Hedge Maze

Try to find your way out of this.

"He had a heart attack when he was out trimming Maris's elaborate hedge maze. The paramedics never had a chance."

—Niles Crane, Frasier

The Hedge Maze is a type of Maze found in ornamental gardens with walls made out of hedges, often found on the grounds of a Bright Castle, Haunted Castle or Big Fancy House. They are generally perceived as mysterious and magical, and sometimes foreboding, and if one is mentioned in a story chances are at some point the characters will have to find their way through it, perhaps while being chased or trying to beat the Villains to the center. The hedge maze often doubles as Mobile Maze and the paths paradoxically seem to move around as you're trying to navigate it. In the center is what the maze is protecting, often something magical and valuable that The Hero needs.

In mystery stories, you can count on finding a corpse in one of these. Since they're almost always a part of the gardens of a country house, you can expect the usual country house doings to be brought into it. Somebody seeking privacy goes there so as not to be disturbed, only to be permanently rendered past disturbing by a killer. Clandestine meetings are arranged, again often in the center of the maze, for important private conversations (like, say, blackmail). Lovers go there for a rendezvous. There's a house party scavenger hunt or village festival on the grounds, and one or more of the revelers goes inside. There may even be more than one trip inside the maze, especially if there's a reconstruction of the initial crime and/or a trap set for the killer.

The hedge maze was a must-have part of Western European gardens in the 16th and 17th centuries, including Hampton Court Palace in the UK. You can see maps, photos and engravings here.

Mazes in general, but especially the hedge maze, tend to be symbolic of navigating the subconscious and discovering the self. While overcoming the maze, the character confronts their own darkness and fears.

A subtrope of The Maze. Compare The Lost Woods and Lost in the Maize. Not to be confused with Hedge Mage.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• In Cardcaptor Sakura there's the Maze Card, which starts out looking like your typical Hedge Maze. Try to cheat your way out of the maze with a Clow Card, though, and it starts twisting into someone M.C. Escher would approve of.

Fan Works

• Satori has one outside her palace in FREAKIN GENSOKYO.
• Starlight Over Detrot: The garden on the roof of High Steps Hotel is for all intents and purposes an impassable jungle navigable only by a mazelike network of small and winding paths, with the trellis overlying it preventing pegasi from taking the easy way out and flying over it. Hard Boiled, Taxi and Swift get rather badly lost in it when investigating Ruby Blue's murder.
• Vow of Nudity: The entrance to the fey bandit hideout is guarded by one of these. Even worse, taking any wrong turn within it will teleport the visitor back to the entrance, sic monsters on them, and then randomize the maze so intruders have to do every attempt completely blind.

Film

• In the climax of The Gray Man (2022), Lloyd Hansen drags his hostage into one, though Sierra Six finds him quickly.
• Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. While playing hide-and-seek in a hedge maze (filmed in the Labyrinth of Horta in Barcelona) Laura Richis is stalked by the killer, but fortunately someone else finds her first.
• Laurence Olivier's character in Sleuth has one of these.
• The Avengers (1998). Steed and Mrs. Peel encounter one of these on Sir August's estate. While traveling through it Steed is attacked by Sir August and Mrs. Peel falls down a hole and is captured.
  Mrs. Peel: Ah, yes, it's clear now. A love maze in a trapezoid shape. [snip] Originally late 17th century design, then copied.
• The Shining. The Overlook Hotel has a rather large hedge maze. Wendy and Danny are shown exploring it midway through the movie and Danny's insane father Jack stalks him through it in the finale. Having had the chance to explore it earlier, Danny lays a false trail in the snow to get Jack Going in Circles until he gets lost, eventually freezing to death.
• In Labyrinth starring David Bowie, part of the titular maze is made of hedges.

