THE MODERN MINT BLOG

Jun10

Brought By Bike – Topiary Making

Brought By Bike is an excellent website I found last month, where businesses offer their services by (of course) bicycle.

Modern Mint and my topiary work is now live on the site offering my topiary services, via bike, to the following two postcodes –

CM1

CM2

Now I can imagine I will need to borrow a ladder should anyone have a larger shrub, but most town gardens in the Chelmsford area have a need not just for privacy but to let light into the house… so a balance must be struck when shaping hedges and shrubs to cover both needs.

So hopefully I won’t need to borrow a ladder too often, as people will want shorter topiary designs. I believe the topiary work will entail more of an editing down of branches, to create a dappled light – so lots of mophead topiaries, or acer pruning, or funny swirls and blobs…

 

topiary swirltools recommend

Using a bike to get to work is a dream of mine…. the reduction in my carbon footprint, the exercise and just the slightly less hurried nature of it all – the work will be done, and I will hear see a little of the world on my way there!

As an aside, if you would like to reduce your carbon footprint, you can plant a tree – Trees For Life.

Or use Bulb as your energy supplier, as I do at home – Quote For Renewable Energy At Home.

So I hope if you live in Chelmsford you will consider having your topiary composition Brought By Bike. To see more of my topiary work go here, or get in touch and we can chat about how I could help you.

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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