Michael Gibson Philosophy
topiary art as therapy and community-building
Patience and Creativity
Topiary, the practice of training plants into defined shapes...Michael P. Gibson believes its lessons extend well beyond the aesthetic.
“Topiary forces you to learn how to be patient, because once you’re trimming, you have to wait for that new growth to happen,” he explained from the top of a ladder propped against a 20-foot holly tree. “I teach people that doing topiary can reduce anxiety. It helps you to stay focused.”
In other words, it’s healthy for the plant and the human.
To that end, Gibson focuses on educating and serving communities (he holds a certificate in therapeutic horticulture). In Columbia, S.C., a capital city of about 140,000, he’s creating a sensory garden at a neighborhood park. He also spends time traveling to take on new installations and maintain existent sculptures.
- Chopra, S. (2025, July 24). Art of craft: Sculpting trees, and teaching patience and focus. Photographs and video by Elizabeth Bick. The New York Times. Reporting from Columbia, S.C.
Michael Gibson Interview
interviewed by Margaret Roach in A Way of Gardening
"WE’RE GOING TO do some pruning, but not the same old straight-forward kind. Instead we’re going to talk topiary, and its transformative powers—not just on the plant that is the subject that’s getting clipped, or on the garden that the living sculpture will eventually adorn, but potentially on the creator, too. Topiary artist Mike Gibson and I talked about the horticulture and the artistry in what he does, and also about the therapeutic properties of making topiary...." Click here for continuation.
Process Topiary
The Gibson Method
Michael Gibson is based in Columbia, SC. He works in the art of topiary—sculpting live trees and shrubs into creative forms—and treats it not simply as landscaping, but as a discipline that cultivates patience, attention, and a dialogue with nature. From his own words, and as shared in social posts, his work is about seeing “the hidden design within” a tree and being confident in the vision.' Five principles guide his approach to topiary art:
The last principle - illusion - is what sets Gibson's approach from others. It is the idea of hiding certain images within the art, that can be seen from different angles and perspectives.
As a process philosopher I see 'process" in all of these principles. The process of creating topiary art is indeed a process, but the art, once created, is also in process, guided by the trimming and the plant's natural growth. What inspires me as well as Gibson's teaching others how to create such art in the context of therapy (giving people a sense of patience in the process itself) and community building. Topiary art, as created and enjoyed, is enjoyable in its own right and also part of helping others to find themselves as individuals in community with others. It can easily be combined with many other forms of practice: community gardening, community arts, farm-to-table endeavors, and local economic development. In an age filled with stress, anxiety, and animosity toward "others," whoever those others might be, it can bring people together.
Topiary Art as Co-Creativity
Topiary art “happens” when trees or shrubs are trimmed, pruned, and trained into ornamental shapes. To make topiary, “create a clear picture in your mind about the form you’re going to create, then see yourself as a sculptor, gradually moulding it into shape,” explains Jeff Stephenson, Head of Horticulture at Bowles & Wyer.
To this description we might add still another term: "co-moulding." True, the artist provides part of the shape. But the plant does the growing and provides living shapes of its own. In this way the plant participates in the moulding in an active way - growing into the pattern given by the artist. And no doubt the artist's plans evolve amid the process, prompted by the plants growth. Topiary art is a form of co-creativity.
Topiary Art Worldwide
Such art has a long history, Emerging in ancient Rome, where topiarius meant “landscape artist,” western topiary art flourished in Renaissance Europe and has evolved to its current forms, which range from the classical symmetry of formal gardens to contemporary eco-art installations, community sculptures, and whimsical living figures in public parks.
Of course we must think more globally. While the Romans gave topiary its name and classical form, the impulse to shape living plants into meaningful beauty—part discipline, part devotion—is much older. Long before topiarius entered Latin, Egyptians, Persians, and Mesopotamians were pruning trees and arranging gardens to mirror cosmic harmony. Persian paradises, laid out in cross-shaped geometries, expressed balance between heaven and earth. In China, early forms of plant training anticipated penjing—miniature landscapes revealing nature’s inner vitality—while in India and Japan, sacred groves and temple gardens were shaped to honor the divine within nature. Across these cultures, people sought not simply to control growth but to converse with it, finding form within flux and meaning within life’s continual unfolding.
Ethical Considerations
In the minds of some—and for understandable reasons—there is an ethical issue afoot in topiary art. The desire to impose geometric or figurative order may conflict with the spontaneous, self-organizing tendencies of nature. When human imagination takes the shears in hand, it risks becoming an instrument of domination rather than dialogue. To sculpt a living plant into a perfect sphere is, in one sense, to override its native will to grow in its own way. The ethical tension lies here: does our artistry honor the life we shape, or does it silence it?
