Lesson learned - Supervision required

Hi
We had a young lad put a note through our door on Sunday looking for odd jobs to earn some money for summer, he was 15, our front garden was looking a little messy following a week on holiday and no being home so I offered to pay him to clear the weeds.
All seemed to be going well so I popped off to the shops and thought I would leave him to it as he advised he quite often helped his parents on the garden.
I came back and about 50% of my plants and shrubs were missing.... including 2 lovely rose bushes and some plants my Auntie had recently given me which she removed from my Grans garden when she died 20 years ago and had grown on in her garden. I was devastated but couldn't get upset with the boy as he was not a professional gardener and was just trying to earn some extra cash in the school holidays.

Fortunately my boyfriend is not squeamish at all and emptied the green bin (worms and slugs and all) onto the driveway and rescued my poor bent broken plants, we have since replanted and they are still alive and I have taken cuttings off them all just in case they do die. He also cleared up the mess he made recovering the plants so all is not lost

I learned a very hard lesson Monday and I know next time to label what I want to keep.

It was probably really my fault for leaving him unsupervised and not marking the plants that were not weeds.

I think if someone is trying to make a go of something and earn a bit of extra cash then I am happy to help them, just as I always support the local butchers, bakers and fruit and veg shop instead of using big supermarkets, but in future I will plan things a little better and put a big pink bow on everything I want to keep. We still have some weeds left so I guess he just got confused between plant / weeds.

I have said he can come back and do the back garden and veg patches one evening with my boyfriend helping which means he would be supervised.

It could have turned out much worse if Stu hadn't rescued my plants but he knew some of them meant something to me and some we had just brought from the garden centre and were quite expensive, we had a much needed shuffle round in the garden now and the plants that were removed and positioned better than before so there is a silver lining

 

How awful! As you say it was a hard lesson to learn.

Did he uproot the rose bushes and plants? If not, they will come back again.

 

He did uproot them, but we have planted the roots again in the hope they will recover, if not we will have to replace them, fortunately he dug them out in a big chunk rather than cutting them back first, so hoping all is not lost

 

Wow! Either they were very young rose bushes or he was very strong! Did he not see the roses on them? It would seem that he had barely the minimum knowledge of weeds since, for the most part, they are not shrubs. How sad. Maybe you will be fortunate in having them grow back.

 

I am unsure how old the roses are, I cut them back last year but they had grown back lovely, about 1.5ft tall, the roses were still buds so not in flower just yet. I don't think he was sure what was what in the garden, but I should have hung around for a while to ensure he was ok.

 

Its one thing having someone tidy your garden.
Its another letting them dig things out.

Dont think I'd let anyone near mine.

I let some kids wash my car once, just to make a bit of spare cash,never again.
They used hardly any water, and an almost dry cloth.
The scratches were obvious.