The Round He Would Not Widen

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, in a year when every new villa on the hill wanted a lawn and a gravel walk, two jobbing gardeners hired themselves out by the day.

Two gardeners, the same spade, the same barrow, the same shears,
The same six days a week, the same four shillings a day, the same patient hands.
One took every garden offered him, from the mill lane out to the far parishes.
One took only the gardens he could walk between, and let the rest go by.
By the third summer one was turning work away, and one was turning his barrow home half filled.
Which of them had the fuller book?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two gardeners in the town I've never named, and their work, in the old chorus, was equally good. Both could lay a gravel walk that drained, cut a hedge square without a line, and tell a householder the truth about a pear tree. Both had a card in the ironmonger's window at four shillings the day, tools found.

The first man said yes to everything, which he took to be the first virtue of trade. A villa on the hill on the Monday. A farmhouse four miles out on the Tuesday, the barrow and the long ladder carried behind a carrier's cart at his own expense. Wednesday back across town to a plot by the brewery, Thursday to the next parish but one, where a gentleman wanted an orchard put right. In three years he had worked in eleven parishes, and nobody had seen him twice in a week.

Count his week rather than his book. Eleven hours of it went into the road, which is a day and a half nobody paid for, and by the time he reached a far garden the light was going. Hedges cut in June were not seen again until September, and a hedge left three months is a poor advertisement for the man who cut it. Worst of all, the gentleman with the orchard was delighted and said so to his neighbour, and the neighbour lived nine miles from any other garden on the books.

The second man kept to the four lanes above the church, and let a good deal of work go by to do it. Two and twenty houses stood in those lanes, with gardens a man could finish in a morning. He took three in a day and walked between them, so the barrow stood in one place from breakfast until dusk. He cut a hedge in July and was past the gate again in August, and in September, and no hedge of his had the chance to look neglected.

By the second summer he was part of the street in the way a pillar box is. He was asked things over walls, and asked to look at a gooseberry while he was passing, which cost him twenty minutes and nothing else, because he was passing. By the third summer he had eleven of the two and twenty houses and the first two of the lane beyond, had put his rate to five shillings without losing anybody, and had a lad who could walk to work in four minutes.

Be fair to the first man. He worked longer hours, took the awkward jobs nobody wanted, and left every garden better than he found it. His mistake was to count the gardens and never once count the miles, and so to gather customers who could not have talked to one another if they had wished.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Choose a ground small enough that your customers meet each other, and their talking will do the work your advertising cannot. A wide ground gets you jobs one at a time, each bought and paid for afresh. A narrow ground gets them in clusters, because the second customer in a lane is very largely sold to you by the first.

Three things happen when the ground is tight, and none of them when it is broad. The first is arithmetic. Miles are bought with hours, and hours are the one article in your shop you cannot reorder. Travel forty minutes each way to a job and you have given the road a working day a week, which no customer has ever agreed to pay for.

The second is that recommendation is a local animal. It travels along a hedge, a school gate, a trade. It does not cross a county for the pleasure of it. If no two of your customers could name a third person who uses you, every kind word they say falls on ground where you cannot work, and you are paying full price for customers you ought to have at half.

The third is repetition you do not pay for. A barrow standing in the same lane on the Tuesday, and again on the Friday, and again the week after, is an advertisement running continuously before two and twenty households. Nobody acts on the first sighting. The third turns into a question at a gate, and a name heard from two neighbours in a week stops being an advertisement and becomes a fact, which no spending can purchase. It is the argument against scattering yourself across every channel there is, set out in why being everywhere is advice for firms with staff, applied to ground rather than method.

Your ground need not be a map. It may be a trade, a kind of customer, or one sort of building. Serve nine letting agents in one town and the tenth will have heard of you before you call. Serve nine firms in nine unrelated lines and you have nine islands and no bridges. The test is not distance but whether your customers share a fence.

Two cautions. First, a small ground must have enough money standing in it. Do the sum before you draw the boundary: how many households or firms it holds, how often they buy, what share you would need. A ground too thin to feed you is not focus but the difficulty described in choosing where to dig, and diligence does not correct it. Second, concentration is not a vow. Take the good job eleven miles off if it pays for its own miles, but do not let far work set your calendar, and do not widen at the first quiet fortnight. Widening is the reward for having filled the ground, not the cure for having failed to.

Three questions, before you accept the next job out of your way:

1. Where are your last twenty customers, and how far apart do they stand? Write them out and look at them together. If no two could plausibly meet, you have not got a ground, you have got a list, and a list is paid for one name at a time.
2. What did the miles cost you last month? Count the travelling hours and price them at what you charge. That figure is the cost of being spread out, and it is generally the wage of the helper you cannot afford.
3. Which ground could you fill this year, and what would full look like? Name the boundary and the number. A ground with no boundary cannot be filled, and whoever cannot say what full looks like widens for ever.

The Answer to the Riddle

Which of them had the fuller book?

The second, who let the far parishes go by. Both had six days and the same pair of hands. One gave a day and a half of every week to the road, and scattered his pleased customers where their good word reached nobody, so every garden had to be won from nothing. The other put his customers near enough to talk to one another, and by the third summer was turning gardens away at a shilling more the day.

The verse:

The same spade, the same barrow, the same six days to fill,
One counted up the gardens, the other counted miles.
One crossed a whole county and arrived a stranger twice,
One kept to four short lanes, and the lanes began to speak.

Until next time. Go and mark where your last twenty customers sit, then draw the smallest ring that holds most of them and call it your ground.

P.S. Notice what nearness did to the second man's character. He looked at a gooseberry for nothing and staked a fallen delphinium in twenty minutes, and both were counted to him as generosity. The first man could not have afforded either, being nine miles off with a cart to catch. A good deal of kindness is a question of distance. Put yourself near your customers and you can afford to be the sort of tradesman you always meant to be.

Also in the archive: The Needle Man's Round, The Well on the Ridge and The Six Channels.