Both gardening and working on a farm are seasonal work, so you will find that there are more job opportunities at some times of the year and fewer at other times. Garden centres, where people buy gardening equipment, often need employees over the summer so if you have enough experience you might be able to get a job in one of them instead.

In a garden:

Things your supervisor or customer might say to you:

Put the grass cuttings on the compost heap.

The tools are in the shed.

Plug the hedge trimmer into a power breaker before you switch it on.

Rake up the leaves.

There's a hosepipe ban in force (at the moment), so you can't use the lawn sprinkler.

A hosepipe ban is when it becomes illegal to use a garden hose. This happens when there has not been much rain. The strange thing is, you don't always need a drought for a ban. There are times when it rains non-stop and mysteriously not a drop lands in the reservoirs (or so it seems, as hosepipe bans seem to happen every year).

Collect the windfalls in this basket.

Windfalls are apples or other fruit which has been blown off the tree by the wind. Don't confuse it with the other type of windfall, which is when you receive a large amount of money unexpectedly.

Some useful vocabulary:

a lawnmower kosiarka do trawy

mow the lawn /cut the grass: These are the two most common ways to describe what you do with a lawnmower.

prune the roses: This is when you cut off dead flower heads and parts of the rose bush that are growing too fast or in the wrong direction.

a bulb roślina cebulkowa

a rake grabie

a hoe motyka

a hose wąż

a sickle sierp

a scythe kosa

a garden fork widły

weeding pielenie

a broom szczotka

a greenhouse szklarnia

a potting shed komórka w ogrodzie

On a farm:

Put the bales on the back of the lorry.

Bales are the large blocks made of hay, wrapped up with twine (string) in cylinders or rectangles.

Switch the machinery off before you try to unblock it.

Never try to remove anything from inside a machine that is still running. It may result in a fifty percent reduction in the number of hands you have.

Pack them in twenty to a box.

This just means that you should put twenty of them in one box.

Always close the gate after you.

Don't make any sudden movements or you'll frighten the animals.

Mix up the fertilizer. The instructions are on the side of the sacks.

Remember to hose down your boots before you go into the milking shed.

Hosepipe bans do not normally apply to farms.

You'll be paid piecework for this job.

Piecework is when the amount of money you are paid depends on the quantity of work you do. The other system is timework.

We'll need as many hands as possible for the harvesting.

This means they need as many people as possible for picking the plants that they are growing. The time the harvest starts can depend on the weather. In 2006 it was much earlier than usual because of the tremendously hot summer.

Some more useful vocabulary:

a pair of wellies

= a pair of Wellington boots

= a pair of Wellingtons gumowiec

livestock inwentarz żywy

overalls ogrodniczki

a pigsty chlew

the sheepdip kąpiel insektobójcza dla owiec

a furrow bruzda

a plough pług

an abattoir rzeźnia

a crop uprawa

a muck spreader This is a machine that spreads manure over fields to fertilise them.

sowing seeds This is the act of putting seeds into the ground.

cattle branding This is when you mark cows with a hot iron.

The country code: This is a set of rules about how to behave in the country. It is normally for tourists, but the general principles apply to anyone in the country.

Get up at the crack of dawn: This simply means getting up very early in the morning.

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