Miss adventures of (some) gardeners

Business has been badly affected by the weather and jobs are beginning to stack up so whilst taking a short break from worrying about cash flow, machinery servicing and the likes I allowed myself twenty minutes to ponder about life in general particularly with all the doom and gloom around at present.Having recently replied to a forum post which touched upon on the delightful subject of the hazards of handling condoms, hypodermic needles/syringes, faeces, vomit etc. – Risk assessment for litter picking if you are wondering, it started me thinking how regulated the landscape maintenance business has become. Whilst I fully agree and support all the sensible ones, particularly H&S it has surely taken some of the fun out of the business.Looking back over the years I recalled the following incidents that perhaps wouldn’t be acceptable in today’s risk-averse society or more importantly how would I write a risk assessment to address them.I must however stress that none of these happened in my businesses and only got to know about the events third hand. Honest!My favourite has to be the young lad getting confused with the correct lever to release to stop the drive on a lawn mower and ending up in a rather grand and deep fish pond. Luckily he wasn’t working alone and both he and the machine were pulled out (eventually). Apparently a number of prized and valuable koi carp were sadly killed.With the advent of the mobile phone and instant video recording, there was an incident where two young gardeners thinking the house was empty decided to strip off and use the clients’ swimming pool. Unfortunately the au pair filmed them and emailed it to her boss! It should of been posted on You Tube but the owner of the business "paid" for the copy of the film as part settlement for damages.Strimming always causes a few problems, once a lad was stimming an overgrown area not realising that the clients’ Yorkshire terrier which was rather old, deaf and slow moving was resting. I believe the dog lived. Similarly the same has happened to tortoises.Racing ride on mowers often popped up in conversation and many the scars to back the story up.Carrying lawn mowers down steps with the blades still turning has to be the most stupid and dangerous one – fortunately the blade was very hot which limited the damage to the guy carrying the front of the mower. But at least they completed the job and invoiced the client before going to A&E.A young lad on a YTS scheme used a ladder to climb a tree, his work mate wasn’t aware of this and took the ladder down. Unable to find his work colleague he packed up and went off to the next job. Poor lad was stuck in the tree for over two hours.There are many more but all this reminds me to check my employee and public liability insurance policies. Maybe we should all employ more females as you never hear of any stories involving them.Perhaps one day I will write a book “it shouldn’t happen to a gardener” surely that’s more fun than risk assessments!

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