The Grumpy Gardening Service
We live in a world where the consumer is king, and so to offer something different in the way of garden maintenance, I’m sorely tempted to start up my own Grumpy Garden Service…
On Saturday I bumped into my friend Nichola who runs a very successful garden maintenance service in Chessington. In fact it’s so successful she can afford to part company with some of her more – how can I put this – unconventional clients (like the one who would follow her round the garden all the time, not just to point things out, all the time).
She charges £15 an hour for long-established clients, £17.50 an hour for regular clients and £20 an hour for new clients - who don’t follow her round. That sounds like good money.
Which got me to thinking about a grumpy alternative... So what could I offer clients in my weekly hour of grumpy gardening? ( Bear in mind I’d change the day each week to suit myself. And not turn up at all if I didn’t feel like it (a bit like a Tube Train driver).
In the hour I could:
*Mow the grass in reasonably straight lines (my daughter always delights in telling me that my 84-year-old father-in-law cuts the grass in much straighter lines than me).
*Maybe contribute some miserable comments to the client on the previous week’s weather – and follow that up with a gloomy forecast of the week ahead.
*Remove plants from the beds that look suspiciously like weeds – although to be honest, it doesn’t really matter, the definition of a weed is a plant in the wrong place. At home we’re forever weeding out the overabundant, self-seeding Nigella and that’s not technically a weed. (Unlike the Delia)
*Send a few slugs and snails off on their summer holidays.
* Spray something noxious on an unsuspecting insect. Not to get rid of it. Just to make it appear I knew what I was doing.
* Train some fruit. As you do.
* Try some ‘new school topiary'. New school topiary is a very free-form version of the traditional art. It's very jazz topiary - anything goes – and we do mean literally anything goes off the plant.
* And to finish off, my piece de resistance, a liberal application of the flame thrower. It doesn’t necessarily get rid of the endemic ground elder. But it’s a lot of fun. And it’s a very good excuse to adopt an Arnold Schwarzenegger accent as you leave. “I’ll be back.” Next Tuesday or Wednesday. That’s £17.50 please - £20 for cash.
