Seven months
Too busy to go to Prague 
When we wrote on the Blogger platform we ran this blog with the strapline, ‘Life as a Garden Designer‘.
In many ways this blog does nothing to reflect what life as a garden designer is actually like. That is my fault, because I’d rather write something which is hopefully entertaining, rather than talk about my average garden designer day. Let’s be honest, here’s nothing less likely to grip the reader than a few paragraphs on why the nursery lost the plant order I emailed last week.
But this week was exceptional. If you imagine what life as a fictional garden designer might be like, if you selected all the good or exciting bits and omitted all but the most interesting drudgery, then this week was getting kind of close to it.
For all students of garden design wondering what glamour might await them one day, take note, CTRL+C if you must, for this was Our Week.
Firstly, we (myself and my erstwhile husband in his role as unpaid skivvy Non-Executive Director (NED), put in 95+ hours. 40 of those were spent knee deep in mud and clay working on a garden build in Derby. The remaining 55% were spent bent over laptops, wrangling over specifications and construction drawings of fantastical wooden constructions destined to adorn a client’s large back garden.
Students: pay attention when you cover specification writing, because it is the bane of a garden designer’s life. Various arcane organisations exist with the expressed aim of writing, collating and selling technical specifications to you. One such organisation is NBS, an offshoot of the Royal Institute of British Architects, which publishes NBS Landscape, aimed at those with large amounts of cash to spend on a subscription. The level of detail is staggering. Every eventuality is covered, from what to do when your galvanised nails split, to which British Standard covers precast concrete slab paving.
It is easy to become lost in the anally-retentive complexity of it all. It is anti-design, 100% Right Brain thinking – analytical, logical and rigidly structured. Almost the complete opposite of how a designer thinks. Similar in many ways to accountancy.
Speaking of which, today we paid our annual visit to our accountants. This is a visit which fills me with dread – you might as well talk to me about quantum physics or the LBW law of cricket. Luckily for me, my NED other half has read the “Bluffer’s Guide To Talking To Your Accountant”, and we managed to wing it for an hour and a half. The good news was we are making a profit, and in these recessionary times you have to be happy with that.
What else happened? We signed up another garden build in deepest Ashbourne; saw five potential new clients from as far north as Duffield to as far south as Tamworth; presented a current client with their tender documents and plans; discovered a new printing supplier; visited a client from last year who has problems with his over-wintered Agapanthus’; discovered our nursery had indeed lost our emailed plant order; advised an enquirer that we do not install safety playground matting; had to deal with a neighbour of a client who took a rabid dislike to our delivery lorries; surprisingly got sunburned; and my NED turned down a 3 day business trip to Prague for his day job on the grounds that we are too busy, which we certainly are.
Apart from that we carried on our normal existence as parents, shopped, washed, ironed, ate, barely slept and did the usual “life” stuff like everybody else.
However, student of garden design, please bear this in mind. Come October we will be scratching about for something to do, because the unfortunate fact is that people only think about their gardens during British Summer Time. A look at our website stats go to prove this. Impressions for March compared with February were up by over 200%. The figures for April will exceed that. Yet once the kids are back at school and summer holidays are over the demand will plummet. To be a garden designer means to be able to hold down two jobs – one during spring/summer, and one for the rest of the year. The season lasts seven months, which is why 95+ hour weeks will become the norm. At least they will if you want to please your accountant nine months after your year end.
Prague isn’t all that great. The botanical garden is small & poorly maintained. The best thing about it is that I can say I’ve been there. I went in March when business is still slow. How does one subscribe to your blog? I became a fan at Facebook & a follower at Twitter. But how to subscribe to your blog posts eludes me. Jordan
Hi Jordan – Keith here. Although Prague’s gardens aren’t up to much I wouldn’t have seen them anyway. My day job is as a graphic designer, and I would have been directing a photo shoot, so I doubt I’d have seen much of the city anyway. But I have been before – the architecture is amazing and the beer is cheap!
To follow the blog I think you need to click the orange RSS icon next to “From the blog” on the home page.