Looking for a gardening club/college to use our garden!

Dinarius

My wife and I have just bought a three bed semi in Dublin 14.

The garden is large, by semi-d standards, at about 150 feet in length and rectangular in shape.

It is laid out in lawn bordered on either side by hedge. There are a few mature trees. Nothing fancy, but in presentable condition.

My wife is a very keen gardener, me less so.

The one problem with the garden is that, over the wall near the end ( a wall built a long time ago by the previous owner to protect her children from a stream that used to run behind all the gardens on the road - now diverted by Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown CC and dry) lies nearly 50 years of grass cuttings and assorted gardening detritus.

We want to remove the wall, thus bringing the 'no-man's-land' behind it into the rest of the garden, and remove the pile of grass cuttings behind it. The area behind the wall is shaded by a larger wall about 20' behind it, which is the real boundary of the property, and it contains two mature plane trees. We would like to create a small wild flower dell here.

Our problem is time.

We would be willing to give over the garden, for a period of time, under terms to be agreed, to a gardening school/college/club/project that was interested.

If anyone is interested, please contact me via Private Message, giving daytime contact details.

Thanks.

D

lomb

i seriously doubt anyone will do it for free tbh.
pm me if u are interested in a professional team doing it, they charge 350 a day and will do it in a few days so it should cost more than a grand or 2, a small price to pay for a nice garden.

Dinarius

Sorry if I gave that impression, but I wasn't expecting anyone to do it for free.

I would pay for all gardening materials, as well as the skip to clear up the place before anything else was done.

My thinking is simply that if anyone who runs gardening courses needs a blank slate for a class project, I can provide it. It would cost them nothing but their time and effort.

If there is no interest, then I will go the commercial route just to get a handle on it. Once it's under control, we would work it ourselves.

D.

corblimey

I'm looking for a house painting club to paint my house.

TheMonster

I'm looking for a house buyers club to but me a house - will pay all legal fees etc just don't want to pay for the house.

lomb

im looking for a ferrari car buyers club il 'look after' and store the cars for anyone who wants to buy say a F430, anyone?

Alun

I'm looking for a house painting club to paint my house.

C'mon guys, give him a break! This isn't exactly a new thing, you know. It's not uncommon, for example for, say, hairdressing schools to offer really cheap, if not free, haircuts to people for their students to practice on, ditto for dental schools and probably a few other professions I can think of.

So, why, for example, shouldn't a college offering painting and decorating courses offer to paint a house for free if you provide all the materials? It'd be far better experience for the students to do a proper job of preparing and painting a real house rather than just practicing in a workshop environment. After all, it isn't a 100% risk free excercise for the house owner ... they are students, after all, and could conceivably make a complete hash of it even if they were properly supervised.

lomb

Alun wrote:

they are students, after all, and could conceivably make a complete hash of it even if they were properly supervised.

as a dentist i know all about learning ,but honestly how can anyone make a hash of a garden, basically whats needed are skips and mini jcbs, and that costs money, if its as bad as what he says expect 2 grand for a clear out and another 1-2 for shrubs, planting etc.

Alun

I was talking about painting a house, actually But my point still stands. Suppose you're running a college course in landscape design ... where do your students practice their skills? Do you have a practice area in the college that you landscape, dig up, landscape again, dig up, landscape yet again ad infinitum? Doesn't sound very close to reality to me. So what would be wrong with offering their "services" under the supervision of a lecturer for the cost of materials and plant hire alone? And like you said, in the case of the gardening, it would be difficult to make too much of a mess of it, so it's a win-win situation both ways as far as I can see.

Dinarius

lomb wrote:

as a dentist i know all about learning ,but honestly how can anyone make a hash of a garden, basically whats needed are skips and mini jcbs, and that costs money, if its as bad as what he says expect 2 grand for a clear out and another 1-2 for shrubs, planting etc.

The pile of grass cuttings is about 15' x 15' and about 8'-10' deep. So, imagine your living room full of grass. Not really mini jcb territory. More like a skip and four or five wheel barrows at it for a day.

The remaining 130' of the garden is laid out in lawn.

Just in case anyone was worried! ;¬)

D.

lomb

Alun wrote:

And like you said, in the case of the gardening, it would be difficult to make too much of a mess of it, so it's a win-win situation both ways as far as I can see.

would make sense to me to contact the gardening 'schools' directly if they exist which personally i doubt they do. if they do exist then go for it its all a game of monopoly anyway

Alun

would make sense to me to contact the gardening 'schools' directly if they exist which personally i doubt they do.

Why do you doubt this? Perhaps if people in Ireland took the whole idea of vocational training a bit more seriously, we might not have the shortage of skilled craftsmen and tradesmen we have here. Landscape gardening is no exception.

Anyway, a quick Google reveals at least one such course ... http://www.scd.ie/landscape.htm, and I'm sure there are more.

EDIT: A brief extract from the course prospectus confirms my suspicions voiced above ...

Career opportunities
The current shortage of Landscape Designers means qualified people are in high demand. There are very few qualifying courses in Ireland and most professionals are educated in the UK and USA.

MorningStar

Alun wrote:

C'mon guys, give him a break! This isn't exactly a new thing, you know. It's not uncommon, for example for, say, hairdressing schools to offer really cheap, if not free, haircuts to people for their students to practice on, ditto for dental schools and probably a few other professions I can think of.

So, why, for example, shouldn't a college offering painting and decorating courses offer to paint a house for free if you provide all the materials? It'd be far better experience for the students to do a proper job of preparing and painting a real house rather than just practicing in a workshop environment. After all, it isn't a 100% risk free excercise for the house owner ... they are students, after all, and could conceivably make a complete hash of it even if they were properly supervised.

Insurance would prevent it I would guess as college insurance probably wouldn't cover it. The lecturer probably isn't going to be willing either if the union lets him do it. The current exam structure probably doesn't include a group project of manual labour. On top of that aren't the colleges closed for the summer?

He is basically looking for free labour.

In saying that a FAS employee benifit used to be that you could get the apprentices to do project work on your home.

DonkeyStyle \o/

Dinarius wrote:

lies nearly 50 years of grass cuttings and assorted gardening detritus.

Impressive.
I wonder if you'll find any dead bodies in there.
Perhaps the last poor sod who tried to clear it out

DonkeyStyle \o/

Actually, I was just thinking, if that grass has really been there for decades, surely it must be some pretty good compost by now.
You might be able to save a few shillings on skips if you could find someone interested in using the compost... something to ask about if you get in touch with some landscapers.