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
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