Dear Seraphim

Leon J Villiers is a shipping magnate; one of the ruthless ones. LJV, as he's known in the maritime industry, clawed his way from logistics clerk to head of operations to eventually ousting the then CEO in a hostile takeover. He spent the next 30 years building up his vast fleet, one container vessel at a time. Recently widowed, he uses his spare time to extend his tentacles into agriculture and commerce sending terror into the hearts of the business owners he targets. His negotiation style is so notorious that his opponents simply yield to his terms before he even expresses them. In the corridors of power no one dreams of saying no to LJV. But at home, it's a different story.

Dear Seraphim,

How long have you been in my employ? Twenty-five years? Twenty-seven? I cannot fathom. Not because I have become senile, far from it. It is because my garden looks exactly like it did in 1999 when I purchased the house. You have tended the gardens daily, insisting that the vastness of the land and the great variety of flowers, trees, shrubs, climbers and grasses requires your constant doting presence. And I believed you.

Yet, the sheer amounts of money you have persuaded me to spend over the years on various botanical accoutrements, in particular on eco certified organic premium blend composted manure, selling for a staggering £155 per tonne, has yielded, well manure. Piles and piles of it!

It has only recently occurred to me that it's during your infrequent absences that a precious few resilient flowers have found the fortitude to blossom. That you consistently find new ways to defile this noble profession is impressive. That you have remained in my employ for this long is downright astounding.

A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME

It has been three years since my beloved Linda passed away. Three years without her smile and her sunny presence. I miss her every day and I still speak to her. We chat about this and that, mostly I tell her how deeply I grieve her loss but increasingly our conversation centers on how you must be the world's worst gardener!

Love truly makes one blind. Gardening, as you well know, was my Linda's passion. Tirelessly, she toiled alongside you in your horticultural endeavors. Planning in the winter months, sowing in the spring and harvesting in the summer. For decades, I thought this hideous garden was her creation and I didn’t care one jot. I would forgive my Linda any shortcoming, the smallest foible. Blossoming flora and verdant oases be damned! If my Linda's green thumb produced only weeds then weeds became roses in my eyes.

When she passed away, I consoled myself with the notion that in your capable hands the garden would transform into a fragrant, flowering tribute to my beloved wife. But as weeks turned into months and years it is improbably in worse shape than ever.

SOW, WATER, WEED, NURTURE, PRUNE....REPEAT

That's all you had to do, Seraphim. Year in, year out, five simple steps and voila a garden would flourish. For a practical man like myself, the only reasonable explanation I can draw is that you're to blame and therefore YOU must be weeded out!

"Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished."

-Lao Tzu

If only this were true. Personally, I've never subscribed to this philosophical claptrap. If we all just went with the flow, waiting for nature to run its course we'd still be crawling around in the wilderness, foraging for food and looking for twigs to rub together to make fire. Come to think of it, this does put me in mind of you the last time I saw you.

TIME TO SOW NEW SEEDS

Having now consulted, at great expense, with a landscape designer, an architect, a horticulturalist and a water feature specialist I have concluded that the garden is beyond salvation. The sanest proposal I have received to date has been to cement over all but a 5 x 20 metre strip where I can lay astro-turf and an assortment of plastic potted plants, in loving memory of my darling Linda (her favourite were rhododendrons) and convert the rest into a parking lot.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change.”

-Charles Darwin

Any remaining gardening duties on the estate have been reassigned to Marko, because if you can wash a car you can water a tree. And to Ernesto, because, applying the same logic, if you can trim a beard you can prune an ivy.

In all my years at the pinnacle of power, I've never been made a mug of. You, Seraphim, have that honor. Much as I would like nothing better, I cannot bring myself to fire you, old dog. My beloved Linda whispers from the beyond that she couldn't abide it, so I will grudgingly keep you on the payroll. Of course, if you tell anyone about this lapse into sentimentality, or that I speak to ghosts, I will kill you with my bare hands and bury you under the astro turf. After all, I have a fearsome reputation to uphold.

A LEOPARD DOESNT CHANGE ITS SPOTS

I have decided to give you an excellent reference and encourage you to seek employment next door. The developer offered me double per acre if I could extend the land for the parking lot, and I have full confidence you'll make short shrift of the neighbour's garden in no time, allowing me to scoop up the property for a song and flip it for a fortune.

Try not to see it as a deception but as a triumph over incompetence. For once, you'll finally be doing what you're being paid for.

LJV

P.S. Discreet enquiries have been made, you start tomorrow.

P.S.P.S. As a gesture of neighbourly goodwill, I've offered to share our premium compost which I've instructed Chef to lace with orange peel and onion skins. I have it on good authority that they're lethal to plant life so, in the likely event that you funk this task too, I have a backup.