I really liked this point: "I put my hand up. I make a point that has been playing on my mind: gardening is valuable when accessible to all but there is a problem of using volunteers as free labour. The practice of planning spaces according to what can be done for free by volunteers to avoid paying a gardener is unsustainable." Would love to know what the response was. I've been thinking a lot about this lately as I come to volunteer myself.
I struggle with this on my plots - who can afford to volunteer with me and who can't. Who 'earns' the experience, skill and knowledge in lieu of their time. Why can't I afford to pay a gardener and so many other questions!
Fascinating accounts and would have loved to heard this discussion, and much more, the one afterwards between these writers (and gardeners). Thank you for sharing these.
I think highlighting the salaries private estates and gardens are able to pay compared to public ones…. Feels like it’s creating a drain as these spaces often with high walls, big budgets, and huge resource needs (both people and otherwise) keep skilled horticulturalists and designers away from public projects as it’s unfeasible to live in most places in the uk on these wages … if we want to create creative, forward thinking, sustainable gardens for everyone this feels paramount to address… liveable wages in public spaces are few and far between but it has to change…
This is a gorgeous post with excellent ideas, thank you for sharing takeaways from the discussion. As a new-ish gardener of 6 years who writes about my experience, I always come back to this sad realization that many of my readers cannot garden bc they don’t have available time, attention, resources, guidance or (importantly) land. I wish that more gardens and green spaces could invest in learning/access opportunities for people who want to begin gardening, while simultaneously paying expert gardeners to do the skilled design, care + teaching work necessary to create and maintain inspiring natural habitats and community parks. Some kind of intentional balance between learning, access, and the free labor of volunteering plus the paid opportunities necessary to compensate expert gardeners for the valuable work they do—a complicated balance of opportunities to figure out but it feels very possible and exciting to suss this balance out!
Volunteering is a menace to many industries; it's endemic and ultimately it serves the middle class well. Perhaps it could even be described as a divide and rule tactic and a form of gatekeeping. Gardeners of all flavours need better pay, but let's not reduce it to a single issue. Gardeners are a bit like hospitality or retail workers - everyone has the ability to do those jobs on a superficial level (it was mentioned in the stack) but not everyone can do them well. We all have the same needs, we are all cogs in the machine and we all deserve enough money to live a fulfilled life.
I really liked this point: "I put my hand up. I make a point that has been playing on my mind: gardening is valuable when accessible to all but there is a problem of using volunteers as free labour. The practice of planning spaces according to what can be done for free by volunteers to avoid paying a gardener is unsustainable." Would love to know what the response was. I've been thinking a lot about this lately as I come to volunteer myself.
What does it mean to volunteer and what am I changing by volunteering? Can I actually afford to volunteer? What about people that definitely can't?
I struggle with this on my plots - who can afford to volunteer with me and who can't. Who 'earns' the experience, skill and knowledge in lieu of their time. Why can't I afford to pay a gardener and so many other questions!
Fascinating accounts and would have loved to heard this discussion, and much more, the one afterwards between these writers (and gardeners). Thank you for sharing these.
I think highlighting the salaries private estates and gardens are able to pay compared to public ones…. Feels like it’s creating a drain as these spaces often with high walls, big budgets, and huge resource needs (both people and otherwise) keep skilled horticulturalists and designers away from public projects as it’s unfeasible to live in most places in the uk on these wages … if we want to create creative, forward thinking, sustainable gardens for everyone this feels paramount to address… liveable wages in public spaces are few and far between but it has to change…
This is a gorgeous post with excellent ideas, thank you for sharing takeaways from the discussion. As a new-ish gardener of 6 years who writes about my experience, I always come back to this sad realization that many of my readers cannot garden bc they don’t have available time, attention, resources, guidance or (importantly) land. I wish that more gardens and green spaces could invest in learning/access opportunities for people who want to begin gardening, while simultaneously paying expert gardeners to do the skilled design, care + teaching work necessary to create and maintain inspiring natural habitats and community parks. Some kind of intentional balance between learning, access, and the free labor of volunteering plus the paid opportunities necessary to compensate expert gardeners for the valuable work they do—a complicated balance of opportunities to figure out but it feels very possible and exciting to suss this balance out!
Volunteering is a menace to many industries; it's endemic and ultimately it serves the middle class well. Perhaps it could even be described as a divide and rule tactic and a form of gatekeeping. Gardeners of all flavours need better pay, but let's not reduce it to a single issue. Gardeners are a bit like hospitality or retail workers - everyone has the ability to do those jobs on a superficial level (it was mentioned in the stack) but not everyone can do them well. We all have the same needs, we are all cogs in the machine and we all deserve enough money to live a fulfilled life.