“I haven’t mown my lawn in about 15 years,” laughs Gus Anderson, new Mowing Team Manager at Wellington City Council.
“It’s the last thing I want to do when I get home from work. If I had the chance I’d probably go for artificial.”
As for outgoing manager, Matt Beres, he’s let his lawn become a meadow, and then there’s mowing team member Ray: “I live in an apartment”, he says with a grin.
The 11-person Council mowing team are flat out across the city, taming the spring growth and making sure our city’s lawns are tidy, healthy, and in tip-top condition for the approaching summer.
And it’s a massive job.
The team looks after a whopping 813 sites, from Mākara to Tawa to Seatoun, and everywhere in between.
At this time of the year the team do longer hours, and they even hire a couple of extra workers form an agency to help out.
Over the last five years as team manager Matt has reorganised the mowing team to spend more time and resources on the city’s high-profile lawns.
Lawns are graded from one through to five – grade one being the most significant or highest profile lawns, such as Pukeahu National War Memorial (which gets cut 26 times a year).
Grade two lawns include Midland and Glover Parks; grade three like our play spaces; grade four some road reserves; and grade five like some Wellington Water sites (which are cut quarterly).