What's It Like To Garden At A Castle?

We are visiting Hearst Castle.  We had a great time touring the buildings and the garden surrounding them.  I caught sight of one of the gardeners and took her photo.  She's smiling because she saw me taking her photo and probably thought:  "Silly tourists take pictures of everything."

 Actually I was imagining what it would be like gardening at a castle.  Plenty of equipment available...

 The beds are numbered, so if the boss tells you to clean out bed D-8, you know which one he means.
Or is this sign really displaying "Ohh noooo Mr. Bill"?

 There's this really cool dump slide.  You can toss all your cuttings in here, and...

 They'll all slide down into a truck waiting below.  Must be nice!

 On the other hand, there's a whole lot of pavement to keep clean.
Those darn dirty Pines!

 A whole lot of pavement.

 And a lot of stairs.

 And that little bit that turned out to be perfectly planted is where almost no one ever sees it. 

 And there's a huge and awesome greenhouse, standing empty.

 Even castle citrus trees are troubled by ants.

 And you'd really, really like to let that rose engulf that Palm tree, just to see what happens, but you can't.  It's not your castle.

 Even castles have little garden companions. 

The surroundings are glorious.

 The views are tremendous.

 But those Bougainvilleas grow so fast, and those Cordylines always need their dead leaves pulled off.

 And some parts of the garden are a little neglected.

 And castle or humble home, the compost pile is always too far away.

 Just when you get the Lantana looking nice, the irrigation line breaks. 

 You know standard roses may be historically correct, but you also know they still look awful.

 You like tile rabbits, but the other kind just ate your newly planted daisies. 

 You wonder if people who watch you think you are nuts. 

 You knew when you planted those in that awful spot that they would die.  And they did. 

 You love the oaks.  They are glorious at every time of day.  When you get hot or tired or frustrated, there are oaks to look at, and suddenly everything is okay again. 

 You sort of wish the Hydrangeas hadn't had such a great year.

 But you know what it's like to garden at a castle, because in the end it's gardening after all, and gardening is fun.

 Hearst devoted nearly as much energy to caring for his flower beds as he did to laying out his front pages. He studied seed catalogues, visited important flower shows, was a regular visitor to the local nurseries, and was an avid reader of books about Renaissance gardens. “We would propagate from five hundred thousand to seven hundred thousand annuals per year,” Norman Rotanzi, one of his head gardeners, recalled. “There was a complete change in the gardens at every season.”
Rotanzi, who had cherished his meetings with his boss, recalled, “You really felt at ease around him. He knew all the names of the plants and most of the pests we have to deal with. The gardeners were sort of his pets. He would like to come out and stroll around the gardens and talk to everybody.”  

-- David Nasaw  "Life At San Simeon"  The New Yorker March 23, 1998