THE MODERN MINT BLOG
Over the weekend we saw an advert for Artificial Lawn that claimed it was the ‘only alternative to mowing!’
Let us be serious – that is no more than marketing hype, and a lie.
The first alternative to mowing that springs to our mind is… don’t mow. Really, keep it that simple, and don’t mow. Let the grass grow longer, flower and set seed… and see how the garden looks.
You might be surprised by what grows when a lawnmower is not cutting the heads off a plant every week through the growing season – orchids have even been known to make an appearance – and all that spare time you now have because you are not mowing for hours on end every weekend will mean you can study what these plants, now allowed to perform, actually are.
What happens though, when it gets to the end of summer, and you want to tidy up? It’s not a difficult question to answer, though we find it often falls on deaf ears because the answer is not what people want to hear. We suggest hiring a scythe mower for the day, to get all the work done at once. This solution is shrugged off as too much hard work (the people doing the shrugging conveniently forgetting the work saved over the previous 6 months.)
What about hiring someone with a strimmer? No.
Facetiously, we then suggest bringing in sheep. This answer also gets shrugged off (and it probably deserves it too – although we’d love to see a sheperd bringing his flock into the back garden for a few days – the neighbours perhaps wouldn’t.)
You could always dig up and start your lawn again, this time sowing a grass seed that either grows slowly or doesn’t get very tall.
Or better still, make the lawn area into a pond – there will be a huge increase in wildlife in your garden and it will also give you the same calming view to look out on as a lawn provides.
It takes a brave person to give up their lawn. But doing so really will give you more time to do something more interesting than mow. And if you hear someone say there is no alternative to a lawn, or that artificial lawn is the only alternative to grass – send them to us – we don’t mind telling them straight.
(Yep, someone really wrote this book…)
10 Years Of Modern Mint
On Valentine’s day this year (2024) Modern Mint, the company I started when I moved to Essex to explore a fresh, contemporary approach to gardening, will be 10 years old. The cliche is time flies… but it does! So much has happened in a decade, from studying topiary with Charlotte Molesworth, to clipping all over the UK (and eventually in the USA and Sweden) to selling shears and secateurs at garden shows and hiding away my reticence to give talks about gardening and topiary to Horticultural Societies across the UK. Ten years feels a good time to mark a new …
Garden Masterclass Trailer – The Modern Topiarist
In 2022 I did a free video for Garden Masterclass, the Annie Guilfoyle and Noel Kingsley run website that is a treasure trove of the great and good of the horticultural world – well worth looking through all the wonderful talks they have available, like meadow-maker James Hitchmough or nurserywoman Rosy Hardy. They are certainly inspirational! Perfect for watching and dreaming up new ideas during the winter months… As a follow-up to my Topiary Provocations video (which you can see on Youtube for free) I was asked to do a video for their Masterclass series on how to make topiary. …
Charlotte Molesworth’s Garden In The FT
The lovely garden of my mentor Charlotte Molesworth is featured here in the Financial Times in the last week or so… She has been interviewed lots of times but I thought this was a particularly great piece, with some photos done at unusual angles and different parts… so well worth a read. For more on topiary by Charlotte Molesworth…