For work, I am a horticulturalist. At home, I’m the same (along with lots of other labels that we all have), but the work and home horticulturalist are two very different things. Which do I prefer? The home horticulturalist without a doubt! There are so many reasons for this, but to give you more of an idea why I have to talk a little about work first.

Work as a horticulturalist

It does go without saying that you have to maintain your clients gardens to the standard they want as best as you can. That is often the easy part of the job.

The hard part of my job comes from a few different things:

• The plants in the garden aren’t always the most suitable for that garden, making it more time consuming to try and make them look vaguely happy. On the plus side, it is good to challenge yourself by aiming to get plants thriving, but sometimes you don’t win.
• Advice should be given as part of the job, but it often isn’t listened too, even though you know the garden would look better if the advice was followed.
• In winter, you struggle to fill your day and in summer, you could fill your day twice over and then some! Overall, I think the summer is better as the days are busy so they go really quickly.

While we all would love to do anything but work, it keeps me busy and out of trouble!

Gardening at home

Gardening at home is completely different, mostly because I can please myself! If the weather is not to my liking, I can leave my garden alone for the day after watering my plants. What do I enjoy most about pottering in my garden?

I love the process of sowing seeds, potting up seedlings and watching my plants grow. Enjoying seeing the flowers and vegetables that I grow is the main thing I garden for at home. Eating my veg is always something I enjoy.

While I am gardening at home, I find it relaxing. Pottering around at my own pace doing my gardening jobs is lovely-I don’t have to run around like a headless chicken to complete my jobs!

I also enjoy watching the animals I see. It’s mainly been caterpillars so far this year, but they turn into butterflies so I can’t complain. I see the odd bird and bees too, and then there is my cat who is a law unto herself, but she’s lovely.

Those are the main differences between my gardening work and my home gardening.