THE MODERN MINT BLOG
Landscaper Essex
Landscaper Essex? Here are photos from a project Modern Mint have been working on over the last few years – do contact us if you want to chat about how we, as a garden designer or landscaper, can help you with your garden.
Alternating cherries and apples along a serpentine wall of this long driveway helps to soften the landscaping…
Low maintenance planting against the house to repalce a rose that had died. Ceanothus will grow taller to add a better sense of scale and interest to the wall.
Check out the rosebay in flower over the wall – nightmare weeding the seeds that land in a traditional border, here any that are missed look integrated into the landscaping…
Slowly turning a traditional herbaceous border into something more akin to a meadow…
This monarda has grown beautifully this year…
Phlox and lavender look good together, but don’t enjoy the same growing conditions – however, here the lavender is planted at the top of a wall above the border of phlox!
The view down from the rose garden…
We started gardening in Hampshire, learning our trade as landscapers on large estates – designing them to look good while also making them easier to maintain.
You can now find us working as a landscaper in Essex, as we moved to the county at the end of 2013. See the Modern Mint About Us page to hear our story.
If you have a garden that isn’t as great as you want it to be, or are finding it difficult to express what it is you want, do check out our portfolio for the work we have done as a designer and landscaper in Essex, Hampshire and Berkshire.
Then contact us now for an informal chat about how we can help.
Happy gardening!
Clipsham Yew Tree Avenue
With Chris Poole of the European Boxwood and Topiary Society we visited Clipsham Yew Tree Avenue in Rutland. Do you know it? Amazing place! Chris and I were teaching a topiary workshop in order to give local people the skills and technique, and tenacity! to help with the pruning of the avenue and elevate it to something even more special than it already is. Read more about the workshops here. We hope to run a further workshop in September 2026, as well as teach an advanced course too. Check the teaching page through the year as it will be updated …
Aesthetic Pruners Association – New Talk In December
An organisation I love and have been learning lots from in the last two years is the Aesthetic Pruners Association based in the USA. Sharing knowledge with them about clipping and the overlap – and differences! – in style is something worth exploring, so I recommend a visit to their website and to join onto their events and talks, which are all on Zoom meaning you can access them from anywhere in the world. No excuse not to learn! The next event will be led by Jocelyn Cohen and be about ancient trees in the British Landscape. This is such …
The Amelia Project – Episode 88: Didius Julianus
Friends of mine write a sitcom podcast called The Amelia Project (I wrote about this years ago, when they started it….!) December 2024 I had some fun playing the tiny part of Fornio in episode 88 – Didius Julianus. I have not listened to the episode yet, as I am clearly not an actor… and the thought of listening to my dulcet tones for the few minutes I’m in it just… makes me feel ill. But the recording and being in the studio was great fun, the real actors were hilarious and the script is brilliant – not just funny, …