ABSTRACT
Modern grounds maintenance has developed over the last 100 years or so from the traditions of the large country gardens and parks of the aristocracy, and their many imitators in the aspiring middle classes. In those establishments the head gardeners and their various assistants were usually part of the household staff and, as tradition has it, relatively highly placed in the pecking order of those ‘below stairs’.The employment of a head gardener and assistants was largely followed by the emerging parks departments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and so, up until very recent times, the majority of public and private open spaces have been maintained by directly employed staff.
