Day 91 - Nice house

There is an advantage in being known in your trade for the kind of work you do, assuming your reputation is a good one. I was able to walk out of one job and straight into another. The world of historic gardens is quite a small one, and I knew the Gardens Adviser in the new job. The interview, as I remember it, was fairly straightforward. I would be taking on two small town gardens, amounting to five and a bit acres in all, or was it nearly seven? Can't remember. Anyway less than I was used to. The town was very picturesque, set near the river, the abbey and some distinguishing hill formations. The gardens, on the other hand, needed a lot of work, and struck me, coming from a place that was by now nearly fully restored, as being seriously disgraceful. Just my sort of project, then. I was also told that there were underlying staff morale problems, possibly warring factions, and reading between the lines, the higher management left a lot to be desired too. I wasn't in a position to be wary about this, however, and having seen how beautiful the surroundings were, I sent for my partner, later to become my wife, to have a look at the place. She flew up and was immediately taken by the situation, so we decided to go for it. She had the chance of two jobs with the same company, one in the South of England, and one in Scotland, so she made her choice and we moved.

I gradually found out the nature of the problems I would have to work on. First of all, there was no team to speak of. There were only two permanent members of staff, one of whom ran the retail side of the business, and the other of whom was part-time in the garden, and each of those had at one time or another been the other's boss, which does not make for harmony. Other than that there were a couple of seasonal gardeners with little spark, and the two gardens had a history of malicious separation from one another, whereby the twain never met. It fell upon me to resolve all this. The first thing I would have to do was see the summer season to its conclusion with its contingent of temporary staff, observe what was wrong with it, and then set up a new team for the start of the next year.

God, it was hideous. One of the gardens, the smaller one, was limping on in the doldrums it had found itself in, with its garden and retail sections largely avoiding each other, and the other garden was in the hands of an uncommitted seasonal member of staff with no eye for presentation and limited enthusiasm. It was also subject to constant interference from the previous gardener, whose leaving had created the vacancy for a new type of management that I was supposed to provide. It was the intention that the two gardens would not only be restored and improved, but brought together as one functioning unit. At any rate, that was the only way I could see it working. But in the meantime, I had to get everybody to accept me first, then build a team, then fix the horticulture, which was weird, to say the least.

I'm going to show you a nice picture first, of the house I was given to live in, so as not to put you off with a rough old image of the garden in disarray -

It was a very beautiful house, with enormous rooms, formed from an old stable block, so it had good connected stone outbuildings and was attached to a 2.7 acre orchard on which I used to run our chickens, but which I maintained in works time as part of my job. Ideal! The rose needed severe sorting out, by the way, before it looked like that. Here is a winter scene -

This was my initial pruning. I intended to improve on that framework in time.

As for the state of the gardens, if I tell you that this was the plant sales area when I arrived, you will probably see what I mean -

As you could never find the member of staff who was supposed to be looking after this, the larger of the two gardens, plants and vegetables were being sold on an honesty basis, although, to tell the truth, there wasn't a lot worth buying. I immediately saw an opportunity here. After all, we had a shop up the road attached to the other garden. It doesn't take a genius to see that that could bring benefits. But not when a defensive stance was being taken, with no cross-fertilisation between teams. I knew what I had to do. First, though, I had to get a product that people would want to buy. And that wasn't going to come from a potting shed like this -

or a greenhouse like this -

or a vegetable garden like this -

Ok. They were growing veg, but there were weeds in the beds, weeds in the path, the hedges were badly maintained, stakes were lying about, there was a permanent trip hazard in the form of a hose and there was vegetable debris, including potato haulms, or shaws as they are called in those parts, all over the place -

We'd have to see what I could do about that.