THE MODERN MINT BLOG
Chelse Fringe, Week 2
Our Chelsea Fringe project ‘You Should Have Seen It Last Week…’ has now reached its second week and material gathered is now starting to look really good. If you haven’t been to a Chelsea Fringe project yet – what are you doing with your time?!?
The contrast between the plants in the southern hemisphere (which enters Autumn) and the project participants from Europe cannot be more marked – all that seems to change each day in Amalia Robredo’s photos is the sea, although if you look closely the fruits on the Cereus uruguayanus (cacti at the front) are being eaten by the birds.
The peonies from Willow in Italy and Oana in the UK have taken a slow evolution from flower bud to flower, but have now passed the stage of promise and are showing us their marvellous blooms, while the Essex garden started with a few tiny green shoots that now appear to be proper seedlings.
Anthea Harrison gave us a ‘ta-da’ moment last week, while Sophie seems to have a new flower everyday depending on when the sun hits the garden. Maja and Andrew Thorne’s garden in Germany is a beautiful contribution, forget-me-nots turning from blue to grey, daisies in the lawn coming and going depending on when they are mowed and flashes of colour from the roses as they open up in the garden…
Artist Gloria Sanvicente Amor chose to work with cut flowers. We watch in the knowledge they exist on borrowed time, losing a little more vitality and warmth each day – it reminds us of a family member coming to the end of a long illness, the urgency to share gracefully what time is left – these photos have been a soft reminder of these times.
We hope you are enjoying this project so far, please do keep coming back for its final week!
Thank you, Modern Mint and the Chelsea Fringe…
10 Years Of Modern Mint
On Valentine’s day this year (2024) Modern Mint, the company I started when I moved to Essex to explore a fresh, contemporary approach to gardening, will be 10 years old. The cliche is time flies… but it does! So much has happened in a decade, from studying topiary with Charlotte Molesworth, to clipping all over the UK (and eventually in the USA and Sweden) to selling shears and secateurs at garden shows and hiding away my reticence to give talks about gardening and topiary to Horticultural Societies across the UK. Ten years feels a good time to mark a new …
Garden Masterclass Trailer – The Modern Topiarist
In 2022 I did a free video for Garden Masterclass, the Annie Guilfoyle and Noel Kingsley run website that is a treasure trove of the great and good of the horticultural world – well worth looking through all the wonderful talks they have available, like meadow-maker James Hitchmough or nurserywoman Rosy Hardy. They are certainly inspirational! Perfect for watching and dreaming up new ideas during the winter months… As a follow-up to my Topiary Provocations video (which you can see on Youtube for free) I was asked to do a video for their Masterclass series on how to make topiary. …
Charlotte Molesworth’s Garden In The FT
The lovely garden of my mentor Charlotte Molesworth is featured here in the Financial Times in the last week or so… She has been interviewed lots of times but I thought this was a particularly great piece, with some photos done at unusual angles and different parts… so well worth a read. For more on topiary by Charlotte Molesworth…