THE MODERN MINT BLOG
Planting Trees In The UK
This June, we have been talking about planting trees in the UK.
Update March 2020: We now have a Grove Of Trees You Can Add To – Visit Here To Plant a Tree
Why Plant Trees In The UK?
Our recent Chelsea Fringe project was about using your garden to capture carbon.
One way of doing that was to plant trees. Trees take carbon from the air and turn in into…. themselves. Trees and woodlands are not actually the largest stores of carbon on the planet – that accolade goes to our oceans, followed up by our soils – but planting trees are a great way to capture some CO2 and keep it locked up, so that it does not contribute to warming our climate to a ridiculous (that means inhospitable) level.
We decided that in June, for every sale we had online we would plant trees here in the UK. It helps our landscape become a place full of woodlands, encouraging birds and bees and other insects to find home, improve their food chain and generally make the UK a more beautiful place to live.
Who wants to live in a denuded, harsh landscape?
Not us.
How To Plant A Tree In The UK
We don’t currently have the space here at Modern Mint to plant a tree for every sale from our online shop, but there are places who can make it happen for you – and they are fantastic organisations to support.
The first, and the one we will be using for this tree planting project, is Village Farm.
We love Village Farm and what they are doing. We have written about them before and they were an inspiration for our capture carbon project. Do check them out.
The other place we suggest you look at is the Trees For Life project, who are restoring the Caledonian Forest and rewilding the landscape in the Scottish Highlands. It is quite something.
So far we will be planting 15 trees here in the UK, from sales online in June.
If you want to make that number bigger, either go visit our shop and make an order – it can be the cheapest thing, it really does not matter. We will still plant a tree. Or visit either Village Farm or the Trees for Life project and ‘start a grove’ of your own.
Planting trees in the UK is a great thing to do. Go make it happen – for Queen, for country… and for your future, most importantly!
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 …