THE MODERN MINT BLOG
The National Gardens Scheme is well underway for 2014. Yesterday we saw the garden at Ulting Wick in Essex, owned by Phillipa Burrough and run by herself and full-time gardener Neil.
This garden has been featured in Gardens Illustrated, and is renowned locally for the exuberant display of tulips in the spring. It was a real pleasure to walk around and superbly cared for – Phillipa herself was a pocket rocket dashing around with the lawnmower preparing for the big open day on Sunday 27th April. If you are free, do head to this part of Essex and take your time walking around.
We hope it inspires you to be bold with your choice of colour and style of plants!
This year the tulips in the Old Farmyard Garden have been replaced by a new planting scheme, due to a virus in the soil. It has an experimental look, and a competely different atmosphere to when it was packed with tulips, the bright stars of spring. To recreate that ‘wow’ factor in April, without using the variety of colour tulips bring you, is difficult. If you use spring flowers you will get a fresh, verdant look, with lots of yellow, white and blue. Beautiful, but not punchy. Neither will you get the flower power necessary from planting grasses or later season plants either, as in spring time these plants give you more a sense of gathering speed, of putting on their make-up for later. Perhaps biennials will prove the solution?
Already the owner is questioning how it could be improved for next year. This attitude to gardening is commendable and refreshing, as further experimenting will lead to further discoveries (and hopefully more of those breathtaking moments well loved gardens can provide!)
The garden at Ulting Wick is a well worth a visit. As is this one, at Furzelea…
For more garden ideas, check out these books…
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 …
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 …
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 …