which is what made the exhibit work after dark without a single power feed. It is the detail that turns a daytime display into something a town navigates by at night.
Solar lighting and anchored footings are what let a piece live on an open sidewalk — the same specification behind our lighted animals.
Every animal carried its own solar lighting.
The menagerie
Sixteen animals, one standard.
Built as a set, so every piece reads as part of the same family from across a street.
Dolly Llama
One of the named pieces. Every animal in the set was given a pun by the programme, and the names did as much work as the sculptures — people went looking for them.
Holy Cow
Five feet, in outdoor boxwood, at the small end of the range. A public set needs pieces at more than one scale or the trail reads as repetitive.
The sauropod
At the other end: a long-necked dinosaur built to be seen down a street rather than across a lawn.
A public topiary programme is not decoration. It is a reason to walk the whole downtown.
In the press
What the town made of it.
The exhibit ran as the twenty-ninth year of Stamford Downtown’s Art in Public Places programme, and closed with an online auction whose proceeds part-funded trees planted in downtown Stamford. Ellie Font, the twelve-foot elephant, was sponsored by VHB and stood at North State and Federal beside the Transportation Center.
- Stamford Patch Stamford Downtown’s HedgeFun topiaries up for auction ↗
- VHB Transforming the Stamford Transportation Center through planning and public art ↗
- Ferguson Library Art in Public Places: HedgeFun in Stamford Downtown, Summer 2022 ↗
A collaboration with PondCreek Studios.
Specification
What it’s made of.
- Frames
- Structural, weight-bearing steel
- Foliage
- Outdoor boxwood, UV-rated and fire-resistant
- Lighting
- Solar — every animal lit itself, no street power
- Range
- 5 to 12 feet tall
- Count
- 16 animals
- Duration
- Installed outdoors, unattended, June to September
- Programme
- Art in Public Places, 29th year
- Afterlife
- Auctioned at the close; proceeds part-funded trees planted downtown
From the same workshop
Where does a piece like this come from?
The same frames, foliage and finishes that built this one — sold ready-made or commissioned to your drawing.
Planning something like this?
Tell us what you’re picturing.
Send a photo or a sketch with your dimensions and date. We come back with a design, a price and a delivery date — then build it in our own workshop.
- 4–10 weekstypical build time
- Any scaletabletop to 40 feet
- US & Canadashipping and install
