It is surely worth a try! Good luck, hope he agrees to your plan.

It sounds like a wonderful plan, Jackie. The fact that you'll be there to supervise and that you're getting someone who hasn't been doing it wrong for years, like the mow and blow guys, definitely would be big plus points. I'm sure he's also an intelligent young man, which means that he'll actually listen to you and follow your instructions, instead of nodding and agreeing, and then doing it wrong anyway. If you don't want him please send him my way!

Thanks, everyone. I have to wait until he moves in with his grandparents while he starts college (He decided that would be a better option than staying with his parents - he has fabulous relationships with all of them, but decided that getting out of the house where his parents and 2 younger siblings live would be a good thing). HIs grandparents live only 15 minutes from our house. That will be after Christmas, so I am waiting with baited breath..

Jackie

It sounds like a great idea to me; if I had such an opportunity I'd jump on it. I'm lucky that my half-day-a-week helper knows nothing about gardening, knows that he knows nothing, and respects my instructions, following them to the best of his ability. He also likes the garden and is a very hard worker and strong: who could ask for more? I have more than enough heavy unskilled work to keep him busy while I prune, plant, and so forth. Even if I could find a skilled gardener, I could never afford to pay him/her.

That sounds like a wonderful opportunity, for both of you! I am very fortunate to have found someone like that to help me in my garden and having that kind of help has taken it to the next level.

The guy who works for me worked on a mow and blow crew, but he wanted to expand his knowledge and eventually open his own business. He said he would like to work for me because I'm "picky". I took him up on his offer! It's not often I find someone who loves my pickiness!

He and I prune, train, and plant together and it has been a very mutually rewarding relationship. MY garden has never looked better! And I'm not killing myself doing the manual labor anymore. He is learning a lot about plants and how to grow them. His new business is very successful!

Jackie, that sounds like a win-win to me...I’m hoping that he’ll jump on this opportunity. It seems like it should be someone in the family to carry on the garden legacy your family has established. Even if not him, he’ll have a connection to the place and can influence others in his generation to love and care for your very special garden. :-)

Jackie, it sounds like a good idea to me, too. I agree that you’re better off starting with someone who isn’t already set in his “mow-blow-chop” ways. He can learn a lot from you, and you might even inspire an interest in roses in him. I’ve had the “help” of a landscaper type guy a few times, and he did some terrible damage. I hope he takes you up on your offer. The fact that he is smart/mature enough to not say yes or no immediately speaks well of him.

Roselady, it sounds like you found a real keeper! Lisa

Sounds like he'd be good. I need help too..just can't do it all anymore, not that I ever really did it ALL...some things just didn't get done. I have had a little free help from neighbors and a very knowledgeable rose friend nearby. Also an offer of help from a good rosarian who plans to come up here next spring. I have thought about hiring someone from Able Body Labor or such and just training them and being out there 100% of the time with them to be sure they didn't mess up. There is a very good jr. college horticulture program nearby that might have some willing workers.

rosylady, I'm finding your posts under your activity. Is your computer preventing you from doing that? I believe your older pics of the back are under comments to some older threads. Was the original garden all perennials?That must have been a lot of work, but it was nicely laid out. SO looking forward to seeing this new space bloom. P.s.Going a bit OT, how did you remove your grass?

Yes, I can see all my previous posts. The long one I wrote about the new rose garden never posted at all. When I hit the submit button, it just got stuck and did nothing for 10 minutes. With a feeling of dread, I asked my computer engineer husband to try to get the post back, but it was gone. It was very long with lots of pictures describing all the roses and the process of making the garden completely from scratch.

I will make a new post soon. There's lots to talk about as I've planted approx 150 different varieties of roses! Most OGR's, but some moderns as well. Actually, there are a lot of moderns! Lots of old tea roses which I'm experimenting with in my zone 8 garden.

Anyway, sorry to hijack this thread! But as for the grass....We actually scraped it off with an excavator. It was on site for removing a very large old hedge, so we just got rid of everything in one fell swoop. Interestingly, that was the easy part. The hard part was that no recycling place would take the sod! Apparently, it's hard to recycle. We had to take it to a place far away and pay a fair amount to get rid of it.

If I had planned better, I would have done the cardboard method and given it a year to compost on its own. One problem with that is that it's my front garden, so it would have been unsightly for a while.

Here comes the ice rain. It sounds great, but today’s college kids are lazy, and your yard screams for a hard labor love, too much work for most of the college kids, I know you have beautiful rose gardens, working in the land of thousands of thorns is not an easy task for college kids. They’d run away as fast as they can. If he hasn’t said yes to it, that means he is running away from the idea. You could get your church people come to help and have a BBQ party at the end.

Well, make sure your liability insurance is up to date because things happen in the garden. I went to see my insurance guy a few months ago and found out that we didn't have liability! I just assumed we did! How could he fail to tell us that we needed it? I could have read the policy I'm sure.

That’s a good call Linda. It should be included in your homeowners insurance, right?

summersrhythm.....you are right about people these days not wanting to do hard, thorny manual labor. One of the main reasons I never grew a lot of roses is because there weren't many people around here who know anything about roses, or care to work with them because of their thorns.

When I initially hired Jose (he is only 28, by the way) it was to clear the bed with the last remaining roses. Everything was being thrown away and my plan was to plant a low maintenance garden of mostly boxwood. He pulled out about 10 raggedy rose bushes and, I thought, put them in the truck to haul to the recycling. At the end of the day, I noticed the roses had been neatly trimmed and stacked off to the side. I reminded him that they were garbage. He asked if I would mind if he took them home and gave them to his mother to plant in her garden.

Then he told me all about his mother and her incredible green thumb, and her love of roses and how he helped her take care of them. I asked him if he would be willing to help me plant, and most importantly, maintain, a rose garden. He was so excited at the prospect!!

I feel incredibly lucky to have met someone with a passion for flowers and roses who is also young and strong and full of energy. I think there ARE young people out there who would be interested, but they would probably have to have a love of roses to take on working in a large, mature rose garden like Jackie's.

If things don't work out with Jackie's nephew, maybe try reaching out to the University of Davis and see if they have any students who are looking for that kind of experience. I know that when I was in my early 20's, my friend and I were absolutely rose obsessed! We would have JUMPED at the chance to work in a rose garden like Jackie's. She went on to study viticulture at Davis. I WISH I had gone to Davis! I went to cooking school instead, which I don't regret...but I may revisit my Davis dream when my kids are older :)

I agree with you, Rosylady. My helper is a gem. I have a huge area on top of a partially fallen stone wall that needed clearing out recently. I asked him to do that as I wasn't home to help. Instead, he texts me a pic of the wall with the caption, "I decided to start on this instead"! You have no idea the work and I slept much more soundly that night as it had been weighing on my mind along with so many unfinished projects. I could never have done it. When I helped him finish it I asked him why he chose to do that. He said, "Well, it needed doing or nothing else would look good. But, I was thinking last night if I died you could never do the wall yourself, but could always pull out weeds." I cry thinking about it.

There is a junior college not too far away from me which does have a good horticulture program - that is my backup plan if it does not work out with our great nephew. However, he took a year off after high school, and worked in agriculture (on farms) in CA, and also in Central America, that entire time. That is why I got the idea. We shall see - I will let you guys know what happens

Jackie

You guys are so lucky to find helpers like that. I am pushing my limits doing everything on my own. Now it's time for mulch again, to cover the grafted parts before winter. I am doing a few hours each weekend, little by little. It should be done by Christmas. Going to the Outdoor gym now. Lol

Hopefully Jackie will get his help. It sounds like he is a good hard working kid.