Nevertheless, in defiance of this, today has nothing to do with gardening. It is a continuation of yesterday's musings. It concerns, initially, volunteers.
Most of the team of volunteers I inherited were involved with duties in the house on open days. They had had very strict training, and much to the disgust of some of them, they were expected to be security sentinels, and to engage as little as possible with the public. This was a considerable disappointment to many of them, who were proud of what they had to show off, and wanted to talk about it. When I first heard mutterings about this at the end-of-season party, I took my thoughts home with me. I must say, I agreed with them, and although the house was not to reopen for the next season for another six months, I resolved to do something about this in the future, even against organisational directives. How can a visitor enjoy the experience, if no one will engage with them? If all the people with badges on scrutinise every stranger with suspicion and express no interest or joy in what they are doing? Where does a visitor get information, if no one is disposed to speak to them? And let's face it, a good knowledgeable volunteer or member of staff has esoteric knowledge that goes way beyond anything that would appear in the guidebook. However, outbursts of ebullition were proscribed, for no reason that I could understand, and I vowed to channel enthusiasm productively the following April when we re-opened.
In addition, at that time, we had one volunteer in the garden, a dogged, determined man who attended regularly. This was at a time when even within a charitable organisation where money had been tight from its inception, staff were still dubious about the benefits of free help. This was particularly so within gardens, where the concept was relatively new. There was a very strong feeling that more volunteers meant fewer staff. The problem has raised its head again more recently under austerity conditions in the NHS and Libraries, for example. People think that volunteers will cause them to lose their jobs. Not true. I embraced our volunteers from the start, because it was a fact that staffing levels had already been pared down to the minimum and couldn't go any lower, so any help we could get was to be welcomed.
I did not embrace our garden volunteer. He was a person who, while out rambling, had entered the grounds by the back gate when the property was shut, given himself a full tour, and had decided that the place was a mess and that he was going to sort it out. Bad start. Even if he was right about it being a mess. The open-all-hours business with the back gate became my bête noir in time anyway. I hated people sneaking in for free, when we were desperate for all the funds we could get to continue the restoration, quite apart from the unfairness with regard to the honest people who had paid. That's an aside. The thing about volunteers, and this applies from whichever side you view it, is that they need to support you to do what it is that you need to achieve. No one needs a rogue volunteer who comes with a personal agenda and seeks to impose it. That's worth remembering if ever you are tempted to sign up as one. You need to be giving, not taking, or your input is useless or worse. Anyway, our garden vollie was never satisfied with being directed, and always agitated to be allowed to perform tasks which, frankly, were never a priority. He did not have relevant skills, and his ideas were unhelpful. My strategy became to plug on regardless, asking him to help us in line with our needs. He was miserable the whole time, and so were we, but it took many years to dislodge him, by which time I had built up a superb team of dedicated helpers who did maintenance and propagation work that we would never have time to achieve ourselves.
Regarding the back gate, it had its funny side, too. Apparently, before my arrival, there had been three gardeners for a while, one of whom was my new next-door neighbour, who had now moved on to alternative employment on the estate. He came in late for one of the many tea-breaks one day, and when asked where he had been, he announced, 'I been 'avin' trouble by the back gate. There's a 'ole fam'ly there, wanting to get in. Won't take no for an answer. Can't get through to 'em. Think they must be French.' So up gets the senior man, taking responsibility, saying, 'I'll sort it out.' Marches straight up in their face, points his finger down the hill and says, 'Fuck orf!' with force. That works.
I often wish I had the courage to act so decisively, but somehow I was always concerned to keep my job. But whatever way you do it, it comes down to the same thing. People skills.
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