PLANT BOSS
Working As A Landscape & Design Apprentice
Late May. My first day as an apprentice for Limitless Landscaping was not glamorous. As soon as I got there, my boss Brennan said to me, “How hard do you want to work?” and I replied, “Let’s do this.” I wanted dirt under my fingernails already, not knowing that I was to be more than just a design apprentice. I would become his right hand woman: half vision, half muscle. Within a few minutes on the job, I was put between the handles of a wheelbarrow and told to get this pile of cement paving bricks from here to there. It was only the distance of a small backyard; the grade of the land was on my side, slightly downhill in the direction I was to wheel said pavers. But my biceps were about the width of two broomsticks, and I was not sure Brennen considered this when he hired me for the summer job (mostly as a favor to my mom). On my first trip to the pile, I judged how many bricks I could feasibly balance in the plastic yellow wheelbarrow, which was to become my best friend and worst enemy. I estimated incorrectly and my first load immediately tipped to the side, pulling me with it. (This would be a common occurrence throughout the summer, making me look very professional.) Sun on his hair and dust in his smile, Brennan just laughed and continued leveling the client’s back patio with a layer of sand, the base for the brick pavers. Slightly encouraged, I went back and forth and back and forth, struggling to gracefully lift and dump the wheelbarrow of bricks next to my boss, rather than collapsing the wheelbarrow load to the side in undoubtedly the easier method.
After an hour of muscle-numbing dissociation, and the adorable discovery of a baby snake hiding under the last layer of brick, the pile was relocated into a steaming heap of simultaneous joy and shame. Now, instead of using my “muscles”, I was to utilize my good sense of form and space as we began puzzle-piecing the bricks in an aesthetically pleasing and sturdy pattern over the sand. The boss and I were repaving a spot in the client’s patio where a huge oak had fallen and left a dirt circle, begging to be reincorporated into the otherwise picturesque landscape. Thankfully, this was not to be my first tree job, the truly hardest days on the job, and the tree had already been removed. As Brennan cut the pavers to fit perfectly, I was finally to plant something! Little baby shrubs. The dirt was cool and the breeze green. When I drove home that day, I couldn’t feel my arms and my hamstrings were shot, but we had improved a natural landscape and I did in fact get to dig in the dirt. And this was just my first taste of landscaping the land.
At the end of each summer day I was disgusting, sweaty, covered in plant goo, reeking of dirt and absolutely loving it. I got to operate terrifying loud motor equipment like drills, chainsaws, and tractors. My biceps grew at least four broomsticks thick and I thought I could lift anything. Brennan was an absolute monster; one of those people that never seem to get tired or stressed, and answered every question I asked without any visible regret for hiring a weakling and landscaping novice. He knew how to make plants look pretty. Old plants, overgrown plants, baby plants, flowers, shrubs, grass, trees. He was a force of beauty and harmony and chaos like nature itself.
Working At A Plant Nursery
Late September. My first day at the plant nursery, I was sure it would be easier than wheelbarrowing bricks. I was sure. Armed with my confidence from chainsawing tree branches and pick-axing rock soil, baby plants were going to be a breeze. Finally, I could care for the plants in peace; water and organize them for happy gardeners. Little did I know, it had been another gross underestimation. That very day I was to earn the title, The Pumpkin Queen. My first task was to do what no other employee wanted to do: unload the Halloween pumpkin crates. Two chest-high crates of massive orange pumpkins. I silently accepted my fate. Thankfully, unlike landscaping, this was to be my hardest day on the job. The thought of being surrounded by baby plants everyday gave me solace as I solitarily constructed a small pumpkin patch in the nursery parking lot.
