A lawn care truck pulls up and two employees jump out across the street. One fires up the mower and the other grabs the line trimmer, and they go to work. Nothing unusual about that scene, as it happens thousands of times every day across our great land. Nothing unusual about it, even though both employees are women, because it is 2009. Go back in time to 1979, a short 30 years ago, and it was not only unusual, it was unheard of, to have women in the landscape trades. In the spring of 1980, I ran a newspaper ad for an assistant manager/lead hand for our landscape crew.

I received a dozen applications and I interviewed five. The best qualified of the batch was a young woman named Heather Maclean (now Lowe). I did not regard myself as being overly misogynistic at the time, but I had difficulty with the idea that a woman was applying for this job. There had never been a female landscaper in our area, and I was not convinced I should be the first to alter the status quo.

During the final interview, I kept challenging Heather about her interest in the position. I said such things as, “Are you sure you can handle the work? Are you certain this is what you want to do? You know this is very hard work, don’t you?” As I asked each question, she quietly answered in the affirmative. On the one hand, she was the best qualified applicant, and on the other, she was a female, and well, it just wasn’t done that way!

For whatever reason, I decided that I would give her a chance, fully expecting she would be gone by the end of the second day. Her first day on the job, we had to unload several pallets of fertilizer by hand. Each bag weighed 55 pounds. I thought, “She won’t last.” To my surprise, she finished the task and asked, what was next? And, she was there the next day, and every day after that for another 25 years. She is still in the trade, and has owned her own landscape design firm for the last four years.

No more novelty
Everywhere I go, I run into women in the landscape trades, working for large and small companies and no one thinks anything of it. But that is now.

In 1980, when I first hired Heather, the guys of my crew were a little taken aback that their supervisor was to be a woman. But they got over that hurdle, and surprisingly, it didn’t take them that long.

The other landscape companies, my friends and competitors, had a little more difficulty with the idea that a woman was working within the trade, phoning them for soil and sod deliveries. Some of the guys told me that if she was my wife, they could perhaps understand her “helping out from time to time.” But she wasn’t my wife, though that assumption would endure for years and years. People within the community were confused because they saw us together six days a week, and they just assumed that we were a couple.

I received phone calls from customers, both men and women, asking me if I knew that Heather is a girl? I would say yes, and leave it at that, waiting for them to respond. No one ever did. The most I got was an “Oh,” and then they would change the subject. It took people a while to adapt but by the third year, no one was surprised. They would phone and say, “I want to book Heather for some spring pruning,” or, “Ask Heather what I should be planting in the flower bed by the pool.” Customers cared that they were being looked after, and it did not matter who was doing the caretaking.

As my company grew, we hired more women. I found that women were more often detail oriented, ensuring that the flower beds were raked and that the walks were swept. Heather used to ride the guys about cleaning the site after we planted, and she did not hesitate to hand the broom to the least-busy person. Keep in mind, this was at a time when a landscaper in our area openly bragged that he did not own a broom. He would tell his customers, if they wanted a clean walk, it was their responsibility to clean up after he installed their sod. I know this is hard to imagine today. Many landscapers failed to realize they were in the beauty business, that they had an obligation to clean up after themselves.

Equal-opportunity leadership
There was a local television series called Women in Non-traditional Roles. Several women who had taken the road less traveled were interviewed and described their journey. One of my favourite episodes was with Frances Olson, a local real estate broker. Frances started out as a broker in the 1960s, when she was the first and only woman in real estate. Until Frances, it had been a 100 per cent male-dominated industry. Frances worked hard at her business and she had a way with people. Success soon followed. She founded a firm that employed other women to sell houses, and that firm became a dominant force. Frances described how incredibly difficult it was for her to get started, how few people wanted to give her a chance, and how banks would only give women loans if their husbands signed. Who today would give a second thought to the gender of the sales agent selling a home?

In a hoot of a story, Frances explains because she only hired women to work for her, she had a complaint filed against her company under The Human Rights Code, and she herself had to change her policies. There have been many other women in my community who have ventured into non-traditional roles, and they have overcome many obstacles on their road to success. A female friend took over as the general manager of the largest fencing firm in our city, and she is known for her competence. Nonetheless, I was in her shop one day and an out-of-town sales rep approached, asking for the boss. Her response was, “I am the boss,” to which the salesman replied, “No, I need to speak with the real boss.” Well, we both broke out laughing at the absurdity of the situation. Here was this fellow wanting to sell his line of fence products to the largest firm in town, and he has managed to insult the general manager before he has had a chance to even open his catalogue of products. Send that boy back to school!

There was a time when gender lines were much clearer. As my generation grew up, we read Dick and Jane in the first grade, and all of us knew that dads went off to work and moms stayed home. When Carla Hrycyna of St. Mary’s Garden Centre and Landscaping in Winnipeg wanted to move into landscaping 14 years ago, she was told, “Girls don’t landscape.” Those days are now finished and all of us have had to adapt, especially Carla’s crew, because she now owns the company. Gone are the days when it was exceptionally rare for a woman to set foot into a hardware store or a lumber yard. My local, old-school lumber yard was such a bastion of testosterone years ago, that all the men from the back came out front to inspect my wife when she accompanied me to their shop one afternoon. It was as if they had never seen a woman before. Last week, by comparison, I stopped in at my local plumbing supply shop and I had a choice of two customer service reps, both women, and I thought nothing of it. I just wanted a part for the shower.

So where does this all lead us, other than to say times have changed? Women are a part of the trade and increasingly so. When I speak at a conference, many of the faces are now female, something that would have been unusual 30 years ago. Women ask better questions than men do at conferences and seminars. Men want others to assume they know everything. They allow macho pride to prevent them from asking questions. If women want to know an answer, they will ask. Women within our industry have brought a new dimension to our trade and allowed all of us to stay on the road to success.

Rod McDonald owned and operated Lakeview Gardens, a successful garden center/landscape firm in Regina, Sask., for 28 years. He now works full time in the world of fine arts, writing, acting and producing in film, television and stage.