THE MODERN MINT BLOG
A Busman’s Holiday
Two years ago on Gardeners World we saw the work of Brian and Denise Herrick, who farm and manage the 85 acre estate Barcroft Hall.
They had decided to create a wildflower meadow on poor land, to create “a little piece of heaven.”
A few of us went down to see it and our director Darren Lerigo was interviewed by a local paper. You can read in the link what he had to say about ‘his busman’s holiday.’
Our memories of this still stand strong – especially the buzzing of bees that thrived on the nectar rich flowers, densely sown to cover as much bare earth as possible.
A quick story for you…
…last year we had a client ask for a wildflower meadow. On asking honest questions of the client and what he thought a wildflower meadow looked like, it turned out he saw in his mind’s eye a meadow of cornfield annuals, a completely different entity. We quoted him and were given consent to go and make it happen.
We cleared the ground, created the seedbed and then sowed a mix based on Dame Miriam Rothschild’s ‘Farmer’s Nightmare’. This includes corn cockle, corn marigold, cornflower and field poppy with its beautiful tissue paper red and black flower.
It germinated and took off, flourishing in the conditions we had created. It had just reached its peak, looking almost gossamer when evening light slung across its flowers, when…it turned black, shrivelled, and died off completely.
It turned out the farmer who had been spraying the field next door with weedkiller had seen this patch of ‘Farmer’s Nightmare’ and, showing some initiative, decided to spray them off because he thought they were unwanted plants. If we were growing crops, they would be unwanted plants. But an ornamental garden is different to a productive garden and the flowers had not only been intentional, but had looked stunning.
We laugh about it now, but it is worth questioning where you get your ideas of beauty and ugliness from….
Try these for a few ideas:
EBTS Boxwood Growers Forum
Through the European Boxwood and Topiary Society I worked with Chris Poole and Sue Mesher, members of the EBTS board, and we set up a Boxwood Growers Forum. This was to discuss how to make sure this wonderful topiary plant stays in the public conscioussness – we know many growers, suppliers and distributors have stopped selling it as the cost of replacing boxwood that has blight, or is nibbled by the boxwood caterpillar, makes it unviable to offer to clients and gardeners. But Boxwood is a phoenix plant, and there are ways to deal with the problems associated with Buxus. …
Modern Topiarist @ Garden Masterclass Poland
My video on Modern Topiary for Garden Masterclass has been translated into Polish, for the keen gardeners (and happy pruners!) of Garedn Masterclass in Poland. Tickets for the first showing and q and a were available here. But it will become available on the Garden Masterclass Poland website at some point in the near future – so if you are a keen clipper and want to know more, but speak Polish and not English, then I suggest you visit the website and get watching. (Of course, if you don’t speak English, you may not be able to read this…. hmmm… …
Topiary Hotline
The European Boxwood & Topiary Society are to run a Topiary Hotline for keen gardeners and people who love to clip. Date is tomorrow, April 16th 2024, and you can get a ticket for the Zoom meeting here – Topiary Hotline. Run by Chris Poole and myself, we set this up as an antidote to the huge amount of questions we have to answer about topiary throughout the summer. The plus is that their is an excitement around topiary and pruning. The problem is we need to help people in a better way… … so we will be giving people …