Literature

• A hedge maze shows up in the Queen of Hearts' garden in Alice in Wonderland.
• J. J. Connington's 1927 Murder In The Maze features two corpses, one in each of the two centers of the hedge maze. In life they were successful-yet-hated twin brothers.
• Katherine Kurtz is partial to using these:
  • In Deryni Rising, just after Alaric Morgan's arrival from Cardosa, Kelson arranges for his meeting with Morgan to take place in a summerhouse outside a boxwood maze. Nigel conducts him there, and during their conversation: "Morgan suddenly realized it was almost symbolic of the dilemma he now faced: convoluted, enigmatic, with new and unforeseen difficulties around every turn. Except that there was a way out of the boxwood maze."
  • In Lammas Night, a hedge maze is part of the coven's outdoor ritual area. Some gates are moved when the area is being used for magical purposes, and walking the maze in the new configuration helps to prepare the coven.
  • The same maze appears in the third The Adept novel, The Templar Treasure, where it's used for the same purpose.
• Sarah J. Mason introduced her Trewley And Stone series in 1993's Murder in the Maze. The body of a doctor's young wife is found in a hedge maze during a village fete.
• Karen Harper has a young Queen Elizabeth I as the lead sleuth in a series, including the fifth installment, The Thorne Maze (2003).
• Catherine Aird's 2009 book Amendment Of Life has a gardener find a body in the yew maze he's working in, observed by his employer from an upstairs window of the main house.
• Emma Porter meets the Pym sisters in a hedge maze early in Aunt Dimity and the Duke, where they question her thoroughly about gardening. At the end of their chat, they send her to find the Duke of Penford's estate, and she finds herself drafted to restore the twelfth duchess's garden. She also finds her personal life resolved there as well.
• In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, one of these serves as the location of the final challenge in the Triwizard Tournament. In the movie, it's downright a Living Structure Monster, removing the beasts that inhabited the maze in the book.
• In the Time Wars novel The Pimpernel Plot, a clandestine meeting takes place at the centre of a hedge maze in the grounds of an English country house.
• In A College of Magics, the villain's country house has a hedge maze that was designed and built by a wizard, and can be used as a trap where a person who goes in can't find their way out until the maze's owner lets them.
• In The Obernewtyn Chronicles a hedge maze forms the main route between the main house and the farms. It is made of greenthorn, the scent of which inhibits the Misfits' Talents.
• The Montague Rhodes James story "Mr. Humphreys and His Inheritance" in More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1911) features a maze that can only be threaded by scions of the house.
• The House With a Clock in Its Walls: In The Vengeance of the Witch-Finder, Barnavelt Manor in Sussex, England has one of these; it was originally made with the intention of having the guests go in from the road side and find their way through to the side closest to the manor's front door, though Arthur Pelham "Pelly" Barnavelt hasn't kept it up in years, thinking it's silly to have your guests get lost this way. There's also a trick to it, as if you keep one hand on the hedges to the right, you'll always find your way out. There's also a stone bench in the center, marking a square hedge with a stone tomb inside holding a malevolent spirit familiar answering to a 17th-century ghost. Lewis accidentally releases said familiar, causing a great deal of trouble before he and Jonathan can banish it back to the other side.
• Discworld:
  • In Men at Arms, we're told Bertholt Stuttgart "Bloody Stupid" Johnson's contribution to the art of hedge mazes was to build one for the Patrician's Palace so small people get lost looking for it.
  • BSJ was also responsible for the hedge maze at Sto Lat Castle, as described in Mrs Bradshaw's Guidebook to the Ankh-Morpork and Sto Plains Hygenic Railway. This one is more conventional in size, although has been closed to the public after a group of visitors, having survived for several days on people throwing sandwiches over the hedge, had to tunnel their way out. It includes several circular paths that may have actually been coffee rings on the original plans.
• Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: In Episode 2, Princesses Are Never Lost: (Everything Else Is Simply Misplaced):
  a little path appeared beneath their feet. Pale green bricks fitted together in a complicated blocky pattern that led them through twists and curves. Without it, Gwen realized, they would be in trouble. The garden was a maze of hedges, with splits and forks leading every which way.
• The Ciaphas Cain novel Choose Your Enemies features a hedge maze in the local governor's orbital residence. A retainer teaches Cain's party the "childishly simple" trick to reaching the center and getting back out, but it still has a reputation for mysterious disappearances. The governor is actually the leader of a Slaaneshi cult that carries out sacrifices in the maze, and Cain has to go in there to stop them summoning a daemon. The hedges progressively mutate into Meat Moss as they get closer to the ritual site.
• The Light Jar is set near a mansion with a hedge maze where, fifty years ago, a six-year-old got lost and died of hypothermia. In the present day, Nate and Kitty go into the maze during their treasure hunt.
• the secret lives of Princesses: It is rumored that some have gone into Princess Molly Coddle's garden maze and never come out.

Live-Action TV

• In an episode of CSI: NY, the investigators find a college kid dead in one. It was the site of a banishment ceremony for a kid who wanted out of a secret group called Kings and Shadows. Another kid seized on it and killed the kid to cover something else up.
• An episode of Highlander set a swordfight between Duncan and the villain-of-the-week in a small garden maze. That particular fight was inconclusive, as the bad guy used the maze to evade Duncan and escape, rather than fight.
• Trigger Happy TV once pulled off a gag involving a hedge maze, some costumes designed to look like hedge walls, and an increasingly confused tourist. Watch!