And yet this same tension inhabits all acts of cultivation. Every gardener, even the most tender, prunes. Pruning can be an act of violence or an act of care, depending on the spirit in which it is done. When undertaken with sensitivity, it becomes a form of listening—a conversation between human intention and vegetal response. The best gardeners, like good process philosophers, recognize that creativity is never unilateral. It is always relational: an exchange between the physical and mental poles of experience, between what is given and what is imagined.
The Many become One
In Process and Reality, Whitehead describes every act of experience as having two poles. The physical pole, in which we receive the world as given. The mental pole, in which we respond by introducing novelty—fresh contrasts, aims, and possibilities.
Topiary illustrates this process.
Through pruning and patience, the many become one and are increased by one more—the shrub’s becoming includes the human touch, and the human’s becoming includes the shrub’s growth. Each cut is both receptive and creative: an act of participation in the unfolding of life.
Sacred Geometry
One of the principles in the Gibson Method is sacred geometry. From a Whiteheadian perspective, this refers to a realm beyond time and space that consists of pure potentialities—forms and patterns that may or may not be embodied in three-dimensional space. Some of these potentialities are geometric, while others are emotional or qualitative in tone. The realm they inhabit corresponds to what Whitehead calls “the primordial nature of God.” Although Whitehead himself does not describe these potentialities as sacred, we can interpret them, in a Gibsonian spirit, as sacred insofar as they invite realization through acts of care and respect. In the creative act, these potentialities become actualized—they “take form”—in what Whitehead calls ingression, the process by which eternal possibilities participate in the temporal world. In this way, topiary art can both participate in and ingress timeless geometrical possibilities, giving them living expression in the world of form.
Illusion
The Gibson Method includes what Gibson names as "illusion." The topiary artist envisions a form within a living plant and then creates the illusion of that form through careful pruning and shaping. The illusion then presents itself to the viewer.
In a Whiteheadian context, the illusion that emerges is neither wholly actual nor purely possible, but something in between—a phenomenon that partakes of both actuality and potentiality. It is something perceived that is simultaneously actual and non-actual. Or, to say the same thing: both actual and potential, as the same time.
Whitehead’s term for this in Process and Reality is a proposition: understood as a felt proposal, a lure for feeling—a potential pattern of relatedness that is itself an invitation to perceive the world and oneself in a certain way. In the Gibson Method, the imagined images within the plant function precisely as such lures for feeling. They beckon the artist toward realization, guiding the creative process in which the possible and the actual intertwine - and they beckon the viewers, too.
Niwaki
"Niwaki (庭木)) is not about strict symmetry or artificial control but about enhancing the natural form. The artist removes and redirects growth so that the tree expresses balance, asymmetry, and a sense of movement—what the Japanese aesthetic calls shizen (自然), or “naturalness.” Each tree becomes a microcosm of a larger world—mountains, clouds, or waves—a kind of cosmic condensation that reveals the universal within the particular. Cultivated over decades, often across generations, niwaki embodies patience, humility, and cooperation with the slow rhythm of growth. The gardener becomes a collaborator with time and nature, not a conqueror. Branches are shaped to convey both movement and repose, often forming cloud-like pads that seem to float in space, evoking the Japanese principles of ma (間)—the meaningful space between forms—and wabi-sabi, the beauty of imperfection and transience. Rooted in Shinto reverence for nature and Zen mindfulness, the act of pruning becomes a meditative discipline, a dialogue between artist and living being, guided by attentiveness and care. Each niwaki is designed to harmonize with its surroundings—garden, architecture, and sky—so that the tree does not stand apart but belongs, contributing to a greater aesthetic and ecological whole."
Michael Gibson is based in Columbia, SC. He works in the art of topiary—sculpting live trees and shrubs into creative forms—and treats it not simply as landscaping, but as a discipline that cultivates patience, attention, and a dialogue with nature. From his own words, and as shared in social posts, his work is about seeing “the hidden design within” a tree and being confident in the vision.' Five principles guide his approach to topiary art:
- Storytelling
- Sacred Geometry
- Niwaki
- Directional Trimming
- Illusions
The last principle - illusion - is what sets Gibson's approach from others. It is the idea of hiding certain images within the art, that can be seen from different angles and perspectives.
