Does your garden mirror your occupation?

I am sitting at my desk, here in the Lot et Garonne on a Sunday morning, listening to and watching a video about hacking which I have picked up from the Real Oasis blog.

In it, a hacker is asking an audience of hackers at a convention, what they think certain people do or what they are just from photographs of them or their cars.

It got me thinking - could you identify what people do for a living from the type of garden that they keep?

I suppose, I have a little head start because I had the opportunity to work with lots of people from such a diverse cross section of society,so I can actually relate a garden to a certain personality.

So here goes with a little selection of my perceptions for gardens related to the owners vocation - use your imagination a little. Some of the detail I might have added as a bit of fun - however there is still a reason for it.

A Fireman - I do not have a recollection of working for any Firemen over the years. This is because they probably had very little money for landscaping or garden maintenance or preferred to spend their disposable income on weight lifting machines or play stations and not garden plants. I also think, despite working in the emergency services that they are probably a DIY enthusiast and maybe a little bit of a control freak.

A Fireman will have the biggest and brash BBQ station too, a three quarter inch hose to water the plants and the cleanest windows in the street.

Firemen will also likely to have a very regimental lawn with no curves and trees and robust shrubs rather than soft delicate shades and colours. Red will be their favourite colour so a good autumnal flush will be important.

A Nurse - Although still an emergency worker, a Nurse is extremely caring by nature and will be a totally different character to a Fireman. If a female nurse lives at home - especially if she is more mature - it is likely to be alone or (shock) with another women.

The house will be tidy and she is likely to have at least one cat but quite likely more, with the garden and cats having her full attention outside of her work.

The garden will be compact and usually have a small courtyard in a small housing development. She will very likely to be a member of the housing association and on the committee and maybe run the communal gardens.

A nurse will have a very soft approach to her flower choices and enjoy lots of pots around the patio. There will be a bird table or box and usually a small cold frame with seedlings being brought on. The resulting plants though, are usually for bring-and-buy sales for good causes or to swap with friends or maybe even give away. A nurse will be happy to spend the last ten pounds of her low salary on her garden.

A Car Salesman (in fact any salesman but the following only applies to successful ones) - A Salesman will be under forty years of age and live on a development less than five years old. The house will a detached ex show house with four to five bedrooms.

The drive will be block paved or tarmacked (no gravel). On the drive will be a very clean, nearly new car with all the bells and whistles. There will be at least one suction pad on the windscreen that holds the Tomtom satnav or PDA and the wheels will be upgraded to high spec alloys.

The garden will be minimalist with typical specimen shrubs like Forsythia, Viburnum, Deutzia, Lavatera because these are the ones the builder planted.

The lawn will have wavy edges but there will be space for sports games such as football or cricket and a plastic five a side goal one end. If at least on of the children is a girl then there will be a moulded plastic Wendy house and/or a large combination play station with slides, swings and a rope ladder. There will also be a golf practise net in one corner. The mower will be a Honda HR series rather than a Hayter.

The Antique Dealer - This one is easy! The antique dealer is typically over fifty years of age and quite possibly gay. They will live in a stone cottage that is dark and filled with antiques (naturally). The garden will be an unordered chaos with the emphasis very much on 'Spring' with a profusion of annual and biennial plants. There will be a mixed herbaceous border typically hosting Alchemilla mollis and Heuchera and lots of Peony.

The summer will be devoid of colour and interest because of the amount of antique fairs that they attend but the autumn colour in the garden will be strong and trees like Davidia (hankerchief tree)will be present.

This is just small sample and I have left loads out. The only one I have based on my imagination is the Fireman but the others are based on real characters that I have worked for.

How about you, is their part of your job or previous profession moulded into your garden and are you too shy to share it with us?

Comments

[Andrew]

What about a Software Engineer's garden? I've often thought that the random, soft edged nature of gardening is an interesting juxtaposition of my daily work where everything is planned, ordered and tested.

[the constant gardener]

A professional gardener's garden:

Everything overdue for a prune and in some cases wildly overgrown
but full of truly beautiful plants (at least they would be if they were looked after properly)
lawn at least 5" high at all times
half-finished landscaping projects (pond, patio, path, cutting garden) dotted around all over the place
greenhouse stuffed with potbound seedlings
and a few client's plants waiting to go into gardens which are primped and preened to within an inch of their pampered little lives
oh... just described my own garden

[Philip Voice]

Hi Andrew, interesting thinking and I wonder how many people treat their garden as their altered ego?

Can you imagine professionals in an ordered and regimented environment who wanted to cause chaos in their lives to break the mould?

Sally, lol! I bet you are not alone :)

My English garden had 50% which was the centre of my attention and kept me on my toes, the other half was chaos and I could never really keep up with it.

I did have a view, that because I had a really good looking lawn, it became the focus for any visitor and a distraction for me so the borders, if a little untidy, had the attention diverted away from them.