Ms. Blethyn talks like a lot of weekend gardeners.

He and his wife, Bunty, are also weekend gardeners, currently involved in landscaping their country place.

Mr. Bales, a weekend gardener himself, was traveling and could not be reached for comment.

A weekend gardener has to accept the shortcomings, as well as the joys, of a split personality.

Like many weekend gardeners, they visited nurseries and purchased what they liked.

Then there are the friendly feuds between weekend gardeners.

We may, instead, be creating a pastoral landscape from which farming has been excluded, a virtual garden tended only by weekend gardeners.

But for weekend gardeners, preparing roses for winter is not difficult.

As a weekend gardener, the biggest challenge is finding time.

Some weekend gardeners now work water-retaining pellets into the soil when they do new planting.