Tips for Loving a Gardener

Tips for Loving a Gardener:

1. Must. Love. Dirt. Because we work in it and are covered with it constantly.
2. We work hard, so we stink: get used to it!  Work hard, play hard–love it or leave it.
3. We talk about plants and growing stuff constantly.  If this isn’t interesting to you, we won’t be interesting to you. You will impress us by buffing up on your Latin (flower names).  You’ll be hearing a lot of them…you may want to carry a pocket plant book.
4. Gifts we love: mud boots, Carhartt’s, gardening gloves, Felco pruners, gardening knives, garden tools, books on gardening, gift certificates to our favorite nursery, hand salve.  Don’t waste your time with perfume or lingerie, it will just collect dust.
5. We love pouring over garden catalogs for hours at a time online or in magazines, so learn to love those glossy pages filled with red tomatoes (garden porn!).
6. Lost about irrigation?  Study up by going to websites and learning about driplines .
7. We are hard and strong.  If you want soft and feminine you’re barking up the wrong tree.Our hands are rough and calloused.  Find out our favorite hand salve and put it in your bathroom vanity, your vehicle, and your coat pocket. We will be thankful when we stumble upon it (and way more likely to get our hands on you).

8. We are obsessed with bugs.  Your gardener might put a praying mantis or lady bug on you shoulder as a term of endearment.  You will only insult the gardener when you scream and tell them get it off.

9. The gardener’s truck is always a mess with dirty seats and dusty everywhere.  Accept it…or clean it for your gardener. They may not notice right away but will be grateful.

10. Don’t get enough time with your gardener?  Start weeding next to them…if you can’t beat them join them. (P.S. They’ll have more time after the frost.)

11. At the end of the day, pull up some chairs, make nice cocktails for your gardener and tell them their garden looks amazing.  We love to gloat over our hard work.

12. Never tell us “stop stressing out…it’s just a plant.” You will be doomed…always console us over plant death or disease with seriousness.

13. “If it’s not dying or a client…it’s just not important” – My rule to live by. You might have to just take a back seat sometimes to clients and gardening.

14. Don’t forget to tell them: “your garden is amazing…look at all the hard work paying off!”… this holds more weight then “I love you…you’re so sexy.”  (But we will take that too.)

15. If you find anything on this list crazy, weird or irrational, please move on and let your gardener just keep planting. You will not turn us into Barbies…we are real, live close to the earth, and we are not impressed with superficial items (except for new tillers or new pickup trucks).