THE MODERN MINT BLOG

Jun22

Notes from Blenheim Palace Flower Show

After a wonderful weekend at Blenheim Palace Flower Show, where Darren of Modern Mint gave a number of garden talks alongside a few famous faces, we thought we would share some more information about what he spoke of in the talk.

 

ian mckellen

 

The talk was called ‘Tips for Tomatoes’ and was based on research you can find in a new book by James Wong, who suggested watering your tomatoes with aspirin will increase the vitamin C content in the fruit.

Take a look at this excellent book…

Darren also talked about:

The best plants for bees (Helenium is the very best, if you are asking….)

Where you can recycle your plastic plant pots, as well as what they can be made into – Recycle your plant pots!

The strange things people say when their vegetables need a wash.

Vegetable-Brush Featured Image

 

The gender divide in gardening, which is best summed up by the tools a female gardener will use compared to a male.

For the female gardener
For the female gardener

 

For the male!
For the male!

And finally, what he thinks is one of the major tenets for becoming a good gardener…

When in your garden, observe observe observe!

Thank you to everyone who came to Blenheim Palace Flower Show and made the talks such great fun. We hope you have a wonderful gardening season and do explore the Modern Mint website further for more ideas on Modern Gardening.

For example, you might like this…

 

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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