THE MODERN MINT BLOG
South East Essex Organic Gardeners – a fantastic resource for those who have a garden in Essex and want to work it …
Plants for Clay Soil
There are lots of plants for clay soil. Difficult as it is to work with, the opportunities to tend a fabulous garden of well-fed, strong and voluptuous plants are second to none (just try not to despair, at the end of the day, when trying to remove the clay from your boots!) Roses are the absolute first choice for clay. We made a beautiful rose garden for a client in Hampshire. It was on blue clay and halfway down a gentle slope, so got plenty of water. Each bed had a single variety of rose in, 15 plants per bed, and it looked fabulous as you peered through the hornbeam arch …
The Silence of Plants
The Silence of Plants By Wislawa Szymborska (Translated by Joanna Trzeciak) A one-sided relationship is developing quite well between you and me. I know what a leaf, petal, kernel, cone, and stem are, and I know what happens to you in April and December. Though my curiosity is unrequited, I gladly stoop for some of you, and for others I crane my neck. I have names for you: maple, burdock, liverwort, heather, juniper, mistletoe, and forget-me-not; but you have none for me. After all, we share a common journey. When traveling together, it’s normal to talk, exchanging remarks, say, about …
James Van Sweden (Part 2)
“No-one had ever seen anything like it. We were using perennials in a kind of meadow-like way, that was very different from anything anybody else was doing.“ James Van Sweden This is the style James Van Sweden, working with Wolfgang Oehme, created – known as the New American Garden. (For more about them, you can read part one here.) Starting by removing lawns from clients gardens, they then began planting masses (and masses and masses and masses) of perennials. “Wolfgang would take off his glasses, or not consider the scale of the drawing, and I’d say… Wolfgang that’s 5000 Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm’… GOOD! He’d …