As a process philosopher I see 'process" in all of these principles. The process of creating topiary art is indeed a process, but the art, once created, is also in process, guided by the trimming and the plant's natural growth. What inspires me as well as Gibson's teaching others how to create such art in the context of therapy (giving people a sense of patience in the process itself) and community building. Topiary art, as created and enjoyed, is enjoyable in its own right and also part of helping others to find themselves as individuals in community with others. It can easily be combined with many other forms of practice: community gardening, community arts, farm-to-table endeavors, and local economic development. In an age filled with stress, anxiety, and animosity toward "others," whoever those others might be, it can bring people together.
Topiary Art as Co-Creativity
Topiary art “happens” when trees or shrubs are trimmed, pruned, and trained into ornamental shapes. To make topiary, “create a clear picture in your mind about the form you’re going to create, then see yourself as a sculptor, gradually moulding it into shape,” explains Jeff Stephenson, Head of Horticulture at Bowles & Wyer.
To this description we might add still another term: "co-moulding." True, the artist provides part of the shape. But the plant does the growing and provides living shapes of its own. In this way the plant participates in the moulding in an active way - growing into the pattern given by the artist. And no doubt the artist's plans evolve amid the process, prompted by the plants growth. Topiary art is a form of co-creativity.
Topiary Art Worldwide
Such art has a long history, Emerging in ancient Rome, where topiarius meant “landscape artist,” western topiary art flourished in Renaissance Europe and has evolved to its current forms, which range from the classical symmetry of formal gardens to contemporary eco-art installations, community sculptures, and whimsical living figures in public parks.
Of course we must think more globally. While the Romans gave topiary its name and classical form, the impulse to shape living plants into meaningful beauty—part discipline, part devotion—is much older. Long before topiarius entered Latin, Egyptians, Persians, and Mesopotamians were pruning trees and arranging gardens to mirror cosmic harmony. Persian paradises, laid out in cross-shaped geometries, expressed balance between heaven and earth. In China, early forms of plant training anticipated penjing—miniature landscapes revealing nature’s inner vitality—while in India and Japan, sacred groves and temple gardens were shaped to honor the divine within nature. Across these cultures, people sought not simply to control growth but to converse with it, finding form within flux and meaning within life’s continual unfolding.
Ethical Considerations
In the minds of some—and for understandable reasons—there is an ethical issue afoot in topiary art. The desire to impose geometric or figurative order may conflict with the spontaneous, self-organizing tendencies of nature. When human imagination takes the shears in hand, it risks becoming an instrument of domination rather than dialogue. To sculpt a living plant into a perfect sphere is, in one sense, to override its native will to grow in its own way. The ethical tension lies here: does our artistry honor the life we shape, or does it silence it?
And yet this same tension inhabits all acts of cultivation. Every gardener, even the most tender, prunes. Pruning can be an act of violence or an act of care, depending on the spirit in which it is done. When undertaken with sensitivity, it becomes a form of listening—a conversation between human intention and vegetal response. The best gardeners, like good process philosophers, recognize that creativity is never unilateral. It is always relational: an exchange between the physical and mental poles of experience, between what is given and what is imagined.
The Many become One
In Process and Reality, Whitehead describes every act of experience as having two poles. The physical pole, in which we receive the world as given. The mental pole, in which we respond by introducing novelty—fresh contrasts, aims, and possibilities.
Topiary illustrates this process.
- The physical pole: The artist begins by receiving the plant—its species, shape, density, growth pattern, its stubborn insistence on sunlight, its patient endurance of time.
- The mental pole: The artist envisions a new pattern, an aesthetic aim that transforms what is received into something novel yet continuous with its natural form.
Through pruning and patience, the many become one and are increased by one more—the shrub’s becoming includes the human touch, and the human’s becoming includes the shrub’s growth. Each cut is both receptive and creative: an act of participation in the unfolding of life.
Sacred Geometry
One of the principles in the Gibson Method is sacred geometry. From a Whiteheadian perspective, this refers to a realm beyond time and space that consists of pure potentialities—forms and patterns that may or may not be embodied in three-dimensional space. Some of these potentialities are geometric, while others are emotional or qualitative in tone. The realm they inhabit corresponds to what Whitehead calls “the primordial nature of God.” Although Whitehead himself does not describe these potentialities as sacred, we can interpret them, in a Gibsonian spirit, as sacred insofar as they invite realization through acts of care and respect. In the creative act, these potentialities become actualized—they “take form”—in what Whitehead calls ingression, the process by which eternal possibilities participate in the temporal world. In this way, topiary art can both participate in and ingress timeless geometrical possibilities, giving them living expression in the world of form.
