I retained at least two of my clients for the full +20 years I had my landscaping and gardening business.
I had several clients respectively of more than ten and fifteen years standing and lots who we served in excess of five years.
Many clients became friends and I retain fondness for many gardens which still give me pleasure when I look back at what we achieved.
Some gardens were purely soft landscaping additions and alterations and others were major re-builds or complete landscaping. many gardens were an evolution over long periods. In twenty years you can do and see so much.
I planted new plants which I then watched mature. Young trees grew older. Plants died and I helped bring fresh life to tired borders. Sometimes I stayed with a garden even after a client came and went. Some died.
I'd like to think that part of me stayed in those gardens. I'd like to think they were partly my gardens. I certainly became emotional about some of them.
Many clients even gave me full creative control and left me to change (within reason and within their budget) borders and create summer bedding schemes.
Jealousy
I'm certain there are many now reading this who know exactly what I'm describing?
You maybe a contractor but you feel that somehow these gardens are as much yours as they are your clients'.
...and how the green eyed monster would catch you when your client (or sometimes a well meaning but busy-body friend) would prune a favourite shrub or weed a border where one might have been nurturing a few self-seeded plants.
Sometimes even another contractor would be employed to carry out other tasks.
I don't miss many aspects of running my business but I miss the many gardens I shared over 20 years of my life with. I'd love to go back and look around and see how they've continued to evolve.
...or maybe I don't
What about you....do you have a connection to your gardens that's stronger than the paper the contract's written on?
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A constant problem if you put any soul in to your work IMO.
I have had the same, with gardens I've worked in for 10-years plus, only to see a new owner employ a cheap cowboy outfit. Or, gardens that have been a lifetime's project for someone, who needed help as they got older, and then a new family come in and rip the borders out to create a football pitch.
Could have written that myself, we still tend some gardens that I first worked on over 30 years ago and the attachment I have with them is strong. Each garden has a story to tell and can remind me of who was working with me at the time, more often good, sometimes no so and occasionally hilarious!
How can you not have an attachment for a garden where you have built every wall, laid every paving slab, planted every shrub and tree, erected all the fences and seen it evolve along with the customer's family?
We have now worked for some of the the children who were toddlers when we started their parents' garden - I can now see a 3rd generation on the horizon!!
It's not a 'real job' is it?