Recently I’ve become a provider of gardening services. And though I’ve been doing it for a few months now, I was told very recently that I still can’t refer to myself as a gardener. I’ve been informed that a clear distinction exists between gardening services and landscaping services. Gardeners both maintain outdoor areas, while at the same time are experts in plants and their environments, knowing which plants will fare well in different environments. Landscapers, I was informed, only keep up with existing areas. All that aside, learning how to offer landscaping and gardening services was one of the best things I’ve done this year.
If a person spends enough time at it, gardening will show them almost all they’ll ever need to know in order to keep up with home repairs. Repairing broken sprinklers, building apparatuses for ponds and waterfalls, and setting up retaining walls, one gets to try their hand at plumbing, carpentry, and masonry. Even though I’m still a ways from calling myself an expert in the field of plants and their prime habitats, I’ve gained many of the skills essential for meeting the demands of an aging home. Those skills I’ll hone as much as I can in future months and years.
The other reason why building a collection of gardening services was so satisfying to me, was because it made me feel connected to that old-fashioned master/apprentice model of learning. Doing work for a friend of mine who owns his own gardening business, I was taught gardening firsthand by a man who’d been in the business for over thirty years. Being younger, I have very much enjoyed spending time with a person who is a master at his craft. There’s just something special and rare about that style of learning in our modern day and age. You don’t it much anymore. It’s something I think we’ve lost in this country. Maybe I’m being overly nostalgic. I don’t know.
On the more current, economic side, the demand for gardening services has seen a sharp decline, especially in the state of California, where I reside. During tough economic times, gardeners are seen more as a luxury than a necessity. Add to that the current water crisis in southern California, and you’ve got a very tricky situation for landscapers and gardeners. But the grass still grows as fast as ever, and people will hopefully soon start to miss their landscape professionals. I’ve seen quite a deterioration this year in the upkeep of outdoor landscapes. It seems as though a simple enough thing to maintain a yard, but surprisingly, even keeping up a green lawn can be a formidable task. It’s a shame, not only that gardening services are on the decline, but also that yards are losing their landscape lustre. As things begin to bounce back, I’m hopeful we’ll see a change.
Filed under: Small Business Management | Tagged: gardening services, landscaping, landscaping services
