The Pragmatic Gardener

Let’s use an analogy (but in the spirit that we all know that an analogy can be easily turned against the person that uses it, but that’s not the point. The purpose of an analogy is to get someone else to understand the thinking and pictures in someone else's mind not to then have an argument about an analogy…)

Life Before PEAF

Let’s suppose our objective is not to improve a company's efficiency, value, effectiveness, etc, etc, but to tend a garden.

Not being experts at cutting grass (because it's not the reason for our existence) we look for Gardening tools/frameworks to help us. Things we can use to do stuff and processes that tell us what to do when and with what.

We discover there are only really two general tools/frameworks in widespread use to choose from…

1. A petrol ride on lawn mower.

2. A tractor with an array of tools for mowing and ploughing and feeding animals and a set of books explaining all about how to do farming.

1) A petrol ride on lawn mower.

We try the first option, because it’s the cheapest.

As a lawnmower it’s fantastic! The guy who designed it was very intelligent and knows almost everything there is to know about lawnmowers.

In fact, he is so well respected that people pay for him to talk about lawnmowers and fly him all round the world to do so. He has also won numerous awards for his lawnmower design and accolades for his contribution to gardening in general. He is considered by many to be the Father of Lawnmowers.

After a while though, we realise that although the grass is well maintained the rest of the garden is a bit of a mess, the pond is covered in duckweed and the fish are dying, the rockery is over grown with weeds and the borders filled with flowers are turning into a wasteland.

We also realise that maybe a petrol ride on lawn mower is a bit over the top for our garden as we only use a percentage of its capability. All the different settings and ride heights and large collecting ability are not really relevant.

2) A Tractor.

So, we try the second option.

First of all there is quite a large investment not only in terms of money to buy it (or rent it) but also in terms of learning how to operate all its different parts and settings.

But regardless, we do this because we have been told that a petrol ride on lawn mower is not really the whole picture (what about the pond and borders) but this excellent tractor can do a multitude of things and it must be good because a lot of other people have bought one.

After a while we start to realise that after all the expense and time invested it is really too big and unwieldy, it's difficult to operate, can’t cut all the grass because it can’t get into the corners, is too big to plough the borders and does nothing to help our pond.

The books only tell us how to grow crops, not how to look after a pond or grow flowers or vegetables.

3) Build Our own.

Then we realise there is a third option.

In fact we knew this option always existed but because figuring out how to tend a garden is not our main aim, we thought other people must be more knowledgeable and what's the point of in re-inventing the wheel.

But now we have exhausted all the other options, it's a real contender.

So we start to build our own tools/framework and start writing our own books on when to plant and when to harvest, what plants go well with other plants, when to stop and start feeding the fish etc, etc.

We use the petrol ride on lawn mower to cut the grass because we have it, and we try to modify the tractor we have to make it fit our garden by making the wheels smaller, reducing the engine size, dumping the seed drilling equipment, etc, etc.

OK - what we end up with may not be flashy tools or books or industry recognised and it may all be a bit Heath Robinson but hey, who cares, it serves a purpose and it kind of works.

When we investigate how many other people who bought tractors are using them, actually we find that most of them, like ours, is sitting gathering dust or rusting or has been so modified that it doesn’t much resemble a tractor anymore.

Unsurprisingly because a lot of money has been spent on these tractors and how to operate them, people are reluctant to admit they aren't as good as they thought they were.

Life After PEAF

Now let's consider the analogy after PEAF was released…

Now, there is a new tool/framework on the block called PHGF.

This tool/framework has been developed by a seasoned Gardener who, after many many years of tending his and other peoples gardens, thought to himself, you know what, all these tools I made myself and notes I wrote on gardening (to make my life easier and make me more productive) could help a lot of other people.

Sure there are things that are specific to my garden but 90% of what I know about what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and what to use to do it would be the same for any garden. In addition, most of the problems I have encountered also apply to just about any other garden and so the wisdom that I have acquired over the years would also be very relevant.

So, he gathers together the essentials; an electric walk behind lawn mower, a pond water health measuring kit, a spade and a fork, and his notes regarding how to use these things and when, what pitfalls to avoid, etc, and calls it the Pragmatic Home Gardening Framework or PHGF for short.

In addition, because he a philanthropic Gardener who gains satisfaction not from money but from gardening and helping others to do likewise he decides to give all of this way FREE to anyone who wants to improve their garden.

After a while, he begins to be approached by established commercial gardening companies who want to use his framework to sell services to their clients. He is also approached by other companies not involved in the whole of gardening per se but involved in niche things such as pond care or garden design, that wish to expand their offerings to their customers to include a complete gardening service

Since these companies will profit from his work he agrees for them to use his framework but only if they can a) prove they are proficient in using it and since they will profit from his work, b) pay a fee with the stipulation that this fee cannot be passed on to their customers.

Now when people are looking for “tools” and “methods” to help to tend their garden in the future they can also investigate and assess whether this new tool/framework would be more appropriate.

It doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t use the petrol ride on lawn mower, (many of them already have one) and it doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t, at some point in the future, buy a tractor, but what it does do is give them a fantastic start in very short timescales for zero cost.