Would you want your children to be a pro/gardener?

3 comments

Ive just read the thread that was on the forum from “Steragram”
And it was a subject ref wanting to go to hort/college in the north but at the time no vacancies could be had,

This is a subject very very close to my heart and the reason being i feel comes back to the old saying wrong place wrong timing,

Let me try to explain.

I was born in a slum area of Liverpool in 1949 not that long after the second world war was over,
close enough to see the air raid shelters, second hand shops and no such thing as the dreaded plastic cards everyone has today,
My own father was a very good worker but when it came to a man being a man he was just that, “a man”
I knew just how far i could go before i got the belt, i also lived in an area we’re a woman of any standing wouldnt be found in the bar of the local pubs,

The snug room yes the bar a big NO NO.

Now when it came to leaving school the likes of wanting to do Ballet dancing in the area i lived was just a nancy thing to want to do,

Gardening,
These jobs could only really be found working for the local coucil and the likes,
And again they we’re the jobs people thought we’re for the lads with little up stairs and you could expect low wages with little chance of getting future promotion.

Now in the gardeners world mag, ("i think it was january issue 2014)
Allan titchmarsh has the back page write up and he pointed out that the trainee gardeners worked in all weathers, for little pay and unless they worked for a landscape gardening company they had little chance of ever getting very far in gardening as the council etc didnt rate gardeners as top of the list for pay, And we’re he once as a trainee gardener helped decorate the town hall for the Mayors ball and such like events,
well with todays cuts these functions do not happen and if they did it would be plastic flowers year in year out.
And he then went on to ask "would you let your children be gardeners,????

What he didn’t say was when he decided to leave gardeners world tv program and the producer asked him who he thought should take his place?
Allan said “MONTY”
Now this is in my mind a very two faced way of treating all those boy’s who became men who worked for very low pay in all weathers and attended the colleges to get their grades and paperwork to show they served their time correctly,

ie Right way of doing things, Wrong time of doing them.

Monty’s claim to fame was he was a jewler who went bust, no qualifications to talk about and he’s never served his time,

Right place right time. “KNOWING THE RIGHT PEOPLE”

It’s a crying shame that as “STERAGAM” pointed out at the time he’d wanted to try college for gardening these places just we’re not there,
But years later when they are there the people who have tried to learn and prove it,
are not given the nudge to the better jobs by those who once walked in the same foot steps to the top.

Gardeners world as a TV program has fallen ratings and the reason being its run by people who do not understand the fact that times have changed and now some of the gardeners on the tv are educated in colleges etc to a very high grade "but these people are not being given the chance they should have and have earned to be in the front line of television.

And now Ladies can be found in most bars in pubs.

Sometimes its not what you know but who you know.

• 10 Feb, 2014
• 0 likes

More blog posts by dungy