I admire and fully support all landscapers pursuing their trade qualification papers. Red Seal Journeyman Horticulturist isn’t just another paper. Because it tests your knowledge and experience, it’s way more special.
The Red Seal for me was the culmination of a long ride since 2000 when I started landscaping at a prominent landscape maintenance company. And in all those seasons I accumulated way more than the 9,700 hours required to sit the test. I feel like I put in the effort and generated enough sweat to deserve my Red Seal journeyman horticulturist status.
And it wasn’t easy and I’m still learning every year because if you stop learning, you “die”. Don’t stop learning.
A young wannabe
This brings me to a young Red Seal wannabe. Again, I fully support this worker in her quest for the Red Seal status. And yet, I feel like her story could serve as a warning to others. Let me illustrate with an example.
Maples
The company she works for routinely power shears Japanese maple tree crowns into round shapes. Think mushrooms.
Of course, I abhor the practice of power shearing trees but that discussion would take me off-topic. (It’s about available space and time available for pruning.)
So, our Red Seal wannabe power sheared a number of maples into nice round tops except for a few trees where ladders were required. Aha. This was the ultimate test. Can you finish the job properly in one day and earn your experience?
But no, as it turns out, bringing a ladder was too much work. I don’t recall the exact excuses. All I know is that weeks later I was on site, ladder in hand, finishing what should have been completed before. See the picture below.
I don’t mind doing the work but I think this Red Seal wannabe is missing out on valuable experience: doing the job right the first time.
In addition, doing it twice required double clean-ups. And that perhaps, doesn’t sound like much until you see a horrified home gardener witnessing another assault on her special garden.
No short cuts
Let me finish this blog post with advice from Rita-Rose Gagne (The Globe and Mail, Report on Business, B9, Monday, November 20, 2017. Her advice to young people is “no pain, no gain. To achieve extraordinary gain, you have to make an extraordinary effort. You need to absolutely work hard.”
Conclusion
My own advice would be to crush it all on the same day. Bring the required ladder and nicely prune every single maple. Absolutely crush it. Leaving incompletely pruned maple trees is lame. You need to crush it, gain experience and walk into your Red Seal exam like a pro.
