THE MODERN MINT BLOG
Unusual Vegetable Garden
Yesterday Modern Mint were sent these photos of an unusual vegetable garden, from a reader of the blog in Oxford. We wanted to share these pictures with you as we think the idea is absolutely wonderful…!
This is what she had to say…
“We harvested the first courgettes last week and the first tomatoes can be seen on the vine! First handful of beans were harvested yesterday! This is so so great – and we got everything for free, scavenging in skips and on the roadside!
Hope your well and keep up the great site and the super blog. Really enjoy reading it!”
Great yes? An unused car parking space in the city becomes a productive garden… it almost has a touch of guerrilla gardening about it…
We hope you are growing vegetables and able to harvest your own produce. We always love to see photos of what you can do so please do contact us if you have any unusual vegetable garden ideas to share!
For seeds you should be growing – visit Real Seeds – they, along with Joy Larkcom (mentioned below) are the best resource for all things ‘vegetable garden’. Each year, every one of our clients gets given seeds from us that we have got from Real Seeds. Why? Because they do the most unusual vegetable garden seeds and are completely open about how they operate.
Last of all, for advice on growing your own look no further than these books by Joy Larkcom, the Queen of Vegetable Growers…
How did she become the Queen of the Vegetable Garden? Her memoir will tell you…
Topiary Teaching For 2026
A new year, so time to share a few thoughts on what I will be looking at doing with topiary, and the focus on teaching I would like to put in place, for 2026 and beyond. Above is Nandina, made by a student of ours from the European Boxwood and Topiary Society. She took a year to work on this, taking a plant not renowned for being a good topiary plant, but seeing what its weirdness is and what values it does have, then exploring and exploding those. I am thrilled by this. Not just this look for autumn. A …
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 …
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 …