Come Play in My Yard

When I was in school, we learned the proper way to describe the tools and components of the horticulture trade. For example, "dirt" is something you clean up with a vacuum or wipe off your shoes; "soil" is the medium for growing healthy plants. When you talk about putting plants in dirt, it connotes the wrong idea, and that isn't immediately obvious if you haven't thought about it. Soil is more appropriate because it better signifies the rich ecosystem of minerals and organisms and fungi and decaying matter and water and air that provide the ideal medium for plant growth.

Another example that sticks out is "whacking," be it weed whacking, or whacking limbs off a tree. Just like talking about dirt, it doesn't sound professional. A word like "whack" implies sloppiness and unskilled labor, that someone isn't taking the work seriously or doesn't care about the health of those plants. When you have professional training in landscaping, or even just in general, it's simply more accurate to refer to these terms by their proper names -- a line/string trimmer, or pruning a limb from a tree.

The above instances are good things to keep in mind, and my point is not to get overly pedantic about semantics. Being a little more precise with our language is always a good goal, especially in skilled trades.

But there are phrases commonly directed at me and my colleagues that I find more frustrating than a pet peeve. "Would you like to come play in my yard?" "You can practice in my garden." "You've been playing in the dirt all day." I'm talking specifically about people who are requesting me to work on their property, or acknowledging that I've been at work all day. I know that in some cases it's said innocently, that it's just something that hasn't occurred to most people to use more precise and respectful language. That's why I'm taking a moment to write about this. If you call a plumber to fix something, you don't ask, "Hey, wanna come play with my toilet?" If your roof has a leak, you wouldn't ask the professional, "Would you like to practice on my roof?"

I want to address the inherent disrespect in that kind of language, and I want to challenge people to think differently about this kind of outdoor work. There unfortunately exists a lot of conscious and unconscious judgment against those who work in labor-intensive outdoor jobs like landscaping. People expect a lot of free or next-to-free services when it comes to the garden (or worse, food production). If people use devaluing language like "playing in my yard," they can justify paying us less, or nothing at all. For the people who've bothered to educate themselves in the field, this is insulting. This is still a job, even if I happen to enjoy it. I'm not coming over to socialize at a BBQ. Even if a person didn't have any knowledge whatsoever about horticulture, their time, their labor, and the wear and tear on their body is still worth respect, appropriate payment, and proper language. That's an important point, because landscaping work is brutal to the body. If you doubt just how hard it is, I invite you to come play in my yard.

I'm not saying that a person shouldn't ever ask for free help in the garden. I have volunteer horticulture projects that I work on, and I do help friends as I'm able to. But the casual language and attitude is something that could be improved when it comes to paying for services. I recognize that I feel even more strongly about this because my body has not been cooperative since my surgery, and the pain and other physical and psychological issues have made going back into the field full time nearly impossible. So if someone is requesting that I work for them, using cutesy phrases like "playing in the yard," I get a little annoyed. It has a demeaning impact, whether or not that was the intention. Now you know.

So unless you're inviting me over to play a game of badminton or to practice my aim at archery, please retire these disrespectful phrases, and help promote professionalism in the field.