Getting a gardener to visit

 

I have been trying to find a gardener for years! Without success. But then I marshalled in the Moel Siabod race, and met a gardener. She wasn't available to do anything with my garden, but she knew someone who might be. This person, Ruth, turned out to also be quite busy, and it was a bit difficult to pin her down. But at some point I got her to suggest a few dates, and one of them was at 17:30 on the last day of the period of my jury duty. And the court ends at about 16:30. I could make that!

In the end I ended up released from my duties the day before, so I was in work. And I had a meeting until 16:30, which made it a bit tight, but possible. I just made sure I could go home straight after the meeting, and I didn't hang around. Something went quite wrong with my bicycle along the way, but fortunately, I was only about 100 m from home by then. So I made it!

I just had time to feed the cat and then I heard a knock on the door. It was Ruth, with a colleague. I recognised her; she had been involved in a project to make our little Ocean Sciences campus look better, with big planters. Our workshop technician can build planters like the best of them, but for the next step, a gardener is more suitable. And I showed them my entire garden, and specifically the problematic raised beds.

They are now going to come up with a planting schedule. I look forward to that! And closer to the time I will have to decide whether I'm going to see if I can pay them to implement it, or whether I want to do it myself. They still sound quite busy, but they do say they are part of a larger community of gardeners, and could probably find someone else to do it if they can’t. 

I am excited. I hope this was the first step in the direction of  really making my garden look better. If you leave it to me unaided, it is never going to look really good. Or fairly good. My sister once had a good walk around, and she did give a lot of useful tips, but I found them difficult to implement. Someone who actually makes a schedule of what plant to put exactly where is something I can work with better. Let someone else do the thinking. I might do the digging!

One of my problem beds (not the worst)