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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Jordyn Beazley

‘I’m just a lawnmower man, I’m no one special’: Nathan Stafford, the Sydney gardener with a following of millions

Nathan Stafford holds a whipper snipper in an overgrown garden
Nathan Stafford trims the lawn of a home in a social housing block for free in Glebe, central Sydney. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian

On a quiet street in Sydney’s Glebe, Nathan Stafford is standing halfway up a ladder balancing his child’s old shoe, with his phone wedged inside, on the ladder’s top rung. He’s trying to angle his phone to get a good shot of the yard of a public housing unit below. The weeds have run wild and the grass is threatening to reclaim the concrete footpath snaking through.

Moments ago the shoe and the phone were atop a yellow bin he’d dragged to the front door of the home to film the resident, Jo Lee, as she answers his loud knock. She’d asked him to come help.

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