Tabletop Games

• The Hedge of Changeling: The Lost is this trope's angry, abusive big brother: an Eldritch Location alternate dimension that forms the "border" between the material world and the Land of Faerie, with fey monsters, shifting paths, and thorns that snag pieces off your soul. And for Changelings, any doorway can lead to the Hedge...

Video Games

• Dead Realm has this as one of the areas you can explore.
• Hands of Necromancy has a greenery maze outside the castle you need to navigate across, while battling zombies, cultists, and assorted enemies along the way. The flying demon mooks takes advantage of the situation by flying over the maze to attack you.
• Spyborgs have one such maze in an outdoor garden, and sometimes enemies will hide themselves in the leaves before pouncing out to attack.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario Galaxy has one planet covered entirely by hedge mazes in which you have to chase rabbits there to obtain the Power Star.
  • Paper Mario 64: Mario has to navigate a hedge maze in Flower Fields to find Rosie so he can trade her a Crystal Berry for a Water Stone needed to save a dying flower named Lily.
  • Mario Kart DS: The Special Cup track Peach Gardens features a segment that goes through a hedge maze inhabited by a Chain Chomp and which has grassy floors that damp the drivers' speed. There's also a topiary of Mario, which comes as no surprise. It makes a return in Mario Kart Wii, Mario Kart Tour and the DLC of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe as a Nostalgia Level; in the latter two games, topiaries of characters like Luigi, Toad, Toadette and the host Peach herself are present as well.
  • Mario Party DS: The minigame Hedge Honcho has all characters, in their reduced size, navigate through a sequence of miniature rows of hedges to each a pond. In each row, each player has to remove the obstructing leaves by sliding them to a specific side with the stylus. If a bee is posed in one of the leaves, the player has to wait until it flies away, as touching it will provoke the bee and attack the player, stunning them for a brief while. If it's a ladybug, it has to be rubbed several times with the stylus to remove it. Whoever reaches the pond first wins; if five minutes pass and no one gets there before then, or if two characters do so at the same time in Duel mode, the minigame ends in a tie.
• In Kingdom of Loathing, the entrance to the Naughty Sorceress' tower is blocked by a hedge maze, which is filled with aggressive animated topiary and deadly traps. There's a friendly skull named Frank who can lead you through the maze safely, but you can ignore his advice and go through the obvious death traps to shave a few turns off your run.
• Old-school FPS Prime Target have a shootout inside one such maze, where you try navigating across while battling terrorists.
• Spike Out have a level set in a greenery maze filled with enemies, though it's a relatively small one you're not likely to lose yourself in.
• Banjo-Kazooie features a hedge maze in the Mad Monster Mansion level. It is a lot easier to figure out how to get through it once you realize that you can actually hop on top of the hedges themselves.
• Bloodhound has one in the Gardens of Hell, though it's rather straighforward and easy to navigate through.
• Conker's Bad Fur Day: The backyard of Count Batula's mansion has a hedge maze, though its paths are wide enough for Conker to know where he is. The real danger is the zombies who overrun it, as they do through the whole place. Conker needs to go through this part to find one of the three keys (specifically the second) necessary to open the door to the exit.
• The Interactive Fiction game Curses opens in a Big Fancy House, the grounds of which incorporate a hedge maze. One puzzle involves reaching a location that's completely surrounded by hedges.
• Sheep, Dog 'n' Wolf has one. It's filled with ghosts.
• In Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, there's one in the Wonderland area, and you once have to chase a Heartless through the maze.
• In Castlevania 64, you see one relatively early on, and are pursued by a chainsaw-wielding Frankenstein's Monster and two stone dogs.
• Resident Evil 4: One such maze appears in the castle's backyard, explored during Chapter 3, and you must find the items you need to advance while dealing with the enemies in it. Notably, in the castle bedroom that provides a sight to this maze from its window, Leon meets Ada for the first time in the game.
• The Sims series:
  • The Sims 2 lets you build your own with block-shaped hedges. This predates Minecraft, by the way.
  • The Von Haunt Estate, introduced in The Sims 4's "Get Together" expansion, has a gigantic hedge maze for Sims to get lost in.
• Donkey Kong 64: Lanky Kong has to navigate one located in a greenhouse in the Creepy Castle area to get a few normal bananas, one of his Golden Bananas, and, once that's done, spawn an Arena Pad.
• In Pokémon X and Y the Parfum Palace has four of these in its back garden. One of them hides the HM01 while you and Shauna have to chase and catch a Furfrou through another to get the Poké Flute.
• In Alice: Madness Returns, there is a hedge maze in Queensland... although the part you navigate isn't difficult, and once she's had a bite of cake (and eliminated a previously invincible minion responsible for many an Escape Sequence), you just sort of... step through it.
• One of the mazes in The Labyrinth of Time is this. Due to the titular labyrinth's convoluted layout that spans across time and space, this hedge maze connects between a construction site and a Malt Shop.
• In Mystery Case Files: Black Crown, the Crown Estate features a very large hege maze, and the Master Detective has to use a dog's guidance to avoid getting lost within it.
• In Iggle Pop!, the first world consists of hedge mazes. In fact, it is actually named "The Hedge Mazes". The later worlds' levels also are built like these, but they lack the vegetal theme.
• In Yandere Simulator, Akademi High School has a hedge maze located on the western side of the school. The player can find manga here. In the future, the player will be able to eavesdrop on students having private conversations there that contain important information.
• In Secret of Evermore, there is a hedge maze between Ivor Tower and Ebon Keep that also has a human-sized chessboard in the center.
• The Witness: The keep on the north side of the island features two different ways of activating the laser. One of them involves navigating through such mazes and inputting a specific path into the panel.
• Rollercoaster Tycoon and its sequel allow you to build these, either to a preset design or custom-made. Unfortunately, they're coded to rely on the same somewhat iffy pathfinding AI used by guests to get around the park, rendering more elaborate designs Awesome, but Impractical.
• The gardens at Halamshiral Palace in Dragon Age: Inquisition resemble one of these, with assorted side paths and hidden fountains.
• The north-west part of the maze from Grow Maze will become this after clicking on a grassy button.
• A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: In front of Brunhilde and Solomon's mansion in Silver Spring, where Brick Jokes happen with people trapped inside:
  Soldier: Why the hell did they install this maze?!
• Disney Friends features a tall grass maze which Simba can visit, whereon the goal is to find the giant tree at the end whilst also finding Simba, Timon and Pumbaa hidden within the maze.
• Tomb Raider I's Croft Manor has one, briefly seen in an FMV and fully navigable in the sequel. With some effort, you can find a switch which opens a door inside the mansion proper to find Lara's Treasure Room. Tomb Raider III had it gutted to make room for an ATV course.
• Garfield's Scary Scavenger Hunt: In the second game, by collecting all the donuts and muffins, Garfield unlocks a hidden door in the library leading into one of these, which he has to make his way through to escape from the haunted house.
• A hedge maze can be found in the Kortz Center in Grand Theft Auto V.

