Day in the life of
Professional Gardener – John Valentino
Professional gardening requires a mindset as creative as it is practical, driven by a hard work ethic and genuine passion for all things green.
My years as a gardener have seen plenty of early mornings and a never-ending list of odd jobs, but overall it’s a rewarding role with room for experimentation few other careers can offer.
The devil is in the details. Gardening demands a wide horticultural knowledge and expert precision with specialist tools. It’s not quite surgery, but lapses in concentration and poor decision-making can hamper years of hard work.
My typical day
My working day starts early — as we do most of our work in the summer months, it makes sense to get out there while the heat is bearable and the coffee is still fresh.
I gather up my tools for the day and read through the specificities of the tasks at hand, judging whether or not I’ll need to bring anything a little out of the ordinary.
Throughout the morning and afternoon, I’m on-site working on projects. They might be private business residences, peoples’ homes, or public spaces — jobs all with their own particularities and challenges. A business may require extensive weeding to improve the look of their office garden or an elderly resident may simply be too old to keep their yard looking the way they want it. Throughout the day you’re visiting all manner of different places and people.
Once the day’s projects are complete, it’s back to the office for an afternoon of admin, booking in jobs with clients for the coming weeks, and preparing myself and the team for tomorrow’s work.
Landscape gardening is a little different. These projects might take place over the space of a few weeks, requiring pre-design work on a new garden or a public space. They’re largely funded by local government, private owners, or public backing. This means you’re often required to meet with stakeholders to discuss what they want for a particular project, before producing sketches, plans, and designs to present to them.
Once the design is signed off it’s time to get to work. Depending on the state of the land, this might require laying turf or seeding it in advance. Once everything is in place you can get to work transforming the blank canvas into something inspiring. Most of a landscape gardener’s time will be spent maintaining and improving these projects, prepping them for the changing seasons.
Pros
If you want to get into it, there’s plenty of gardening work to go around. Lots of people have gardens but lack the time to properly maintain them, and that’s before you get to commercial properties and local government and community contracts.
Gardening is a labor of love. So, if you love plants, watching the fruits of your work blossom, and feeling the benefits of demanding physical work, this is the role for you.
There’s plenty of room to develop specialisms or move into landscape architecture. Gardening knowledge is universal, so there are benefits and crossover to be found across industries from private firms to tourism.
It’s a social job with plenty of access to interesting characters. In a way, it’s a great chance to become further intertwined with your local community, leaving a mark in a distinctly visual way.
Being a gardener also teaches you a lot about the administrative side of running a business. There are clients to manage, equipment to be ordered, and staff to coordinate. It’s a creative, sociable, and healthy introduction to business management.
Cons
There might be a lot of gardening work out there, but the majority of it is seasonal.
As the majority of plants simply don’t grow throughout the winter, it can be hard to get work at the same rate as the spring/summer seasons. Be prepared for some quiet days around the holidays and consider some ways of diversifying your business.
Gardening work is not for the faint of heart. It’s as physical and demanding as it is rewarding, with long days in the sun and joint pains common — so make sure you are well prepared! Fortunately, there is an office side, which might not be for everyone, but is an important part of the job.
