THE MODERN MINT BLOG
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. 
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.
Or please do contact us now to talk through your project.
Many thanks!
Darren and Charlotte
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, …
Waltham Place Topiary Workshop 2026
With the European Boxwood and Topiary Society, I run two workshops each year at Waltham Place, one of my favourite gardens. The next topiary workshop there will be on Friday September 4th 2026. Details and how to book yet to be announced, but get in touch with them now to get on the waiting list, as last year we had double the amount of people wanting a place than we had space for. The Waltham Place website is here – topiary workshop 2026. See the teaching page for how else I can help you with the topiary in your garden …
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 …