Illusion
The Gibson Method includes what Gibson names as "illusion." The topiary artist envisions a form within a living plant and then creates the illusion of that form through careful pruning and shaping. The illusion then presents itself to the viewer.
In a Whiteheadian context, the illusion that emerges is neither wholly actual nor purely possible, but something in between—a phenomenon that partakes of both actuality and potentiality. It is something perceived that is simultaneously actual and non-actual. Or, to say the same thing: both actual and potential, as the same time.
Whitehead’s term for this in Process and Reality is a proposition: understood as a felt proposal, a lure for feeling—a potential pattern of relatedness that is itself an invitation to perceive the world and oneself in a certain way. In the Gibson Method, the imagined images within the plant function precisely as such lures for feeling. They beckon the artist toward realization, guiding the creative process in which the possible and the actual intertwine - and they beckon the viewers, too.
Niwaki
"Niwaki (庭木)) is not about strict symmetry or artificial control but about enhancing the natural form. The artist removes and redirects growth so that the tree expresses balance, asymmetry, and a sense of movement—what the Japanese aesthetic calls shizen (自然), or “naturalness.” Each tree becomes a microcosm of a larger world—mountains, clouds, or waves—a kind of cosmic condensation that reveals the universal within the particular. Cultivated over decades, often across generations, niwaki embodies patience, humility, and cooperation with the slow rhythm of growth. The gardener becomes a collaborator with time and nature, not a conqueror. Branches are shaped to convey both movement and repose, often forming cloud-like pads that seem to float in space, evoking the Japanese principles of ma (間)—the meaningful space between forms—and wabi-sabi, the beauty of imperfection and transience. Rooted in Shinto reverence for nature and Zen mindfulness, the act of pruning becomes a meditative discipline, a dialogue between artist and living being, guided by attentiveness and care. Each niwaki is designed to harmonize with its surroundings—garden, architecture, and sky—so that the tree does not stand apart but belongs, contributing to a greater aesthetic and ecological whole."
God as Topiary Artist
Another image which is also required to understand his consequent nature† is that of his infinite patience. The universe includes a threefold creative act composed of (i) the one infinite conceptual realization, (ii) the multiple solidarity of free physical realizations in the temporal world, (iii) the ultimate unity of the multiplicity of actual fact with the primordial conceptual fact. If we conceive the first term and the last term in their unity over against the intermediate multiple freedom of physical realizations in the temporal world, we conceive of the patience of God, tenderly saving the turmoil of the intermediate world by the completion of his own nature. The sheer force of things lies in the intermediate physical process: this is the energy of physical production. God’s role is not the combat of productive force with productive force, of destructive force with destructive force; it lies in the patient operation of the overpowering rationality of his conceptual harmonization. He does not create the world, he saves it: or, more accurately, he is the poet of the world, with tender patience leading it by his vision of truth, beauty, and goodness.
AN Whitehead, Process and Reality
If God is, as Whitehead says, the poet of the world, might it not also be true that God is the topiary artist of the world—the one who, with infinite patience and gentleness, helps us prune the overgrowth of our own becoming? The Divine Spirit does not hack or wound, but clips and shapes with care, inviting us to remove those habits, fears, and rigidities that obscure the living form within us. Each moment of awareness, repentance, or renewal can be seen as a subtle act of divine pruning, clearing space for new growth and deeper harmony. Yet this shaping is never one-sided; it is a co-creative process, requiring our own cooperation, discernment, and willingness to be formed. In this sense, the Spirit’s artistry is relational—never coercive, always responsive—working with the grain of our lives as a gardener works with the grain of a tree. What emerges, through time and trust, is not a uniform pattern but a living beauty, asymmetrical yet whole, expressive of both divine intention and creaturely freedom.
Of course, there is something about topiary art that seems unnatural—trees and shrubs shaped into forms they would never assume on their own. Yet this tension between artifice and nature can be understood not as a violation of nature, but as a continuation of nature by other means. From a process perspective, creativity is not confined to what occurs spontaneously in the wild; it includes the imaginative responses of all creatures who participate in nature’s unfolding. The act of shaping a tree, when done with reverence and restraint, need not oppose nature’s will—it can express nature’s own impulse toward form, pattern, and beauty, realized through human cooperation. The boundary between the natural and the artificial begins to dissolve, and the human hand becomes an instrument of the same creative advance that pulses through sap, soil, and season. What matters is not whether the art is natural or unnatural, but whether it is attuned to the deeper rhythm of becoming, honoring the life of the tree even as it guides its growth. (AI with help from Jay McDaniel_
Michael Gibson Videos
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Topiary Mentor: Pearl Fryar
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