THE MODERN MINT BLOG
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, and 2 meadows taking shape, we have a busy spring this year. And already the phone has been going for more work! So do get in quick if you need help and ideas with your garden this year.
Here are our major projects currently on the go:
A large garden in Upminster, Essex.
A small, private garden in North London.
A large garden in Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex.
Phase two of a large, private garden in Gidea Park, Essex.
Phase two of a meadow in Gidea Park, Essex.
Phase two of a meadow in Grove Park, London.
Organic Topiary
We also have our new shears coming this weekend, to help us with our Organic Topiary work in 2015 – we have been asked to sculpt a number of hedges and trees to give them a more dynamic look.
If you want to know more about this new form of topiary, check out these blog posts:
Or better yet, send us a message. We’d love to tell you why Organic Topiary has such cutting edge style (hehehe…)
Shop
Our shop is a platform for us to share with you the products we love – products that are sustainably sourced, hand-made, beautifully crafted, and support the idiosyncratic voices of the artisans who make them.
They are products for the home and the garden, and our list of suppliers is growing all the time.
If you know someone who is, shall we say, a little different…? Please tell them about us! We want to hear from them. And you, of course – if you want a particualr product, of a high quality, and you just can’t find it on the High Street – let us know and we will seek it out for you.
See our shop to discover what we have already found in our first 3 months since opening…
Blog
Top 5 posts from 2014:
2) Interview with Rosy Bee – Plants for Bees
3) 9 Ideas for a Cut Flower Business
5) Dan Pearson’s Must-Have Plants
Chelsea Fringe
We are curating a book of manifestos answering the question – why do you cultivate your garden? Each manifesto is no more than 100 words. This is a call for authors and garden enthusiasts to share their ideas with us – come on, 100 words – you have that in you, right?
Find out more here Chelsea Fringe 2015 Modern Mint.
Do follow us on Twitter to find out more – and have a great 2015 everyone – from Darren and Chloe at Modern Mint!
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. …
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… …
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 …