In the courtyard they're like topiary, lollipop trees.

Pits have been filled in and tips levelled to form the ubiquitous British, urban, flat landscape of close-mown turf and lollipop trees.

By the time Larry entered high school, his family had moved to Danbury, Conn., where they lived in a white-shingle house with two lollipop trees out front.

Larry by then was painting quite a bit - he specialized in simplified views of white-shingle houses with two lollipop trees out front - and his father thought he had tremendous talent.

It's about as impressive as you'd expect from a drawing made by a six-year-old: stick figures, lollipop trees, lopsided houses, garish color that refuses to accept the authority of the lines meant to hold it in check.

Especially if it's an herb that looks like a 10-foot lollipop tree.

But absence of chatter left time to drink in the mellow farmland and observe the rolling hills that looked like a child's drawing with their oddly angled lollipop trees.

Every house was identically landscaped with multicolored gumdrop bushes, lollipop trees, nut-cookie sidewalks, and all- day-sucker flowers.

Shrubs such as holly, box, privet, euonymus and yew can be clipped into formal tiers, trained or bought as mopheads - lollipop trees - or shaped into amusing foliage statuary.

There are pictures of lollipop trees, sailboat-shaped waves, mind-bending mazes and patterns that look like webs of red, interlocked safety pins.