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A multi-tiered Canadian hemlock.

enlarge Doug Jones/Staff Photographer

This European larch is one of Royce O’Donal’s favorites.

enlarge Doug Jones/Staff Photographer

A Canadian hemlock with intersecting planes.

enlarge Doug Jones/Staff Photographer

Royce O’Donal, 81, prunes a European larch, one of many of his topiary works in progress in the gardens at his home in South Gorham. O’Donal is donating his topiaries to the Brain Injury Association of Maine fundraiser Sept. 26.

AUCTION INFORMATION

WHAT: Fundraising auction for the Brain Injury Association of Maine

WHEN: 6 p.m. Sept. 26

WHERE: O'Donal's Nursery, Routes 22 and 114, Gorham

INCLUDES: Hors d'ouevres and live music, silent auction and live auction.

AUCTION ITEMS: In addition to Royce O'Donal's topiary, other auction items include two paintings by Maine artist Jon Marshall

COST: Admission to the event is free, but bidding numbers are $15 per person

FOR INFORMATION about the auction or for information about dealing with brain injuries, call (800) 275-1233 or visit www.biame.org

 

TOM'S TIP

(This is passed on from Royce O'Donal.) Common plastic mesh deer fence does an excellent job of protecting individual plants, because deer dislike getting tangled up in it. If you put the mesh on top of the plant, the mesh will bother them enough so they won't eat it. And if you leave the mesh on the ground, they will avoid it because their feet get tangled in it.

Royce O'Donal, 81, has been creating topiary for decades, hand trimming trees and shrubs into shapes that were never intended by nature. He has dozens of examples at his home in South Gorham, near the plant nursery and garden center he bought, renamed and ran for decades before retiring and selling it to his son Jeff.

Mostly he uses native plants such as pine and hemlock, but does have a special fondness for European larch. He creates larches with balls at the end of the branches and pines that look like palms. He once had all the playing-card suits made from hemlock, but sold the club and spade.

Tending the topiary takes a lot of time, and that is something he is not going to have as much of very shortly.

Royce's wife, named Selma but called Sally, had a stroke about six years ago and recently underwent an operation on the foot not affected by the stroke. She is coming home soon and won't be able to put any weight on her feet at all. Royce will be taking care of Sally.

And as a result, he wants to divest himself of his topiary. The first step will be an auction Sept. 26 at O'Donal's Nursery to benefit the Brain Injury Association of Maine.

Royce O'Donal is donating a gift certificate worth $1,000 in topiary he has created, and has 17 plants priced and tagged for the sale. Depending on the selections, the $1,000 would probably buy at least five plants, based on the price tags I saw.

The one catch is, digging and transporting the plants will be up to the buyer.

"I won't have the time to dig and move them like I have been doing," O'Donal said.

To get an estimate of how much it would cost to move the plants, I talked to David MacDonald of Whitney Tree Service in Gray. They have a huge tree spade that would easily dig a topiary Royce O'Donal has created. MacDonald said the fee for the digger and its operator is $140 an hour.

The O'Donals support the Brain Injury Association because their second son, Wayne, who now lives in Denmark, suffered a brain injury as a result of a ladder collapse while he was working in New Hampshire. June O'Donal, Wayne's wife, is on the board of the Brain Injury Association and is helping to organize the charity auction.

As he walks around his yard, showing off the topiary that will be part of the auction, O'Donal bubbles with enthusiasm for all the plants, but especially the odd ones.

He shows off a compact chamaecyparis that has one branch with entirely different, faster-growing foliage from the rest of the plant. He doesn't know if it is biological sport or if a seed from a different plant somehow lodged itself into the first plant.

He has a rhododendron and can't remember the variety, but he thinks it is Cunningham white or chionoides that was blooming on Sept. 3, while most rhododendrons including those two varieties, normally bloom in May.

He has a 14-year-old crabapple tree that he found at the back of his property that isn't yet 3 feet tall. O'Donal has a couple of extremely slow-growing hemlocks that were only about 12 feet high that he thinks could be used in landscapes where the standard 90-foot hemlock is too large. He has two-story-tall fan hemlocks that he uses to screen his workshop from his house that he has pruned to only 30 inches deep, although they are about 15 feet wide.

O'Donal loves hemlocks, and hopes they will continue to thrive in the landscape. The hemlock woolly adelgid, which devastated hemlocks in southern New England, has made its way as far north as Ferry Beach in Saco. But he is not worried about hemlocks in the home landscape because they can be sprayed easily. Hemlocks in the forest could be destroyed, however.

O'Donal suggests that homeowners have some fun creating their own topiary, and offers some tips that come from 60 years of pruning trees. He started O'Donal's Tree Service in 1947 out of his home in the Pleasant Hill section of Scarborough. Royce and Sally in...