THE MODERN MINT BLOG
Green Elements
Green Elements: Cultivating Your Garden in Extraordinary Times is a brand new talk by Darren Lerigo of Modern Mint, premiering at the Quay Theatre in Sudbury March 12th 2017.
Darren, the resident speaker here at Modern Mint, will be presenting a brand new talk next year. It came about after being asked by Greener Sudbury, a group who promote sustainable living and biodiversity in the town and surrounding areas, to present an action packed talk about gardening that would get people inspired to get outside and get their hands into the soil.
They have asked him to put together a talk that will give people practical steps they can take to ‘green’ up their garden, but also link it to the wider world, so helping people discover exactly why our gardens and landscapes look and get managed the way they do.
Greener Sudbury are using Darren’s talk ‘Green Elements’ alongside a talk by the fantastic organic gardener Bob Flowerdew to promote the important aims of their group to more people in around Sudbury.
Do check out their website for more information. (Or visit the Quay Theatre website to book a ticket to Darren or Bob’s show!)
The Blurb for Green Elements
The blurb for Darren’s show on March 12th 2017 is below. It gives you a little frisson about the ideas he will be sharing with you:
Darren Lerigo is a former playwright, stand-up comedian, flower farmer and judge of the longest vegetable competition at the local WI.
With a CV like that, you know you’re in safe hands.
In Green Elements: Cultivating Your Garden in Extraordinary Times, Darren will explore how our gardens can have a positive impact in a modern world of unrelenting connection, cultural displacement and dwindling natural resources.
Drawing on garden ideas from around the world he will show you how to make your garden a haven for wildlife, reduce damage from slugs and snails, improve your flower borders, sequester carbon in the soil and help arrest the decline of our bee population.
All while growing sweet and tasty tomatoes for your dinner too.
If you are in need of some garden inspiration, or some real world horticultural advice, or perhaps just want a moment to stop and sniff the flowers, then Green Elements: Cultivating Your Garden in Extraordinary Times is the talk for you.
Cripey! If that doesn’t rock your world and get you heading over to the Quay Theatre website to book a ticket for you AND ALL YOUR FRIENDS RIGHT NOW then you must have been skim reading it.
Go on, go back and read it properly. We’ll wait…
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 …