They tend flowers Ivan oddly swapped with queen (9)
I believe the answer is:
gardeners
'they' is the definition.
Both the definition and answer are plural nouns.
Perhaps you can see a link between them that I don't see?
'tend flowers ivan oddly swapped with queen' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'tend' could be 'garden' (gardening is a kind of tending) and 'garden' is found within the answer.
'queen' could be 'er' (short for Elizabeth Regina ie Queen Elizabeth) and 'er' is present in the answer.
A single letter 's' remains which might be clued in a way I don't understand.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for gardeners that I've seen before include "Perhaps nursery workers" , "Land workers" .)