Gardener (General)
What the work is
Plants, cultivates and maintains parks and gardens.
Would you enjoy the work?
These are the main tasks in the official description. Mark how each one sounds to you.
- Prepares and maintains seedbeds and growing sites
- Plants and transplants flowers, shrubs, hedges, trees and other plants
- Maintains planted and grassed areas by weeding, trimming, fertilising, watering, mowing and removing trash, fallen branches and leaves
- Prunes and trims trees, shrubs and hedges to maintain their shape and improve plant health
- Installs plant support and protection devices
- Applies pesticides and herbicides to control pests and weeds
Try it
A simulation and a case study from this kind of work, set in a council parks and gardens crew looking after a fictional town's gardens, ovals and street plantings. They are fictional.
The kind of days you could have
Good days
- A bed you planted last spring bursts into flower and people stop to photograph it
- A tidy, healthy park on a sunny morning before the first walkers arrive
- A resident stops to say thanks for the street trees you looked after
Hard days
- A long hot day of mowing, weeding and hauling green waste
- A heavy storm that leaves branches across paths and a long clean-up list
- A resident complaint about a job that was done exactly to the plan
Written by Career Calling as a general guide. Real roles vary by employer and place.
Work a mission
Step into a simulated workplace in this field, with a brief from your manager.
Description and tasks: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Occupation Standard Classification for Australia, 2024, Version 1.0 (opens another site), occupation 342131, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. The skill guide above is our plain English summary.