THE MODERN MINT BLOG

May25

Dan Pearson’s Must-Have Plants: Ferns, Grasses & Half-Hardy Perennials

This is the second in our plant inspiration guide from garden designer Dan Pearson… he has been sharing the plants he loves to use, and I think it is a fascinating series and major help when trying to work out what you can add to your garden.

My own love in the garden is topiary, but topiary really works best when planted with and around some of the plants in this blog.

So check them out below and see act you might add to your borders this year!

(Do check out this review of his excellent book ‘Spirit’.)

Ferns

Adiantum venustum

Asplenium scolopendrium

Athyrium ‘Ghost’

Dryopteris wallichiana

Osmunda regalis

Grasses

Briza media

Hakonechloa macra ‘All Gold’

Miscanthus sinensis ‘Malepartus’

Molinia caerulea subsp. Arundinacea ‘Transparent’

Panicum virgatum ‘Shenandoah’

Stipa barbata

Thamnochortus insignis

Half-hardy Perennials

Dahlia merckii ‘Alba’

Pelargonium tomentosum

Salvia discolor

Read Part 1, part 3, Part 4.

Further Reading:

Natural Selection: A Year In The Garden

Designing With Grasses

Apr16

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. …

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Apr15

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… …

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Apr15

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 …

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