Western Animation

• In Chowder, an old apprentice of Mung Daal's tries to get even with him by taking Chowder to his "Deathly Maze", where he would get lost forever. Unfortunately, the plan fails because he gets lost in his own maze as well.
• In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic the very first episode of Season 2 ("The Return of Harmony Part 1") has Discord trick the ponies into chasing him through a hedge maze where he has supposedly hidden the Elements of Harmony.
  • The episode "Putting Your Hoof Down" has Iron Will (appropriately enough, a minotaur) giving a seminar on assertiveness at the centre of a hedge maze.
• One of No Heart's schemes in an episode of Care Bears (1980s) involved leading the bears into a hedge maze that he had augmented with magic thorns, making the experience considerably more dangerous.
• Martin Mystery has an episode where Martin have to battle a spectre-possessed Diana in a hedge maze, in a Shout-Out directed at The Shining. Although it does raise some questions that since possessed Diana could fly, making audience wonder why can't she just hover above the maze and destroy Martin from an elevated position.
• Ben 10: Charmcaster's debut episode has one.
• The Simpsons:
  • In a nod to The Shining example above, the "Treehouse of Horror" parody had Bart cheating by using a chainsaw. Groundskeeper Willie gets understandably annoyed.
  • Homer gets lost in one of these in "Stop or My Dog Will Shoot".
• An episode of The Critic has Duke with his own hedge maze, where both Pope John Paul II and Don King are lost in it and discussing ways to get out of it.
• The Wind in the Willows (1983): One episode has Toad working on and reopening his late father's hedge maze behind Toad Hall. Even Badger, who often scolds him for his foolishness, praises him for a well-done job. He and his friends have fun navigating the hedge maze until Toad gets helplessly lost, so his friends return to the maze and get him back out.

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