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Gardening for non-gardeners | | Date Added: July 05, 2010 07:52:30 AM | | Summer has arrived and the garden is flourishing. Or is that just the weeds? For the gardening enthusiasts in our community, summer is showtime. But for those of us whose fingers aren’t so green or just aren’t into digging dirt, summer can be a real chore. All that mowing, weeding, cutting back – it never ends and the lawn still looks more like a recently vacated campsite than a bowling green.
We’re being told not to pave over our gardens for the sake of the environment and to grow our own food for the sake of our health, taste-buds and saving the planet. Employers are being encouraged to furnish offices with indoor plants to provide healthier workplaces. OK, message understood. But let’s face it, if gardening isn’t your thing then how likely are you to take action? There’s simply too much to learn, too much to do, too many things to buy and too much dirt to get onto your clothes and under your fingernails.
While the less green-fingered among us wrestle with our consciences, others in our community gain great pleasure from keeping the green flag flying. So why not take advantage of that by getting our gardening-loving neighbours to look after our plant life? Why not pay them to mow our lawns, weed our flowerbeds, make our gardens beautiful and even grow our food for us? These people might also turn out to be the teachers who inspire us to have a go for ourselves, by showing us how it all works instead of leaving us to navigate the jargon of gardening manuals.
Why not? Because we don’t know who they are.
Now, thanks to a website called PlantConcierge.com, that is about to change. PlantConcierge.com provides a place where every knowledgeable home gardener can offer their services and every reluctant gardener can find them. It’s an internet-age version of postcards in the local shop window. Only this shop window is available in your own home and shows all the people available to serve your postcode area.
PlantConcierge.com’s founder, Miriam Young, explains what inspired her to create the website. “The idea actually came to me because I responded to an advert on a website for somebody who needed help weeding her garden. She turned out to live across the road from me, but it was pure chance we found each other via her ad.
Gardening isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but more and more people are recognising the benefits of having plants in their lives. Established gardening businesses don’t always cater for the customer who just wants small jobs such as weeding, mowing the lawn or showing people how to grow their own food, yet there are so many amateur gardeners who’d be glad of the cash they could get from helping their neighbours out. These gardeners can’t afford to advertise in local directories or have websites built that local people can easily find via Google etc., so I wanted to create something that would make it easy for everybody to get what they want. Something that would benefit local communities by putting neighbours in touch with each other, in contrast to the long-distance “self-help” relationships fostered by online communities.”
As the tough economic climate leads us to spend more time in our own homes and to look for ways to boost our income, PlantConcierge.com could well be a home-grown solution that makes all our lives that little bit better. |
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