Maintenance gardening and all the observation you can make while doing it is great experience. There are lots of ways of maintaining plantings. Be careful to observe the different ways that gardens are maintained as well as how the plants repond to maintenance techniques and the lack of them. Sometimes you can use the natural growth of the plants to make a composition that works well, but other times a specific maintenance schedule is a key part of the design. One is not better than the other as long as either is fitting the goals of the project. Sometimes we tend to look at the planting world based on what we see as "the" proper amount of maintenance and view everything that requires more as being wrong, or those getting less as wrong.

I cringe everytime someone writes "all gardens should be low maintenance" as if it is a fact or law. There is nothing wrong with planned high maintenance plantings as long as it was not done deceptively.

Obviously, there are a lot of plantings that were simply over done by poor foresight, but another thing that often happens is that there is a change in circumstance after the fact. The homeowners age and can not keep up with it, or the house gets sold to those with lesser commitment.

Certainly, there has also been a big drop off in the amount of skilled garden maintenace people out there due to the mechanization of the industry. When I was a Ute (youth), a pull cord was pretty well limited to a lawnmower and a chainsaw and weeds were hoed or pulled. The people doing the work often did it for long periods of their lives with ample time to observe and develop techniques that were effective. They also passed these observations and skills on to the younger people who they worked with. It was slow painstaking work with ample time to observe. The help had to be trained.

Nowadays, everything is done on the fly. It is all dumbed down and built for speed. The turnover time for help is measured in weeks rather than years. Weeds are sprayed continuously (and left in place) - heck, they don't even cut out grass for new beds, but spray those out as well. Beds are edged with a power edger. Fertilizer is applied with a ride on high speed spreader. Plants are pruned (hacked) with chainsaws and sheared with gas powered hedge shears up, down, around, under, ... all over where they need it and where they don't. Get in and get out, but don't forget to leave the place clean by blowing it all into the street with the jet pack on your back. The owner of the company is likely to have only had the hit and run experience as well. In other words, good hired maintenance is few and far between mostly because there are few with the experience that is required to train these people and a market that does not allow these people to compete.

While I hate to see low standards of maintenance limit design, it surely has to be considered.

>Maintenance gardening may not be glamorous, but it is a good learning experience for a novice designer!And it is often a good teacher of what NOT to do as a designer. Like have a good understanding of how big some plants are really likely to get (if maintenance is not consistent) and place them poorly. Bi-weekly trimming of any shrub or tree is excessive in my book unless very formal tidy hedging was the intent and usually means the plant in question was not the best choice for that specific location.

I agree that low maintenance does not have to be the over-riding requirement in a design. But for many clients it is and for the very reasons laag mentions. Reputable, reliable landscape maintenance companies that know plants and how to care for them properly and take the time to do so are few and far between. The landscape referral list my nursery provides is sorely lacking in that regard. There are scores of landscape companies in my area but none that we feel comfortable in recommending for routine garden maintenance. In fact, nursery management is considering starting their own "fine gardening" maintenance division to cater to our customers' needs.

I'd guess that even if skilled gardeners were available, the cost would be prohibitive for most homeowners. The mow-blow-and-go guys are in and out in half an hour, lawn scalped as low as they can get it, edges strimmed, walks blown off. To pay someone a reasonable wage to do hours of gardening on a regular basis would get expensive pretty fast.

I've thought about doing this in my area, where many homes go for more than $1 million or $2 million, some higher. Given that unskilled yard work is $30 per hour or more, I could probably get $50 per hour, and hire out the heavy stuff.

I'm curious to know what skilled garden work might fetch in other areas?

Landscape companies are often charging $50-65/hr in my area for general labor. You could easily get that with skilled landscape maintenance and you would not need many jobs to to keep a crew busy since it will take much longer to do. The problem is managing the crew. The training and supervision will be done by ....? It has to be you because no one with the skills needed to train and supervise the crew is available. They can not be left alone because there are too many things that can either go wrong, sidetrack them, or not be noticed by them.

We all see the mow blow and go people and tend to think we can run their companies better. We'd just hire better help. We'd hire better supervisors. Well, so would they if they could. The market is there. The money is there. Give it a try. It is not so easy.

