If you have a huge garden- should you be doing your own gardening or outsourcing the work to paid help such as gardeners or general workers?
The decision whether to manage the garden yourself and if you do, the type of skills required depends on a few factors such as:
1. How big is your garden and the complexity
2. Your interest or ability to care for the garden
3. The amount you are willing to spend or your budget
How big is your garden and the complexity
If your garden consists of a small area of potted plants on concrete floor, maintenance is fairly easy. You would just need to dedicate time (example once or twice a month) to pull some weeds and commit to watering your plants every day if it does not rain.
However, if your garden covers a huge grass area, then it would require more time and effort to mow the lawn. Someone would have to do it.
For example, my house has a reasonably large area of grown grass. There are pebbles and small stones stuck between the grass – and to mow the grass, believe me, it requires some skills. I tried to buy a weed cutter from Black and Decker and used it… and ended up making ugly patches, and worse still, a small flying pebble cause my car’s side rear mirror to crack and broke. I was lucky it did not crack my windshield or my screen door or glass windows.
I have tried to manually pull the grass, but after spending hours in the garden, I could not see any difference.
That is why personally for me, I have chosen to outsource the work of trimming the grass to workers.
Your interest or ability to care for the garden
Some people have green thumbs. They love gardening, and whatever that is planted and cared under them grows beautifully. They also consider maintenance work like pulling weeds, shifting plants around, potting/depotting and mowing the lawn as therapeutic and a good exercise (you sure sweat buckets working in a garden).
So for those who love all aspects of gardening, and does not mind to do the dirty work, then it is no brainer that there is no need to outsource.
But some folks (like me) do not mind to plant flowers, water the plants and pull a weed or two but moving the lawn would be out. So, the heavy duty job of getting rid of weeds would be better outsourced.
Above: Garden weeds from pulling out the weeds on my own and yet ….look at the surrounding grass patches… still have lots of weeds. Looked as if nothing much is being done 🙁
The amount you are willing to spend or your budget
Having a garden has many therapeutic effects on the mind and soul. Looking at the greeneries and flowers help to relax the mind and cheer up a sombre mood.
We may not love gardening but most people would sure love to have a nice and neat looking garden.
And that comes with a price.
If you want to turn your garden into a work of art or something truly beautiful or artistic, then the very least you would require an experienced gardener. Or an expert in landscaping.
And once your garden is turned into a work of art, naturally it would require constant maintenance because weeds would surely grow with given time. A friend of my mom invests few hundred dollars each month to get a gardener come in about once every two weeks.
Often, you get what you pay for.
My neighbors also have grass patches and they also often need to call in people to have the weeds cut, swept and bundled. Usually they opt for the cheapest service, which is alright. But the guys I frequently engage to weed and sweep my garden are a little more expensive but they do with better quality. Each time after they weeded and swept the weeds/grass, twigs and dry leaves, my garden looks so good.
Summary:
Most homes today choose to replace their garden with concrete tiles.
There are many therapeutic quality that a garden could bring you. It is great to destress and walking barefoot on the soil helps to discharge electromagnetic energies from your body. You would often feel better after spending even 5 minutes walking barefoot in your garden.
On the other hand, having a messy or cluttered garden would have the opposite effect on the mind, not to mention it can be a hazard…. breeding ground for mosquitos, attracting snakes (due to rapid deforestation, there are many sightings of snakes especially at overgrown grass where they can hide) and bad entities.
Keeping a real garden would require time and money….ongoing and long term. The less willing or lower interest we have in maintaining a garden, the more we would need to pay to outsource the work.
