Friday, April 8, 2016

Gardener Abuse

Gardeners are underpaid. We all know that. They are also often not understood. All too often I have been involved professionally with a garden where garden staff are employed but those employing them only have the dimmest idea of what they do and even less of why they do it. Garden staff, of course, work outside – so tend to be in isolation from both any other staff employed or their employers. They work with living things in an environment which is never predictable, and which inevitably remains mysterious to those employing them. 

Of course people who are employed, outside, doing things which remain a mystery, they will get asked to do other things, which appear to those in charge to be a) more urgent, and b) less of a mystery. In my experience of working with both large garden owners and gardeners I have come across too many examples of what could be called 'gardener abuse'. This takes many forms.
In many cases this abuse is exacerbated by the problems caused by employers with TMM (Too Much Money). Just because someone has been very successful in their particular field, i.e. has made a pile, in no way reflects on their abilities in any other field. The extremely successful/wealthy are often dysfunctional and chaotic in fields other than that in which they have succeeded – indeed are often more so, or they marry dysfunctional and chaotic people, or employ likewise. Having lots of money and being D&C can produce some pretty spectacular results.

General Dogsbody
Its winter and there are pile of chairs in the great hall that need moving back into storage after that wedding party. There can't be anything useful the gardener is doing. Get him to move them. Ditto painting, odd DIY.
As any gardener can tell you, there are plenty of things to do in winter. Try telling the average employer-of-a-gardener that and their eyes begin to glaze over. You can see they don't believe you.

Waste Disposal
Gardens are big places, often big enough to bury, or at least hide, large quantities of unwanted building materials or other debris, which the local authority rather inconsiderately charge for removing. And of course there is the gardener who, because he/she spends all their time outside knows the best places to bury or hide them. Or burn them. I once had dealings with a nursing home (since closed down) where one of the gardener's weekly jobs was to take away and burn all the old incontinence nappies from the residents. Yes, really.

Vehicle management
One thing those afflicted by TMM tend to do is to buy too many cars. These need to be taken out every now and again and 'exercised', though not as much as horses of course. Some gardeners quite enjoy taking the Bentley out for a spin every now and again, but it is not exactly horticulture. Sometimes it all gets a bit too much. I once visited a garden where, in an out of the way corner, I came across a Hummer parked next to a Ferrari: all their tyres were flat, they were covered in leaves, and grass was beginning to grow on the tarmac around them.

Animal Husbandry
The gardener is outside all the time, as are the animals, so it seems reasonable enough for the former to look after the latter. Not all the time of course, just sometimes. Animals are sometimes bought and installed without much thinking through basic welfare provision, like access to water or food; inevitably it is the gardener who notices and has to deal with the situation. Animals tend to escape and if they are sheep or horses, tend to gravitate to the nice juicy vegetables or tasty perennials which the gardener has responsibility for, necessitating the gardener spending rather more time on fencing than gardening.

Packing the children off to boarding school may strike the rest of us as callous (and is something which tends to horrify non-Brits), but at least (these days) they are kept amused, safe and stimulated at school. Not always so if they are at home, especially home and alone. I sometimes think that many of the children of the extremely wealthy are so neglected there should be a charity especially for them, a bit like the charities that have been established in India to look after the children of drug-addicted western hippies. So it is the gardener they hang around, either because they are the only other human being on the premises, or because the housekeeper has had enough of them hanging around their ankles and sent them outside. Fine, if they can be gotten interested in what the gardener is doing and in some cases this can be the beginning of a great gardening life, but not so fine if they can't be. Or, if they are, as I have heard more than once, “psychotic spoiled brats” who actually have to be supervised if they are not to wreak havoc.

Actually this is not so much a problem for the gardener, as the garden designer or consultant, who is more likely to be seen as a social equal and therefore someone who one can pour out one's problems to, especially if one is a neglected spouse (let's face it, usually a wife), abandoned in a vast house, with no neighbours in sight, with a load of responsibility you never wanted (managing the gardener for a start) and an overstocked drinks cabinet.

Garden Design
The distinctions between what a garden designer does and a gardener does are pretty hazy to people who don't really know what goes on outside anyway. The gardener comes in every day, plants stuff, grows stuff, they can do something with that new bit half way up the drive can't they? One could get a designer in, but that would be expensive, better get the gardener to do it.

The other side of the story
There are the lucky few who garden for employers who they almost never see, but who pay them well, resource the garden well, let them plant what they want and trust them with property while they are away (which is most of the time). The gardener may feel a bit unappreciated but if they have the run of an enormous house, can have their friends round every now and again, have lots of expensive kit to charge around the acres in, who can complain?

Then there are the employers who are dedicated gardeners themselves, who work their socks off, the ones who go to parties painfully aware of the dirt beneath their fingernails they can't quite get out, but who are afflicted by hopeless gardeners, who came with good references and solid CVs, who interviewed well, but are actually.... well what do they do all day? Sacking them is difficult because of employment protection legislation. 

Finally, there are those, not that common, but oh so wonderful when you do come across them, employer-gardener relationships which are truly synergistic: mutual trust, shared interest, goals you both agree on and understand. These have made some of the very best gardens.