“At 70 years old, if I could give my younger self one piece of advice, it would be to use the words "f*** off“ much more frequently.”
~ Helen Mirren
The worst part about getting old, is that you stay young on the inside but nobody can see it …
“Your brain is a gambling addict that bets on reality. It doesn’t wait for information. It guesses what should happen and adjusts when surprised. Most bets win. But when they don’t, you run into walls.”
As a garden designer, I know a fair bit about gardens. And after living through the pandemic in a gardenless north London flat, I was determined that nothing would come between me and my third-of-an-acre kingdom when we moved to our Wiltshire cottage three years ago. I was ready to manifest my long-held visions of pruning, mulching and weeding, small children playing at my feet.
But after two years spending every free weekend running in and out of the house with arms full of bare-root whips and bulbs, I was burnt out. Everywhere I looked, my ambitions exceeded my resources. A baby’s weekend sleep schedule does not equal enough hours to make a garden.
What I needed, I came to realise, was help.
I put a call out for a part-time gardener on Instagram and received 10 respectable applications. After reluctantly turning down the charming, qualified gardener who was familiar with much grander homes than mine across rural England — there is a limit to how much I can justify spending on my own garden — I began working with the lovely Nathan King four months ago.
Now I look around and see climbers carefully trained up walls, beds free of weeds and meadow borders with neat, mulched clearings around juvenile trees and shrubs. Garden waste is neatly rotting in brand-new compost bays, waiting to be recirculated.
Looking back, I don’t know what took me so long. I source a great gardener at the beginning of every design project if the client doesn’t have one or two already. I just felt that I should have been able to manage on my own.
Clare Foster, an author and garden writer with a space similar in size to mine, admits to having mixed feelings about hiring help. She visits incredible gardens every week and sees the armies that keep them in tip-top shape, yet she too feels she should be able to manage her rambling beds of self-seeders and informal gravel garden by herself. Are we all under the illusion that beautiful gardens should make themselves?
Landscape designer Sarah Price, who works with three gardeners intermittently on her garden in Wales (and on other projects), is pragmatic on the subject. “I think it’s important to admit that you can’t do everything. I love the act of gardening but I also love drawing and dreaming up and creating real gardens,” she says. Working with others has also fostered an “ongoing creative dialogue” that has made her garden richer, she adds.
You don’t need to be in the profession to see the value of skilled help. If you regularly go to the garden centre, and regularly kill your plants, you need a gardener. If you spend hours asking AI for gardening advice, you need a gardener. If you are an expert hobbyist gardener who needs an excuse to indulge even more, you need a gardener (you’re welcome). And if you’ve spent a fortune on your interiors, but have scrimped on your outdoor space, then yes, you need a gardener.
It doesn’t have to be a full-time commitment and some will offer consultancy services, helping you find your feet in a new space. At home I employ King for four hours every other Friday. We start with a walk around the garden discussing plans and making new ones. So far he’s clocked up more than 30 hours. It’s sobering seeing his monthly hours on paper — not for the cost, but the realisation of how much work a garden really takes.
Most of his work involves weeding, mulching and composting — jobs I still do but that no longer overwhelm me. He’s also fixed steps and rebuilt walls. In the autumn we’ll lift and divide perennials, tackle the bed of ground elder and start work on the gravel garden.
One client observed that me having a gardener is like a therapist having a therapist. King challenges my ideas and has gently mediated where my boyfriend’s ideas have differed from mine. Who needs therapy?
Decisions now have to be made faster. Will we paint the house, or should we just climb roses up it? Replace the paving, or rebuild the dilapidated stable? We are forced to plan for now, rather than getting caught up in potential future scenarios.
It helps that King and I share an aesthetic; he loves our mossy, uneven cobbles as much as I do and knows not to over-weed. He found an old gate in our shed and suggested it could support climbers up against a crumbling wall that had been bothering me. A fresh pair of eyes goes a long way.
My optimism is contagious. Our next-door neighbour has hired King too. Plans to build a hedgehog highway are now under way.
There is always more to do. Weekends are still happily spent working outdoors. The vegetable patch is thriving under the stewardship of my boyfriend and our toddler. I have grown ageratum, sweet peas and nicotiana from seed. But I also have time to sit under the fig trees on Sunday afternoons — and finally enjoy having a garden of my own.
