THE MODERN MINT BLOG

May01

Hypertufa High Jinks

The Chelsea Fringe is about all things gardening, but that doesn’t mean you always have to be outside. One of the online projects you can see at this years festival is ‘Hypertufa High Jinks’

Hypertufa-High-Jinks… ‘Hypertufa High Jinks’ is run by garden writer Ansel Oommen and science artist Cynthia Nguyen.

Follow Hetty the hypertufa elephant as she travels the ‘world’, magnifying the tiny spaces around us that often go unnoticed. So come down and take a closer look: that patch of weeds may as well be a jungle or that pebble, a treacherous mountain. You never know what stories lurk in the undergrowth when you let your imagination wander.

A brilliant idea!

Hetty’s adventures will be updated from New York City during the run of the festival (May 17th – June 8th.)

And don’t forget Modern Mint have their own online project “You Should Have Seen It Last Week…” if you crave even more online gardening fun… or it’s raining outside.

If it is raining outside… then get yourself a gardening book… we recommend…

Aug04

Box Hill – Novella by Adam Mars-Jones

I picked this book up back in 2020 because of the title – Box Hill – fabulous, I thought, a book about boxwood. I’ll peruse this for its respective thoughts on the plant I clip most when I make topiary. I didn’t read the blurb on the back. Didn’t know the author (although I knew the publisher, Fitzcarraldo Editions, as I love many of the essays they have published… so trusted the author would be worth spending time with.) By page 2 I realised this novel wasn’t quite what I had expected. I started the book at 10pm, after getting …

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Apr14

Topiary, The Art Garden at The Henderson

The Art Garden at The Henderson in Hong-Kong has now opened to the public. I joined the project last March, to work with Gillespies Landscape Architects on the topiary that had been designed for the Art Garden, which gives a calm, green space below the extraordinary Henderson skyscraper designed by Zaha Hadid Architects. The garden has been designed with butterflies in mind, so lots of nectar plants, and has other art projects and installations within its footprint. The history of the site is interesting too – it was originally the first cricket ground in Hong-Kong! So still a green space….! …

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