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A Working-day in the Life of an HP Landscaper.
4th Aug:
Summer time sees our landscaping teams working to capacity across gardens in our area of London. The last couple of days have been typical of this time of year, seeing the appearance of both the Factor 20 and the company issue water-proofs. Our Great British Summer. The job ahead in this particular two days is to be mainly heavy ground working with a little skilled and precise installation work. A prior ground or soil survey has revealed the presence of clay. A lot of clay.
As part of a five-strong team I arrive on site before 8 am where the client offers us the great British motivator, a round of teas, relieved to find out they are all white-with-ones.
We glove up and set out the days tools, dust sheets, barrows and boards. Already hot, sleeves are rolled up, sun cream slapped on faces and deep breaths taken as today’s task is the excavation of a metre deep hole and the erection of 12 posts within to install a fabulous trampoline as part of a children’s play area. Did I mention that the hole is to be made through clay? Luckily we are able to call on two extra members of our team to come and do some leg work lugging hundreds of bags of clay and rubble out the front to the skip, returning to the garden with over 300 20kg bags of sand from the five ton drop made that morning. That’s when the teas really come into their own. Some of the boys progress to white-with-twos.
10 am arrives fast, and the 15 minute break results in a rapid stiffening of muscles so it’s back to the digging and the carrying. This makes room for the first of the 12 posts on which the trampoline will be set. It feels good to see the idea coming to life, for both us and the client whose delightful children are taking full advantage of the weather and the holiday to splash about excitedly in the paddling pool and offer us bites of their half eaten dripping lollies, one dressed as a mermaid and the other as a cowboy.
By the end of the day, the sand is shifted and levelled in the play area, the hole is completed and eight posts are erected.
The next day arrives and the British summer gifts us another warm day; with a side of heavy and constant rain. You’ll see from the pictures that the hole is doing it’s job of draining away rainwater – just wish the raincoats were doing as good a job – and the lads remain committed to meeting the deadline.
As soon as the shed is erected we have somewhere to huddle together and eat our soggie sarnies, sup our restorative brews and discuss the best way to lay the artificial turf on a bed of layered safety-foam which we are using to cover the entire children’s play area. I’ve never seen a shed go up in such record time! It turns out that the conditions do not lend themselves to laying the grass and foam as it doesn’t give the product (nomow artificial turf) the best chance of a long and maintenance free life.
That being said, I’d have loved to show you pictures of the completed job, but this being Our Great British Summer, sometimes we just have to do the very best that mother nature allows us to.
