THE MODERN MINT BLOG

Aug09

Topiary For Designers (& Other Pruning)

If you are a garden designer in need of some topiary for a project, please do get in touch here at Modern Mint.

Darren has been pruning trees and hedges for 18 years. Charlotte has been a topiary artist (and is the best you will find) for well over 3 decades. topiary artists

We are happy to help you design a topiary, provide ideas or feedback for an existing piece, maintain a sculpture to the highest standard or advise on the health and management of the plants.

We work all over the UK and into Europe.

Often we are asked to prune and sculpt in boxwood or yew, but are equally at home working with deciduous plants. Also don’t forget that heavy set evergreen shrubs, like camellias for example, can be made a feature of the garden through judicious cutting in the just the right places.

Giving these shrubs air, light and a feeling of transparency is all part of the topiary arts.

You can see a recent interview we gave to the Guardian, with photos, here – Cutting Hedge Technology.

Topiary Modern Mint

Or please do contact us now to talk through your project.

Many thanks!

Darren and Charlotte

Aug04

Box Hill – Novella by Adam Mars-Jones

I picked this book up back in 2020 because of the title – Box Hill – fabulous, I thought, a book about boxwood. I’ll peruse this for its respective thoughts on the plant I clip most when I make topiary. I didn’t read the blurb on the back. Didn’t know the author (although I knew the publisher, Fitzcarraldo Editions, as I love many of the essays they have published… so trusted the author would be worth spending time with.) By page 2 I realised this novel wasn’t quite what I had expected. I started the book at 10pm, after getting …

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Apr14

Topiary, The Art Garden at The Henderson

The Art Garden at The Henderson in Hong-Kong has now opened to the public. I joined the project last March, to work with Gillespies Landscape Architects on the topiary that had been designed for the Art Garden, which gives a calm, green space below the extraordinary Henderson skyscraper designed by Zaha Hadid Architects. The garden has been designed with butterflies in mind, so lots of nectar plants, and has other art projects and installations within its footprint. The history of the site is interesting too – it was originally the first cricket ground in Hong-Kong! So still a green space….! …

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