Palmer’s Garden & Goods was the most beautiful labyrinth of plants, trees, trinkets, and tools that I had ever seen. Through the back barn doors of the heavily ornamented store front, a twisting and turning garden awaited. Filled with hidden nooks and roundabouts, each leading to its own family of plants, Palmers was perfect for exploring (especially for Smokey, the resident cat). Green greeted me at every entrance, and flora waved leafy goodbyes as I left each night. I felt that here, they knew what I had really wondered about when landscaping: how to take care of the living plants. Sure, Brennan and I installed plants and cleaned them up, but that was where the job ended. We didn’t have to maintain the beauty we left behind. But I wanted to know what the plants wanted. What kind of soil, water, sunlight? And it turned out they did know, most of them.
The busiest employee at the nursery was always Erica, intrusted to the “plant hospital” tucked into a back corner of the nursery. She never had the proper spacing for the plants to grow back properly, because any plant deemed “unsellable” or “ugly” was abandoned at the hospital entrance. Many suffered this fate. We often joked that the plant hospital was more like a hospice, where plants go to die a slow death. Coworker and student of horticulture, Erica taught me all she knew about plants, like how walking by plants daily helps them resist parasitic weeds. Due to the daily stimulation and breeze caused by our passing, errant airborne seeds would be blown away before they could root in the host plant’s pot. I found this to be true because the plants lining the paths and on tables, those frequently moved or examined by customers, never seemed to grow weeds. The unlucky plants hidden among the potted tree grove, or stuck in the back rows and between trealises, were always overgrown and eventually strangled by weeds.
Another coworker and former Marine, Derec, studied horticulture in college and told me how tree stumps were often kept in the ground in Norwegian forests, because the roots of the tree were still a part of a larger communication system between one side of the forest and the other. If you removed the stump and its roots, those trees would no longer be able to talk amongst one another. Derec told me how the potted trees we sold typically do not do well in the ground because they never learn the underground root language of other trees and cannot communicate with their neighbors. Therefore, warnings of animal threats or parasitic invasion cannot be heeded, and nutrients cannot be shared when the freshly planted tree is adjusting to its new environment (a precarious time for both plant and gardener). There was one employee who taught me that not everyone feels empathy for the plants like Erica, Derec and I do. She would carelessly knock plants over, damaging the leaves, branches, and stalks of the plant, without bothering to pick them up. She did not seem to understand that we were caring for and selling live beings, which require and deserve the same amount of attention and care as a pet would, if you want it to flourish.
In conclusion, scientists have proven that the color green boosts serotonin levels in the human brain when spotted by the eye. Therapists have relayed to me how laying on a patch of grass can instantly relieve anxiety. Based on my experience landscaping and selling plants, I can confirm both of these statements. Today, I pine for those long days beaten and weathered by sun and rain. I sit in class and contemplate growing herbs and fruit. Outside, I seek the smell of dirt and petals. Like a plant, I feed on water and sunshine. I continue to dream of my own garden.
Tips & Tricks
When planting a new plant in the ground, always coat the hole with compost and rustle the root ball of the baby plant with your hands, so that the roots ends hang down and are not tangled around each other.
Always keep your tool blades sharp, makes for a quicker job.
If you buy a plant that has been grown and cultivated indoors, make sure it stays indoors. It if goes on your uncovered porch it will die. (Covered porch depends on the local weather). Along the same vein, indoor plants need about two weeks to adjust to the new temperature and air conditioning of its new home.
Herbs cannot be grown indoors! They like the direct sunlight. 6+ hours.
Do not throw away ugly plants! Even if they look dead, there is a possibility they may come back in the spring or summer. It is worth the wait to see a dead plant come back to life.
If the leaves of the plant are browning in the middle, you are giving it too much water. If the leaves are browning at the edges or has small burns anywhere in the leaf, it is being burned by the sun and needs less time in the sun. Put it in a slightly shadier or more light-filtered spot.
LIFT HEAVY PLANTS WITH YOUR LEGS, NOT YOUR BACK.
Target Publication: Horticulture Magazine
In my article, I explore my time working as a landscape & design apprentice and plant seller, and relate it to the human experience with plants: how humans and plants are both conscious beings, and the horticulturist ritual of touching and being touched by nature everyday.