THE MODERN MINT BLOG
Modern Mint are running a project for the Chelsea Fringe.
The project is called “You Should Have Seen It Last Week…” a phrase you will often hear a gardener say when they show someone around their garden. It seems wherever you go, the garden always had less weeds and more flowers back then…!
What is the Chelsea Fringe?
If the Chelsea flower show is the spectacular, trendy, stunning starlet of the horticultural world, the Chelsea fringe is the anarchic, homemade, anything goes fun lover that won’t be home until dawn.
Now in its 3rd year, it is a platform for artists and gardeners to express themselves, to club together for three weeks and encourage gardening in all its forms. If it is interesting, related to horticulture and legal, it’s in.
A real positive for London, as urban space gets ‘greened-up’, there is also great virtue in not spending a lot of money, being imaginative and sharing in the goodwill out there as spring begins turning into summer.
What is the project?
A group of willing photographers, including Tower Hamlets Cemetery and garden designers Amalia Robredo and Anthea Harrison, will be taking photographs of a plant or landscape everyday for three weeks, from May 17th to June 8th.
These pictures will then be placed on the Chelsea Fringe page of the Modern Mint website, and as material builds we will be able to see a gallery of what the plant or plants did actually look like last week!
Where did the idea come from?
The phrase “… you should have seen it last week…” is a normal part of the gardener’s armoury, and worth poking a little fun at. We also tried to get people from all over the world, not just the UK, to take part (and we managed it, with two gardens from the southern hemisphere and several more from across Europe) as we thought it would be great fun to see and compare a peony in Kent just coming into flower, while a cherry blossom from Kyoto begins to pale and fade… while someone in Northern Scandinavia photos the snow melting from the petals of a crocus.
Taking a photo everyday for the whole duration of the Chelsea Fringe also gives us a chance to see how it changes, a flowery version of this, basically… http://everyday.noahkalina.com/
We hope you enjoy and look forward to hearing what you think!
Happy Chelsea Fringe!
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 …