In today’s world, we expect that everything should happen yesterday and that today is never quick enough, never mind tomorrow, next week or next month. This is hard to deal with when the plants you work with, along with the rest of the natural world, work on longer timescales than we have come to expect.

At work, I’ve look after a number of roses around the place. As is often the case, they have had a spot of bother with aphids, which has had the what some would say is the ‘correct’ treatment using insecticide which take a little time to get working. When the boss came out, who is lovely and I have a lot of time for her and is good at her job (including appeasing clients) I was told I should get out other insecticides to spray on the roses too. Not because I haven’t done anything but because the client has been in her ear. That’s what happens.

At this point I do have to say that I’m not a big fan of doing this as I have seen several predatory insects about, along with their larvae, all doing their work. This secondary dose of insecticides has not occurred. It is because it wasn’t necessary as, what do you know, most aphids are now dead, with only a few still sucking away.

I get it that aphids on roses are plain old ugly, but the point is that I’m trained to do my job and have over five years of experience. To be constantly have this nonsense of nitpicking is annoying at best and insulting at the worst!

It’s also important to note that observation of all plants under your care is needed, that’s the only way to learn how to manage any situation I. The garden-you learn what happens and when, so can start planning your work around that.

This is where more education is needed for the population at large. It’s great to get kids involved, in fact completely essential, but the adults running the show and those building up to running the show often have now clue at all. Worse they don’t care. This, of course, is not everyone but it needs to change. This is the hard part. I’m not sure how best to deal with this at the moment, but I’ll keep writing away and talking-hopefully it will get conversations going somewhere as this will certainly help!