Do you have a gardener? And whether you have a large or a smaller outside space. If you are used to having a gardener regularly, it can be a big adjustment when they cannot make it to work. Even if your gardener only pops in once a week. When that stops, it can be challenging to learn how to cope without your gardener – even for a short period of time!
So whether your gardener is not well, on holiday or for any other reason is not able to come to do their normal work for you. Learn how you can cope without your gardener for whatever length of time!
Find Your Gardeners Work Plan
One of the main ways to deal with your gardener temporarily being unavailable is to plan and be organised. If you know what your gardener roughly does every time he does work for you, you can try and mimic that plan yourself.
However, you might not be able to do everything on the list. Some things might be too unpractical or require an actually skilled gardener. Therefore make sure you make a list of the absolutely necessary things. And separate them from gardening tasks that could perhaps wait a little longer. Maybe even until your gardener returns!
There is no point in trying to attempt really complex gardening work or operating machinery you are unsure how to. Your gardener is a professional after all and the right person to do these things upon their return.
Make sure the things that you will be doing are achievable and realistic. So that you will not spend hours and hours trying to do a job you do not know how to. But you can still maintain an organised sense of your outside living space until your gardener returns.
Urgent Tasks
Under urgent tasks, we consider things you really do not want to leave and must happen for things to keep running as normal. Doing these urgent things when you can, will make you cope without your gardener a lot better already!
You can think of things such as:
- Mowing the lawn
- If you have a lot of grass or even a little patch. Try and mow the lawn at least once a week whilst your gardener is away. It will give an instant sense of tidiness and with the right land mower, it should not be too difficult a task to do a rough cut until your gardener returns.
- Sweeping/Clearing up
- This will mostly be leaves and any other bits that might be falling down from threes and shrubs. Try and do a big sweep and clear out once or twice a week too to keep things looking tidy. If your gardener is away for several weeks then your outside space can quickly become really messy. So by you removing any leaves etc will give it an overall tidy feel without applying too many specific skills!
- Clearing Weeds
- Now, this is probably everyone’s least favourite task in the garden, but an important one to upkeep your garden! Set yourself a task to do this once a week so keep on top of it until your gardener returns.
- Watering
- Especially if you are in a dry season, get into the habit to water your outside space every evening – or suited as per the plants. If you leave them try for too long, and there is no rain, your beautiful plants and flowers will suffer!
Temporary Cover
There might be reasons why you would not be able to take on the gardening work yourself whilst your gardener is away. This can be for all different types of reasons. Perhaps you are simply too busy and you will not be able to schedule this into your daily or weekly schedule. Or perhaps the tasks the gardener normally does are too skill-specific, and you would not have the knowledge and skills to be able to do them.
Finally, do not underestimate how labour-intensive gardening work is and can be. And that might simply be too much for you to do. Even someone who is really strong and fit can struggle with doing heavy gardening tasks. And it is very easy to injure yourself if you do not know exactly what you are doing.
So if this is the case, and your garden cannot be left alone, consider hiring a temporary gardener. Especially with gardeners, there are many who do temp and ad hoc work. Your own gardener might be able to recommend someone, or you can use an agency for peace of mind.
Other Things to Consider
There can be various reasons why your gardener might not be able to come to work. Perhaps is it a holiday they have booked. f this is the case, you can prepare for the time when they are away. Ask your gardener to make sure the garden might be ready to be lest for however long they are away for and all big projects to be finished beforehand. If you are not sure about holiday entitlement and holiday pay, this UK government website can help.
If your gardener is actually unwell and they are employed by you, you might have to pay sick pay. You can read all about it on this UK government website.
How can Polo & Tweed help?
Do you now know how to cope without your gardener? Polo & Tweed understand the amazing value hat gardeners bring and that it can be quite the challenge to not have the gardener around for a while. If you are really stuck and are unable to do the gardening yourself, why not consider hiring a temporary gardener in the meantime. Polo & Tweed can help with temporary, part-time and full-time staff.
Do get in touch with us here and one of our consultants can talk you through what we can do for you.