GARDENING NOTES

New Zealand Tablet, 20 January 1916, Page 53

GARDENING NOTES

(By Mb J. Joyce, Landscape Gardener,, Chrifltchurch.)

THE JOBBING GARDENER. i The jobbing gardener is a very useful man, and usually a very busy man. He is also a very much abused man. I have had a life-long experience, and can therefore speak with authority on the subject. The object of these few notes is to explain the position that the jobbing gardener is placed in, with reference to satisfying his employer’s requirements. The employer of the jobbing gardener is usually a person possessed of from a quarter of an acre to one acre of land. If he wants his garden well kept, according to size, the gardener has to attend two or, three days in each week, to mow the lawn, clip edgings, rake and tidy walks, and carry out planting in both the kitchen and flowergarden. In the winter he has to do all the pruning and digging, and when thespring arrives he has to put out all the bedding plants and sow all the flower and vegetable seeds. We will say that this takes two days of the week. Then he has to have four or five other employers who each take up his time about a day in the week, and sometimes a man wants him for half a day, and then he has to get another half-day’s work to fill in his time. This is the weekly routine of the jobbing gardener, so you can understand he is a very busy man, and a responsible one at that, as he has to see that all the gardens under his charge are kept up to the requirements of his employers. Sometimes he has to work very hard to get his job finished in the day, in order to be ready to make a start on another garden the day following. Things go on all right for a time, providing the weather is fine. But when a few days of wet weather set in his troubles, commence. The work gets behind, and, instead of commencing on No. 1 garden on the Monday, it is Wednesday before he makes a start. Consequently, he is late in attending to his other patrons. They imagine that he is neglecting them, and make no allowance for the days h© cannot work, owing to the inclemency of the weather. They reprimand him for his supposed neglect, and make matters very unpleasant for him, although he is doing his best to please everybody. This happens several times throughout the year, so that the lot of the jobbing gardener is not always a happy one.

The work having gone behind, he has to labor much harder to bring things into proper order again. But there are other misfortunes which occur to him in his daily rounds. To-day he puts out a quantity of bedding plants. He does his work very carefully, having given the plants a good watering before leaving. But here comes the trouble : he will not .be back for another week, so that the plants have to weather it through several days of, perhaps, a howling nor’wester or bright days of hot sunshine, which scorch them up before they have time to get established; The consequence is that when the gardener returns he finds most of his plants dead. This is very often the case with the one-day-a-week garden, and the proprietor never takes this into consideration. He comes to the conclusion that the gardener is no good, or else that he neglects his duty, and lets him know his feelings in the matter. This is very discouraging for the gardener, who does his best to satisfy his employer. If the employer happens to be a man who understands gardening and has a knowledge of plants, things will go on better than with the man who does not understand.

The man who understands < the matter will be a judge of the work, but the. other will expect too much, and cannot understand the cause of the failure. Sometimes he thinks he should have vegetables before they have time to come to maturity, and flowers before their proper season, never taking into account the damage done by late frosts and very dry weather", which are so detrimental to the growth of plants. Then, there are some owners of gardens who employ only inexperienced men, who are merely common laborers, or, perhaps, old men, because they can get them at a low rate of wages. These, very often, know nothing about garden work. They may be able to do a good day's work at digging, but when placed among the beds and flower borders they do considerable mischief to bulbs and herbaceous plants. After a while a gardener is called in, and what a job he has before him to set matters right, especially if his predecessor had been employed for any considerable time. The gardener has to devote several days to putting the place in proper order, and even then the mischief cannot always be remedied for some time. This sort of work is very unsatisfactory for both employer and employee. Everything is behind hand. The planting was not done in the proper season, as the inexperienced man did not know anything about the work. The consequence is that the garden gives evidence of being greatly neglected. The employment of unskilled workers in well-stocked gardens is indeed a very grave mistake. The employer who takes a delight in his garden and has a practical knowledge .of horticulture, rarely makes the mistake of permitting an inexperienced man to work among his choice bulbs and plants.