THE MODERN MINT BLOG

May23

Our Desert Island Plant

For the Chelsea Fringe 2016 Modern Mint are asking you a simple question:

What is your Desert Island Plant?

We know, we know – it is a tough question to answer! Out of all the plants out there, all the wonderful flowers you could choose – which could you not live without?

See what other people have chosen.

We thought long and hard about our choice. A few of the also-rans were:

Wild primrose. The ‘first rose’ of the year, a simple flower with a beautiful soft colour. Looks as great en-masse as it does when you peer closely at just a single specimen. Love it!

Peony ‘Sarah Bernhardt’. Got to know this well when we grew cut flowers for florists, it look like a giant apple blossom and makes an incredible display in the garden or in the vase. The fragrance is to die for too.

Stipa gigantea. Anything with ‘gigantic’ in its name is going to be exciting, and this plant offers the most wonderful flower heads on long thin stems. Easy to grow, it can stand above shorter flowers in a border but never crowd them out or steal all the light. Reflects the sunshine from its beautiful flower.

Tell Us Your Desert Island Plant!

But the plant we have chosen, as our desert island plant, has got to be….

Buxus sempervirens. Green, used in just about every garden, it is our desert island plant because of the way it can be clipped. Grabbing a pair of shears and spending time cutting buxus into formal, tight shapes is a lovely way to spend a morning.

Box 4

Even better is to cut it into something a little less formal!

It took a lot of thinking about, but there you have it – our Desert Island Plant would be the beautiful and useful Buxus sempervirens. But we are interested in you –

What Is Your Desert Island Plant?

Jan08

Topiary Workshop 2026 at Waltham Place

The next topiary workshop I will be teaching is now live on the website and can be booked! Just visit Waltham Place to get a ticket for the Topiary Workshop I will be teaching on Friday September 4th at Waltham Place. Myself and Chris Poole of the European Boxwood and Topiary Society (Buxus expert! Like, he knows everything there is to know about the plant! So worth booking just to tap into his knowledge….!) will be teaching here for the… fifth year in a row I think? The garden is a beautiful place to spend time clipping. We will teach …

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Nov18

Michael Gibson, New York Topiary Art!

In the New York Times earlier this year was a lovely interview with Michael Gibson, who makes topiary and gardens in New York. The article is here but you may not have access… however, search the internet, find it and have a read. It is great! His philosophy of pruning is especially worth it… Sacred geometry in topiary? Yes please! What a phrase! I think (and speak) of balance, of major and minor, of leaf volume… but sacred geometry might well make it into my topiary teaching lexicon! And the idea of directional trimming? I realise I do this, but …

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Nov18

Topiary Library

I do a lot of teaching topiary. I had the opportunity from my mentor, Charlotte Molesworth, to work on her garden and experiment and test techniques and generally try making shapes without the worry of failure, or being fired, or being sued and run out of business for getting it wrong. This opportunity was essential (along with Charlotte’s insistance that pruning standards had to be high!) in becoming better at topiary. When I look around the world at our cultural vitamins, what we see in the media day in and day out, I see the stupidest and grossest of people …

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