A New Life: Former marketing specialist Caroline Mahon tells Elaine Edwards her office is now the garden
For a lot of people who make an unusual career change there is a "light-bulb moment", a sudden dawning that they've found what they want to do for the rest of their life.
But for Caroline Mahon, the realisation that she wanted to be a professional gardener, a trained horticulturalist working in the haven of the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin, was a more gradual and even accidental process.
After a stint in AIB's marketing department after she did her Leaving Cert at just 16 in the early 1980s, a string of jobs mostly in marketing or sales roles followed.
"I left school very young - I was 16 and I hadn't a clue what I wanted to be. Like almost everyone else, I took the aptitude tests for AIB and I got a job. I was slotted into the marketing department in Ballsbridge and I absolutely loved it and had a great time there working with lovely people. But I wanted to travel and I left, but for various reasons it didn't work out."
Mahon, (42), took a stopgap job in a gym and then an opportunity to work in a marketing role for An Coras Trachtála, the Irish Export Board, came up.
She later moved on to Polydata at the IDA centre in Dublin's Pearse Street, where her role included the promotion of Irish software abroad.
She then worked for a family firm of silkscreen printers and, although she enjoyed it, she decided to leave when she had her first child, Kate, in 1990. In all, she was seven years away from work, during which she and her husband Kevin had a second daughter, Meg, (10).
"I did miss working and as time went on and my children grew older I really wanted to do something and I felt they needed me less. Psychologically and emotionally I was freeing myself up. But I didn't want to go back into business. And I had been out of marketing for a long time. Seven years is a full generation in marketing for certain, and I wouldn't have been able to go back in at the level I would have liked.
"The thread through my whole life was marketing. I enjoyed all the places I worked, but I never really settled anywhere. The work just never filled the gap that I didn't even know I needed to fill."
All the time her ideal job was almost literally on her doorstep at the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin.
"We lived 10 minutes away. When the girls were small I used to put my youngest daughter in the pram and walk through it. I loved it. I was in love with it. It's a magical place and I was thrilled to have it beside us. It's not a public park, it's an institution, but many people use it like a park, to walk through it and enjoy the plants."
A chance meeting with someone who had taken the National Diploma in Horticultural Studies led to Mahon's eventual decision to apply for the three-year course. But she first took a year's foundation course in horticulture at Teagasc in Kinsealy.
Her new career meant a huge "cultural change" for the family, but everyone benefited from it, she says. She finished the course in 2001 and set up in business as a landscaper, but didn't enjoy being in business on her own.
Last year, an opportunity at the Botanic Gardens came up and Mahon applied and got the job, on a year's probation. Her enthusiasm for her work is unique to those who know they've found their niche in life.
"Not everybody has plants that flower in their garden at this time of year. But I love walking through and seeing the delicate blue-purple flower of a dwarf iris or to smell the delicate scent of Chimonanthus praecox or to see the silver foliage at this time of year.
"Even to see the bark of some of the trees that's revealed in the winter when they lose their leaves is very beautiful. A lot of the work which relates to propagation of plants is going on around now, which is a quiet time for horticulture. But by the summer, we will be in full flight.
"It's an extraordinary place to work. And although I have an office, I don't really use it. I'm in my 'office' when I walk out into the gardens."