weddings weeding despairing

Another wedding last weekend with garlands and hundreds of pastelly table flowers, loads of weeding all the rest of the weekend while there was no one here - horrified at the state of the beds after all that damn rain, poor plants choking in solid airless clay. Despairing at the difficulty of finding good people to work. Ad in H Times (which costs around £250) yielded three people. One a young chap just finishing NVQ in Bournemouth, good on him for applying for things but not quite what's needed, one from a chap who needs a job and used to have a swimming pool company in Australia, no horticultural qualifications or experience, and one from someone whose only qualification as far as I could make out was that "My brother used to grow alpines." Interesting.