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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.
CBS News/Cameron Stewart
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.
Handout/Tim Bushe
“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.”
CBS News/Cameron Stewart
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.
Flint, Michigan – Former President Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail Tuesday evening in his first public appearance since the second assassination attempt on his life.
“It’s a dangerous business, however, being president,” Trump said while sitting alongside Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his former White House press secretary, at the Dort Financial Center in Flint, Michigan. “It’s a little bit dangerous. It’s, you know, they think race car driving is dangerous? No. They think bull riding, that’s pretty scary, right? No. This is a dangerous business, and we have to keep it safe.”
Trump later told the crowd he received a phone call Tuesday from Vice President Kamala Harris, calling it “very, very nice, we appreciate that.”
Speaking earlier Tuesday during a panel interview with the National Association of Black Journalists in Philadelphia, Harris also acknowledged that she had spoken to Trump, saying that she “checked on him to see if he was OK.”
Previously Trump was blaming the rhetoric of Democrats and Harris, telling Fox News digital, “their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country and they are the ones that are destroying the country — both from the inside and out.”
Joseph Guajardo, a licensed counselor from Battle Creek, Michigan, said at Trump’s town hall in Flint that he hopes the former president will focus on policy, “instead of all the name-calling.”
“I think America is above all of this horrible rhetoric that’s been spoken of about President Trump and the other side, the other side being the Democratic party,” Guajardo said.
On Sunday, members of the former president’s Secret Service detail spotted an AK-47-style rifle poking through the bushes at Trump National Golf Course while Trump was golfing there.
An agent fired at the suspect, later identified as Ryan Routh, who fled the scene. Routh was later apprehended and charged with two firearms offenses. An investigation is underway.
Despite Sunday’s events and the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, Jim Jones, an Army veteran from Davison, Michigan and Trump supporter, said he’s not worried about his safety at Trump’s campaign events.
“I think when the good Lord wants you, he’ll take you,” Jones said, adding that he thinks “the good Lord has a job for Trump to do.”
Virginia Williamson, a nurse and Trump supporter in Flint, Michigan, said she wasn’t planning to attend Trump’s town hall Tuesday until she heard about the apparent attempt on Trump’s life.
“That’s why my husband and I are here today to show support,” Williamson said.
Trump campaign officials say that they are not planning changes to his schedule after Sunday’s events. A senior campaign official told CBS News that acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe told Trump that it isn’t safe for him to golf without additional security measures. The Biden administration has asked Congress for a surge in funding for the Secret Service to help provide more resources to the agency.
Trump plans to hold a rally in Uniondale, New York, on Wednesday and a rally outdoors in Wilmington, North Carolina, on Saturday.
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