THE MODERN MINT BLOG
Best Gardening Hat
The photo above has a truly international flavour – an Italian wearing a Brazilian gardening hat!
Our very own Stefano posed for this shot last week in Chelmsford, Essex, surrounded by the beautiful flower heads of Stipa gigantea (a plant that has an exotic travelling history itself, being found growing wild in Southern Spain and into Morocco…)
He was wearing a new product we have here at Modern Mint – the eco-friendly gardening hat!

This is a product we discovered about 12 months ago when one of our lovely clients told us about it. He said it was durable, strong, kept off the sun and the rain and best of all it was a hat made from recycled materials!
We were thrilled with it so decided to spend the next year testing it out in all conditions, to see if this hat really was the product it appeared to be. Lo and behold, it passed all the tests and has now made it into the Modern Mint ranks.
Check out the eco-friendly gardening hat.

The hat is made from truck tarpaulins that have been used on cargo trucks running from the North to the South of Brazil, carrying the beans of the coffee you may have drunk this morning. These hats have seen it all – the sunshine, the rain, the red dust roads, giving them a look that no factory could ever hope to replicate.
Each hat is unique and tells a different story of its trucking life below the equator. They are built to last, and should keep the weather off of you here in Blighty!
The making of the hats is done with adult only labour in Brazil, and the employees work in good conditions and are paid a living wage. Which goes without saying, right?
We provide sizes for people with big heads, people with medium sized heads and people with small heads – do see the size guide for more information but you should be able to get a recycled hat that fits you!
We cherish our eco-friendly, recycled, strong and weather resistant gardening hat from Brazil – we hope you will enjoy it too.
Why I Wrote The Book Modern Topiary
I have written this book, Modern Topiary, because I wanted a collation of useful information that would give people access to everything they need to know in order to start making topiary. Topiary is an amazing (and niche) line of work to follow – amazing because it offers up opportunities to travel all over the world, making gardens, meeting people… but also, the work is intensely physical, hands-on, yet requires creative thinking in order to solve the puzzle of how to make the shapes you want. This mixture of the craft and the art is what I love the most …
Buxus the Norfolk Terrier In Modern Topiary Book
This is Buxus, our Norfolk Terrier, who I acknowledge in the acknowledgments of the book of Modern Topiary. The book of Modern Topiary can be read, for free, here. There you go. Buxus the dog on ‘doorstep duty’ at a friend’s house in Edinburgh. For those asking what he looked like!
What People Think Of Modern Topiary, The Book
Yesterday I put out the book – Modern Topiary – that I have spent the last six years writing. Download for free a pdf of Modern Topiary here. And what seems amazing to me, is that not only have people actually been reading it, but then responding to it. So below are a number of comments I have been sent from those who read it last night, and this morning…. “Brilliant read, exactly the right amount of info to take in and digest.” Rachel, a gardener “I love your book, the advice is so straightforward and your writing is so …

