Do You Employ a Residential Gardener?

[BristolCavendish]

Curious if any TRFers have gardeners to maintain their residential landscaping. Reason for asking is that while we employ the services of one, I am becoming more and more skeptical of his actual proficiency when it comes to a number of basic gardening-related skills.

For those old enough to remember, there was a time when this profession was predominated by individuals who were highly skilled in all aspects of gardening and landscape maintenance. In addition to trimming lawns, most 'professional' gardeners were also adept at interpreting and carrying out detailed landscaping plans, lawn aeration/renovation/fertilization, the specialized pruning of roses/seasonal trees and perhaps most importantly, offering constructive and insightful suggestions on how to improve and enhance one's landscape in general.

I am beginning to suspect that over the years the actual art of gardening has steadily been replaced by something more along the lines of 'basic landscape maintenance'. Instead of a highly-skilled gardener, we've got one who merely straps on a noisy leaf blower (sending flying debris onto the street and eventually into our neighbor's front yard), trims a few hedges from time to time and pulls some weeds whenever the mood suits him. To get anything else accomplished one has to practically draw a picture and as of recently I've taken over the seasonal pruning of trees and roses, leaving the cuttings for him and his crew to eventually pick up and dispose of.

It's kind of ironic that while modern technology is always advancing, skilled manual labor appears to be on a downward spiral in certain areas. Maybe it's time to consider a rock garden.