On a recent Friday morning, plants lay scattered atop mulch in a flowerbed between UVM’s Old Mill and Williams Hall. The sun shone, but this flowerbed sits in the shade of surrounding trees. No worries, said Senior Grounds Maintenance Specialist Nate Walker.

“It’s a perfect bed, and I don’t like when a bed is empty,” Walker said. “So we’re trying to make it look nice.” He’d already tried last spring, he said, but except for a ring of determined coral bells making a go of it around the bed’s edge, none of the plants reappeared this spring. So Walker returned, more plants in tow. Suspecting the missing plants weren’t satisfied with the shaded location, he said, “I’m putting in some shade-loving plants. Hostas, bleeding hearts, Japanese painted fern.”

Beyond an aesthetic exercise, Walker’s project was a rescue-mission-slash-recycling-effort. The bleeding hearts came from Living and Learning, where a construction project was about to overtake their home.

“I’m saving those,” Walker said, “hoping that they’re happy here. Same with these hostas; they just came out over near our shop near Centennial Field.”

An adjacent flowerbed, already full of thriving hostas, suggests the new plants will like the location. Eyeing this bed, Walker observed, “I know that there’s a big family of chipmunks living there; they were yelling at me before.” A few minutes later, one of the chipmunks appeared at the corner of the bed, surveying the evolving garden situation before disappearing into the leaves.

Walker, who has worked at UVM for about six years, noted the outdoor role “suits me a lot.” Although he’s done other jobs over his career, he said, he returns to groundskeeping.

“Our job always changes throughout the seasons. Spring comes around and we’re mulching beds, doing cleanup. Summertime rolls around and there’s a lot of maintenance; today I’m planting a garden, but of course there’s grass growing, tree pruning, all kinds of stuff.” The arrival of fall ushers in leaf pickup, and with winter’s snow and ice come plowing and clearing the campus—no small task for a team of 15 full-time and one part-time year-round staff members and a few seasonal student employees.

“It’s a massive campus; there’s always something to do,” Walker said. “It’s actually one of my favorite things about the job: the way it changes throughout the seasons. You never can get stuck in a rut. If you get sick of one type of work, just wait a little bit; you’re going to be doing something else.”

Walker also takes pride in his work’s value to the community, he said. “There was a moment last week where I pulled up to one of these flowerbeds to water some flowers, and it turns outs that all in the bushes was this preschool class, just playing around, having fun, and they were fascinated by me: ‘What are you doing?’ I love that type of thing. It makes me feel good knowing that I am helping to make this an accessible and inviting and beautiful place, for not just the college students, but the entire community.” The campus, he adds, “is very central to town… that gives me a sense of pride.”

And he appreciates the benefits of working here, where he has taken classes including a death doula course and one focused on sustainability. His daughter will be headed to college in a few years, he adds, “and the tuition remission benefit of working here is excellent.”

“I very much love coming into work with a goal, and working to accomplish it,” Walker said. “I love seeing the final product of everything looking good.” To that end, Walker expected to spend another hour or two getting the plants situated in their new home, pondering, “I might come in and put a fresh layer of mulch on just to tidy it up.”

After pressing dirt and mulch around the base of a plant, Walker rose to his feet, brushing dirt from his hands as he said, “Alright, hopefully you’re happy there, bleeding heart.” Once Walker was satisfied with the garden’s appearance, it was off to plant trees. Give it a few months and he’ll be back to clean up their leaves. In the meantime, the summer days fly by for Walker, who says he enthusiastically raked leaves and shoveled snow as a child, much to his father’s puzzlement.

“Maybe,” he mused, “I was a born groundskeeper.”

UVM Grounds Manager Matt Walker (no relation to Nate) says of the groundskeeping team, “I am proud of the positive changes and improvement the crew has made in the time that I’ve been here. It’s always my hope that the crew is proud of this improvement, but also isn’t satisfied with the status quo. I want them to continually challenge themselves to provide the most aesthetically pleasing and safe environment possible for our campus partners.”