You can probably assemble some pretty skilled people to work flower beds, but consider large shrub and hedge trimming and other hard labor jobs and you may find a lack of physical strength, speed, and stamina in the bedding plant people. It would be very difficult for a client to hire a separate crew for each aspect of their landscape maintenance. If it is truly high skilled, high end maintenance, it would be expected that all of the work would get done rather than just the light physical work. It would also be expected that the hedge would be trimmed in a day rather than a week. That is a lot of skill sets to develop and manage. You have to find them, train them, supervise them, and reassemble them each year. Who among us can really do all of that? I think a lot of us might have these skills, but would have an extreme difficulty translating these to a work crew.

I think after you attempt it, you'll have a new respect for the better mow, blow, and go companies.

The rates I know around here are -
$30-35 for "grunt work"
$35-45 for "fine gardening"- two other designers I know do it and myself ($40 for me- ~40% of that goes for taxes).

Some folks are willing to pay for good, trained gardening. There is a market. I've added two clients this year without really looking.

The community college offered a class called Estate Gardens this past semester. It was taught by an instructor who has recently started a company offering similar services, plus spraying, design and installation. He also teaches the woodies classes. I guess that's one way to find employees!

Sometimes I feel like my clients are afraid to open my e-mails, since I'm usually telling them something needs treating, and I don't spray for bugs or diseases. I've thought about getting an applicator's license, but haven't done it yet. But I don't think most hourly horticultural employees would report things like that to the owner, if they even noticed.

We provide fine gardening (aftercare) for clients whoÂve had us design and install their gardens. At the beginning of each season we send the client an estimate of monthly hours it will take to maintain their gardens. The can opt for more or less hours if they want. Usually, itÂs an email back that saysÂdo whatever you have to do. If it takes more, we explain why. If it takes less, we charge less. Unless itÂs a big hedge, we donÂt use any power tools. We are quiet as church mice. We donÂt spray, nor do we mulch. We leave those chores to the regular landscaperÂthat means we donÂt tread on their toes and avoid conflicts. There is a real demand for skilled garden labor at the upper end of the market. We also charge almost double the going rate to do it and there has been no shortage of requests for our services.

I agree with Laag, because it takes almost a full season to train gardenersÂeven with a supervisor and we only hire people with previous training!

On the other hand another thread reported there was a new niche market for trained gardeners because landscape architects were starting to look for maintenance people up to the task of keeping their projects going after completion.

"While I hate to see low standards of maintenance limit design, it surely has to be considered."

WOW.

The real design question--how to design gardens that will survive the maintenence crew.

That's why I never plant crepe myrtles. And I'm blue in the face from saying "mow on the highest setting--no really!" Like the liriope which was all pulled out (they though it was weeds!) And vines pulled off the fence and the roots weed-wacked to the ground ("there was something on your fence--but don't worry, we took care of it.") Etc, etc.

And it only takes once--one substitute, new crew, bad day, whatever, and they can destroy years of caredul pruning, growth, etc.

Since I am kind of "in" to pondering maintenance issues, and what makes a chore more of a chore, or not, I am drawn to laag's description of the varied types of tasks and "skill sets". Also think equipment. So one of the things I think about, either when I get overly ambitious for plantings in my own yard or look at some other design or installation, is how many different TYPES of maintenance chores and TOOLS are needed, as well as how much time, and when. So one "client" may do okay with lots of edging (or hedge trimming, or substitute whatever) if he has his trusty edging gizmo and not much else to have to do, and would be overwhelmed by many different types of chores; whereas another person might be okay with having lots of tools/gizmos and 30 minutes of a different job several times a week.

I would say water use is one of the biggest maintenance issues and biggest "worries," if you don't have an adequate automatic system (which I don't--have partial automatic sprinkler coverage, which still barely does enough in real drought, and have not developed drip irrigation) because if you put it off, the plant (wrong plant/wrong place, as it may be) dies, whereas some other chores--pruning, weeding--one can usually say, maybe tomorrow. So even though I have thought I have been working toward fairly drought-tolerant plants, I am still finding that I want to go even lower maintenance in this particular area, even if I have to give up some bloom and variety to get there.

Yep, it's the daunting task of hiring people that keeps me to just take on what I'm comfortable covering myself, while leaving time to design. Hopefully, I'll be all design at some point, but for now, I'm really enjoying the gardening.