THE MODERN MINT BLOG
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Welcome to Modern Mint, for home and garden.
We never intended to be a shop. We started as a garden design firm, helping people who felt overwhelmed by their garden learn, season by season, how to make it a beautiful place.
To promote good garden practise we began adding articles to the Modern Mint website. There are now 100’s to explore ranging from environmental issues, to practical techniques for growing flowers, to discussing why we sell a particular item at Modern Mint.
To help you explore it we have provided this Start Here page. Just scroll down to find what interests you the most!
Start here for some free stuff – an e-book we curated for the Chelsea Fringe Festival…
Download ‘Contemporary Green’, a free e-book from Modern Mint
Start here to read some of our most popular garden interviews and essays:
Manifesto for the Modern Gardener
9 Ideas for a Cut Flower Business
The Alternative Guide To What To Do In The Garden This Month
The Charity We Support – Pets as Therapy
Start here for our top products:
Copper Tools for Organic Slug Prevention
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Thank you from all of us at Modern Mint!
Darren
Chloe
Stefano
Brought By Bike – Topiary Making
Brought By Bike is an excellent website I found last month, where businesses offer their services by (of course) bicycle. Modern Mint and my topiary work is now live on the site offering my topiary services, via bike, to the following two postcodes – CM1 CM2 Now I can imagine I will need to borrow a ladder should anyone have a larger shrub, but most town gardens in the Chelmsford area have a need not just for privacy but to let light into the house… so a balance must be struck when shaping hedges and shrubs to cover both needs. …
Transforming Topiary
Transforming Topiary – a video made for the European Boxwood And Topiary Society by Charlotte Molesworth and I, in her garden. We take a dog topiary and work out how to update it, turning it into a bird. Worth a watch I think, and hopefully useful to you! You can see more of my clipping on the topiary page. Or read my Spring 2021 Topiary Provocation here.
Phillyrea From 1682
Phillyrea is one of my favourite plants for topiary. I have been using it for quite a few years as a specimen shrub, mostly due to the fact it clips well and has a tough habit – all good characteristics for a topiary plant. It also has a reputation for being an excellent nectar source for bees… Read more about Phillyrea here. Mentioning this to Malcolm Thicke, a market garden historian and writer, he sent me a some photos of topiary and phillyrea mentioned by John Worlidge in Systema Horticulturae from 1682…. incredible! He also mentioned to me that in …