Why a London man named Bushe is on a mission to turn his neighbors’ hedges into art

London — On a dead-end road in London’s Islington district, CBS News found Tim Bushe trimming his hedge. It was an ordinary scene in the neighborhood of row houses until you stepped back to take in the full scale of the neatly pruned topiary — in the form of a giant locomotive.

“Philippa, my wife, used to sit in the living room and look out through the window here and demanded that I cut a cat,” Bushe told CBS News, briefly laying his trimmer aside. For him, it’s as much an artist’s brush as it is a gardener’s tool.

Philippa Bushe got the train instead. That was more than 15 years ago. Soon after, Bushe decided to help his neighbor, who struggled to trim his own hedge across the road. It was Philippa’s idea, he said.

“Then I gave her the cat that she had asked for the first time,” he said.

The couple met as teenagers at art school. They were together for 47 years before Philippa died of breast cancer about seven years ago. Bushe, who works as an architect when he’s not busy with a hedge, has carried on with his topiary art in honor of his wife, who gave him the idea.

“It is her legacy,” he said.

The father of three has transformed hedges all around his home, into elephants, fish, a hippo, a squirrel — there’s even a recreation of the late British sculptor Henry Moore’s “Reclining Nude.” That one sits boldly in front of Polly Barker’s house. She’s in the choir with Bushe.

“I was slightly worried whether the neighbors might be offended, because she’s quite, you know, full-on, but they haven’t complained,” said Barker, adding: “We’re a tourist attraction on Google Maps now. We’ve got a little stamp.”

The hedges aren’t just tourist attractions, however. With each commission, Bushe raises money for various charities, many of them environmental. His first mission was to raise money for an organization that cares for his sister.

“My young sister has got Down syndrome, and the people looking after her down in Kent, I decided to raise money for them,” he said. “I raised about 10,000 (pounds, or about $13,000) for her.”  

Bushe says when he picks up his garden tools to do an artist’s work, he lets his medium guide his hand: “I find the shape within the hedge.”

His wife Philippa was also an artist and his muse.  

“If she was alive now, she would be fascinated, I think, by the way it’s taken off,” he told CBS News, adding that he intends to keep going, “until I fall off my ladder.”

Bushe said he enjoys seeing the results of his hobby making people smile, and he acknowledged the coincidence of his name so accurately referencing his passion — but he said to him, it feels less like a coincidence and more like destiny.