Life & Times – Advertising for a gardener
I recently posted a message on my local Facebook page asking if anyone could recommend a gardener to tidy up my overgrown but not too large back garden. I got 28 (yes 28) replies from helpful members of the group. My quandary now was deciding which one to contact with a view to getting the work done. I proceeded to draw up a short list – entirely unscientifically – and from it I chose one one – Tom the Gardener –o n the basis that his address showed he lived close to me. Tom said he’d come round later that day to look at the work to be done, and he did. The main question during his inspection was whether I wanted the fairly large laurel bush, which was almost a tree and was cutting out light, cut down completely or to just have the top part taken off it. We got back into the house and I was pretty gobsmacked when he told me that the cost of tidying the garden and doing the ‘small job’ (ie, removing the top part of the laurel) would be £1,700 and, if I wanted it, the ‘big job’(ie, cutting it down completely) would be £4,000. He told me he could start the next day. I said I’d think about it, but he seemed to twig that the answer was likely to be no, since he began to talk about how costs had ‘skyrocketed’ in recent times and how just to deposit the green waste at the Council site ‘cost a fortune’. Anyway we said our goodbyes and I knew I’d have to find someone else.
When I had another look at my ‘short list’ to try and decide where to go to next, there was one name on it I rather liked – GreenspaceSOS. I looked at their Facebook page and website and my first impression was reinforced. It said ‘GreenspaceSOS is a non-profit Community Interest Company. All profits made by our garden and estate maintenance service go towards delivering free services for vulnerable people and groups throughout our communities struggling with their overgrown gardens and green spaces. We recognise the physical and mental health benefits that access to good quality green space can provide.’
It then added (and this caught my eye in particular): ‘Due to receiving an overwhelming number of enquiries asking whether we deliver a normal ‘paid-for’ garden maintenance service, GreenspaceSOS have decided to open our books to paying customers who would like a reliable, trustworthy, professional, friendly, clean, and ethical garden service for 2024!’ Bingo! Or so it seemed. And actually it was. I wasn’t looking to have my garden done for free, but the ‘paid for’ option gave me hope. So I duly emailed Greenspace SOS and got a quick reply. Paul offered to come round and look in the next couple of days. And he did. I immediately took to him. He was obviously knowledgeable about the work and his friendly, courteous manner inspired confidence. He quickly told me that, though he could cut back or cut down the big bush, he didn’t want to reduce its height to any great extent, because it was likely that birds were nesting in it and they shouldn’t be disturbed. I hadn’t thought of that and I was obviously sympathetic. He asked me if he could take photos of the garden with a view to sending me a quote and promised to get back to me soon. He did that a couple of days later, quoting a sum of £140. In its own way, this shocked me as much as Tom’s £1,700. A friend suggested that maybe he’d inadvertently left off a nought at the end.
Anyway I got back to him to say fine. But when he came to do the work the following week, the first thing I said was I thought £140 was incredibly little. But he said it was all right and that at least cleared my mind of the missing nought suspicion. It was a good number of hours work for Paul and he did a truly excellent job of pruning, shaping and clearing as well as leaving everything very clean. I asked him how they (their website said that he, Gav and Ian were a team of 3) managed financially if most of their work was done for free and they seemed to charge little even for paid work. He told me they applied for various grants that were available for assisting disadvantaged individuals or groups (eg, elderly and disabled, extra care housing schemes, an animal rescue centre, St John’s Ambulance), and also canvassed donations from local businesses. They were content to live on relatively little themselves and had the satisfaction of knowing they were in some way lighting up the lives of people who had little materially and were contributing positively to the health of communities. When I asked him how they disposed of the waste, he said they had to pay for that at the council site – at which I insisted that £140 really was too little and he had to take a few more tenners, which, thank goodness, he accepted.
Since then I’ve recommended GreenspaceSOS to two friends, both needing work in their respective gardens, and they’ve both agreed terms with him. Paul has emailed to thank me. But I’ve also mused about how to account for all this. As I see it, Tom, who I’ve actually got nothing against, is bowing to capitalism’s everyone-for-themselves ethic, whilst Paul, Gav and Ian are resisting this and preferring instead to embrace a community and mutual aid ethic. Good for them, and it also provides at least a glimpse of evidence that, when we get a socialist world of common ownership and free access to all goods and services, human beings, eminently flexible as ‘human nature’ is, will be perfectly capable of acting in the interests of the community as whole, especially as it will also be in their own interest to do so – and that includes Tom the Gardener’s interest as well.
HKM