We have recently been presenting a new garden talk – ‘What Do I Do With This Space?’ – to a number of gardening groups in Essex. (To find out where we are presenting the talk next, please visit the Talks page.) What looks like a simple question has turned out to be incredibly complex to answer, and in a one hour talk of free form ideas we barely have time to scratch the surface. What do people do with the land around them? How does the landscape inform their lives and the choices they make? For example, some people have enough …

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We want to quote today from a book by playwright Steve Waters – The Secret Life Of Plays – as we think it ties in beautifully with a way of thinking about gardening and garden design. “A play is a space to house a human story and must have give and, well, ‘play’ in it.” We love this. The quote has important words in, like ‘space ‘and ‘house’ and ‘story’… ‘human’ and ‘give’… the word ‘play’ is so significant it is repeated, and the second time given its own quotation marks! But replace the word ‘play’ with ‘garden’ (after all, it is ‘gardening’ …

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Happy New Year from Darren and Chloe at Modern Mint! Modern Mint will be turning 1 next month and what a busy year it has been… … we have designed gardens, sown meadows, written nearly 200 blog posts, took part in the Chelsea Fringe, performed a new garden show called ‘What Do You Do With This Space?’ and started an online shop to showcase the best in artisan talent – furniture makers, tool makers, soap makers – we are seeking them out and sharing them with you! Excited? Absolutely. Garden Design With 5 designs on the go at the moment, …

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