However, I also recognise that there are many other branches of the discipline, all with their merits for different personalities. And there are first-rate practitioners in all these disciplines, all deserving of respect, and mostly receiving it in very limited doses. So hats off to all the dedicated landscapers, nurserymen, arborists, conservationists, commercial horticulturalists, designers and maintenance gardeners, whose enthusiasm leads to quality work. And a large raspberry to all the half-arsed freeloaders whose sloppy workmanship lets/drags us all down.
If you're a client out there, then remember that what we do is a skill that you probably haven't got, even if you think you have, so don't price us cheap as if we were unskilled labourers. We have spent a lot of time on the bread line to reach this level. On the other hand, don't assume that a high price means we are any good either. We may just have shrewd business practices like dodgy car salesmen (this is in no way to denigrate the honourable motor trade, which also exists). Do your research, look at the work, find the quality. It is out there for whatever service you require. It can just be obscured by a lot of people who think it's an easy living and are getting away with it. Find the right people and treat them with respect. Allow them to know more than you and you will be rewarded.
So, how was it for me? Well, in fact, the earth moved. I was a mature student embarking on an academic career, desperate to write, in as many languages as possible. I was on a study year abroad, head so bursting with ideas that I couldn't sleep properly. Then the village Fire Brigade felled a 100 year-old pear tree outside our little Gartenhaus, and I told the landlady I'd dig out the stump for her. 26 years old, never done any gardening in my life. Landlady looked sceptical. Several weeks later the stump was out, split with wedges, soil backfilled and a new lawn sown. I've never slept so well. That was my first lesson, and it was a powerful one. I had learned that I loved physical labour.
After a series of reverses in my fortunes, the academic life dropped out, and faced with harsh choices, I became a gardener, almost by accident. My career continued to be favoured by chance, and I soon found myself being absorbed at Head Gardener level by charitable organisations caring for country houses open to the public. It was always my intention to steer clear of the risks associated with working for private landowners. By luck, I seemed to drift into a specialised area of the work which suited me well, and I made my career in gardens which formerly had had quality, but either had descended or were descending into dereliction, from which sorry state it became my duty to rescue them. These were gardens which no one had found a solution for and which the owners had all but given up on. I was a sort of last-chance reprieve for the places in which I worked. This inevitably meant that I had considerable freedom of interpretation within the historic context, as no one else was able to devote much time to supervising what I did to such lost causes. I began to be trusted. As my confidence grew, this became very liberating. At first, of course, I was way out of my depth, a bit of a council-trained chancer in the company of highly-qualified Botanic Garden educated colleagues. That was quite intimidating early on, until it began to dawn on me that there were many different ways to interpret the brief, and that mine was as valid as anybody's.
Be in no doubt - gardening is many things, one of which is an interpretive art, like music or theatre.
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