THE MODERN MINT BLOG

Mar25

If You Want To Waste Time Online…

If you want to waste time online… it is far too easy to do!

So we have chosen for you a number of posts worth reading online that will mean that, when you’ve finished, you won’t feel guilty about time lost. Because these are fabulous blogs. Not all are about gardening, but what they do have in common is a way of teaching you something, of taking you through an idea or a story that is worth hearing.

By spending time online with these ideas, you will give yourself something rich and deep to think about while you are head down weeding this spring.

Enjoy our five recommendations for online reading!

1) Whispering Giants by Sara Maitland

About wind farms an how to judge what is beautiful and what is not. So interesting as always from Sara Maitland, and the magazine it is published in – Aeon – is worth making a regular visit to.

2) The Farming Ladder by Michael Blanche

Brilliant thoughts into how to become a first generation farmer. Not easy, but exciting to see such creative thinking.

3) Farm Series photographs in Indie Farmer

Indie Farmer is another wonderful magazine, and this post talks about the work of photographer Rob MacInnis and how he managed to capture such funny and ridiculous images.

4) Career Advice by George Monbiot

Not one to hold back, here George Monbiot tells you to take the road less travelled – you might not earn much to begin with, but what a fun time you will have doing it. And what you learn along this odd road will pay for itself later on…

5) Outdoor Philosophy by Kate Rawles

Kate Rawles teaches about the environment. She wrote a book called the Carbon Cycle, where she cycled across the USA interviewing people she met along the way how they felt about climate change. You can imagine the responses there, yes?

Is that enough for now?

If you want more to read online we can offer you a few selections from our website… we loved making these interviews with interesting garden folk:

The Cycling Gardener of Liverpool.

Rosi Bee – plants for bees.

And of course, you can always check out this years garden design trends:

Garden Design Trends 2015.

Has that inspired you?

We do hope so. Now go get outside into the spring sunshine… rain… snow… whatever the weather holds, and get stuck into your garden jobs. The great stuff you can find online will always be there, but spring only comes once a year.

Happy gardening!

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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