In downtown Columbus there is a park you can step into — literally, a painting. Topiary Park recreates Georges Seurat’s masterpiece “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” in living topiary: 54 yew figures — people with parasols, dogs, monkeys, a boat — clipped into a pointillist landscape behind the Columbus Metropolitan Library.
Created in 1989 by artist James T. Mason and maintained by the city’s gardeners, it is believed to be the only topiary interpretation of a painting in the world. A pond stands in for the Seine; from the eastern overlook, the whole scene composes itself exactly as Seurat painted it.
Free, quiet and utterly unique, it’s the most cultured picnic spot in Ohio.
Art history you can sit in — only in Columbus.
