What pops into your head when you think of a private gardener or a landscaper? Huge country estates, neatly manicured lawns and flowerbeds, and immaculately shaped hedges? Although these are all things that can of course still be achieved with a gardener, the industry has moved on since the Downton Abbey-esque days. At Greycoat Lumleys, we can provide candidates with a range of gardening and landscaping experience, and a variety of skills depending on what kind of service you’re looking for.
Whether you need some specialist and technical landscaping done, or you’ve got luscious greenhouses to maintain, we’re confident that we’ll have a candidate who’s ready to get stuck into the role.
Are there different types of gardening? What are they?
Depending on the scale and requirements of your garden, you might find it necessary to have a team of gardeners, landscapers, and specialists, overseen by a head gardener. Similarly, you may be in need of only one individual, who actually specialises in greenhouse care, and also completes some light gardening on the side, or you may have a whole host of particular plants that need round the clock care.
Many of our private gardeners also have other skills such as organic gardening, historic garden restoration, and complete design and restoration.
Client visits to assess the site are offered as part of our personal service, to be sure that that candidate is fully equipped to deal with the space they will be working on. It also encourages a friendly relationship between candidate and client from the very beginning of each placement.
There are many different types of gardening - keep reading for some insight into who might be responsible for what…
Landscaping is the act of designing or improving gardens and the surrounding buildings to make them more attractive, involving the incorporation of plants (including trees, lawns, and shrubbery, as well as flowers) with ‘hardscapes’ such as pathways, outdoor furniture, water features, and fences or perimetres.
Gardening, on the other hand, involves the design, planning, and maintenance of plants already in a space. Private gardeners are particularly responsible for planting, weeding, cultivating, replacing, and harvesting the plants they work with. Gardening can also be entirely ornamental, or working towards a specific function - for example, care and maintenance of an orchard with fruit trees that can then be harvested
If you’re looking for something slightly more specific, you might also want to consider a horticulturist. Slightly different from both landscaping and gardening, horticulture is the science of growing plants for a specific purpose - food, ornamental plants, or medicinal plants, for example. There are three different areas of horticulture: pomology, olericulture, and ornamental horticulture.
If you had something else in mind, don’t be dissuaded. Whatever you need, we’re confident that we’ll be able to find the perfect candidate for you. We are also able to provide:
Head gardeners specifically trained to manage a team.
Grounds staff for larger estates.
Greenhouse / glasshouse specialists.
Just get in touch with us for more information!
What do I need to provide?
Because gardening involves manual labour and outdoor work, it might be important for you to provide some equipment for your gardener - this is also dependent on the kind of work you want your gardener to be doing.
If the gardening or landscaping that you have in mind involves heavy machinery, such as chainsaws, motorised hedge trimmers or lawn mowers - you may need to provide this equipment yourself, as well as somewhere to store it, rather than asking your employee to transport it back and forth each day (assuming they are living offsite).
Given that private gardeners and landscapers will also spend the majority of their workday outside in all the elements of the season, it may also be considerate to provide somewhere warm and dry where they can take breaks, eat a meal, and perhaps get changed at the beginning and end of the day.
Interested in some of the services that our candidates might be able to provide? Get in touch with us for more information. We can start the interview process immediately, or simply have an informal chat about what you need.