A week in the life of a gardener
4 May 2026
May is here. It has come upon us swiftly - suddenly the gardens, hedgerows and parks are bursting full of life. Buds appear overnight - suddenly we have ripe rose buds, peony heads; we swore they weren’t there yesterday. Bright blue ceanothus, impossibly fluffy, is suddenly here, frequented by fat snuffling bees. I have a particularly - in this sense anyway - nihilistic client who says “it’s all downhill from here” (for which I chastise him). But here, there are droopy, wan tulips, heads spent, pale chubby stems giving up the ghost and lying flatly on the soil. And there, the magnolia have flung their last petals, their creamy gigantic confetti that gave so much scented joy on warm evenings of late. Just as things have started, some must end.
This time of year is my “boom time”. Quite frankly, it goes mad. The weather warms, the rain eases off, everybody looks outside and remembers they have a garden and QUICK it needs doing before X event. Unfortunately it means my bookings are jam packed way ahead of time - 8 weeks out is my current wait time.
At the start of the year I ease in gently - a few hours here and there, home by 3pm when it’s already dark, cooking up great soups and stews and reading actual books, catching up on podcasts and obsessing over weather forecasts. In the blink of an eye, usually around Easter, I’m back up to 4 gardens a day, filling my diary to capacity and reuniting with all the garden centre staff I see on a weekly basis between April and October.
As a result my body reacts - which is normal I suppose. I’ve cancelled jobs due to lower back pain, and a horrible knee injury that feels like my knee is going to pop but is actually an annual tighter-than-tight hamstring issue. I stretch, endlessly. I come home from jobs filthy, face freckled from both dirt and the sun; my hair lightens a shade or two.
Tasks this week have included: lifting self seeded gaura seedlings from a pathway and potting them on to be planted elsewhere. Transforming a blank space into a Mediterranean courtyard with stately olive trees and tufts of beautifully scented rosemary and lavender. Pulling endless threads of cinquefoil from a raised bed. Unpuzzling a confused border and advising my client to put in, for example, 1 more Stipa Ponytails to make it up to three, remove the Spanish bluebells taking over, and making space for a salvia to soak up the sunniest spot. Planting in a shade border, full with hydrangea, hosta and ferns, structural and beautiful against new black fences. In short, it’s been varied.