Groundskeeper

A groundskeeper is a person who maintains landscaping, gardens or golf courses and their vegetation for appearance and functionality. The task requires a wide range of knowledge of horticulture, pest control, and weed abatement. As many institutions (especially schools) are moving away from the use of chemical pesticides and toward integrated pest management the experience, knowledge and scholastic requirements of top groundskeepers are increasing. While groundskeepers usually follow a site plan created by a designer or architect, there can be many opportunities for creativity in detailed design and presentation.

In fiction

Groundskeepers have appeared occasionally as minor characters in fiction and moving images. They are usually presented as comic or peculiar characters with some compulsive personality defect.

Some fictional groundskeepers

• Groundskeeper Willie is an eccentric Scot in the television animated series The Simpsons.
• Carl Spackler is an assistant groundskeeper played by actor Bill Murray in the movie Caddyshack, who obsessively pursues the destruction of a gopher on the golf course that he maintains.
• Boothby is the longtime Starfleet Academy groundskeeper in the Star Trek series The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager.
• Chance - Chauncey Gardiner, played by Peter Sellers in Being There.
• Drake is the groundskeeper of fictional DeMontfort University in i.s.o.