THE MODERN MINT BLOG
Organic Gardening
This post on organic gardening started with us chatting to a vegan. He was suggesting that the moment you mentioned to people you were vegan, they labelled you, judged you on the kind of person you are and the problems you would cause them if they invited you to dinner.
We feel the same happens when you mention to people you are an organic gardener, or you work your garden on organic principles.
They seem to lean away from you, as if you are dirty, and most definitely untidy (who could allow weeds in their garden? And it is no excuse just to grin and call them ‘wildflowers!’) They seem to turn away from you, as if you are about to spit an argument about not using pesticides right into their faces. They breathe in sharply, readying themselves to tell you why they spray a herbicide (to ease maintenance, to annihalate the roots of the plants they don’t want… and because organic gardening ‘just doesn’t work’…)
If they are an organic gardener mind, they will smile and laugh and clap you on the back as if you are their oldest friend, just returned from 6 months at sea. It is a lovely thing, to know you are part of the gang.
But still, that tense moment when you tell someone you garden organically, you have to be ready for it, because you just don’t know which way they will respond. This is a problem, this judgement, all because of the word organic.
What about just calling it gardening?
As with our vegan friend, who feels put into a box the moment he suggests he lives a life without animal products, we would love to see a change in attitude from the one side who garden with chemicals, and the other side who garden without. Instead of creating these tribes, affiliating ourselves with those who believe in what we believe, how about we strive to just see each other as an important (yet small) part of the natural world – its custodians?
Three cheers to the day then, when organic gardening is called gardening (just like it used to be called, before anyone had ever heard of something like weedkiller!)
Three cheers to the day when a vegan diet is called eating food.
And three cheers to anyone who gets out into their garden, rolls up their sleeves, and gets stuck into growing plants as well as they possibly can. And we, us organic gardeners, might just find that the more people garden the less chemicals they will use – after all, it happened to us, didn’t it?
Michael Gibson, New York Topiary Art!
In the New York Times earlier this year was a lovely interview with Michael Gibson, who makes topiary and gardens in New York. The article is here but you may not have access… however, search the internet, find it and have a read. It is great! His philosophy of pruning is especially worth it… Sacred geometry in topiary? Yes please! What a phrase! I think (and speak) of balance, of major and minor, of leaf volume… but sacred geometry might well make it into my topiary teaching lexicon! And the idea of directional trimming? I realise I do this, but …
Topiary Library
I do a lot of teaching topiary. I had the opportunity from my mentor, Charlotte Molesworth, to work on her garden and experiment and test techniques and generally try making shapes without the worry of failure, or being fired, or being sued and run out of business for getting it wrong. This opportunity was essential (along with Charlotte’s insistance that pruning standards had to be high!) in becoming better at topiary. When I look around the world at our cultural vitamins, what we see in the media day in and day out, I see the stupidest and grossest of people …
Clipsham Yew Tree Avenue
With Chris Poole of the European Boxwood and Topiary Society we visited Clipsham Yew Tree Avenue in Rutland. Do you know it? Amazing place! Chris and I were teaching a topiary workshop in order to give local people the skills and technique, and tenacity! to help with the pruning of the avenue and elevate it to something even more special than it already is. Read more about the workshops here. We hope to run a further workshop in September 2026, as well as teach an advanced course too. Check the teaching page through the year as it will be updated …