THE MODERN MINT BLOG

Jul30

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!”

 

Before - just a parking space...
Before – just a parking space…

 

 

 

After - a productive veg patch!
After – a productive veg patch!

 

 

Unusual Vegetable Garden
Unusual Vegetable Garden

 

aubergine

 

Great yes? An unused car parking space in the city becomes a productive garden… it almost has a touch of guerrilla gardening about it…

Tomato!
Tomato!

 

beans

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…

Grow Your Own Vegetables

The Organic Salad Garden

Creative Vegetable Gardening

Oriental Vegetables

How did she become the Queen of the Vegetable Garden? Her memoir will tell you…

Just Vegetating: A Memoir

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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