Founded in 2008. The Landscape Juice Network (LJN) is the largest and fastest growing professional landscaping and horticultural association in the United Kingdom.
LJN's professional business forum is unrivalled and open to anyone within within the UK landscape industry
LJN's Business Objectives Group (BOG) is for any Pro serious about building their business.
For the researching visitor there's a wealth of landscaping ideas, garden design ideas, lawn advice tips and advice about garden maintenance.
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I showed the advice to my 16 yo daughter earlier on after reading the your blog.
Here is some of her comments:
• Word of mouth – astound customers with your service and they’ll talk about you
'Anyone who doesn't know this should not be in busines, but then again they are not likely to be in business for long if they don't know this.'
• Think about a five-year plan – it will help you stay focused
'Under current conditions I would recommend a three year plan, especially for small to medium companies. Markets are in decline and considering the number of household names that have gone into receivership this early in what is predicted to be a significant recession things are likely to change very quickly.
Her one piece of advice:
Small companies/partnerships/single traders - identify up to three key weaknesses in your knowledge about business that is effecting your company and get training. Or they could wait until work is drying up and they have plenty of time.
From my own view point when I was the secretary we got a letter asking us to renew our subscription with a regional organisation. When I went to the site it was down, when I looked to see what we had got from our membership the only thing I could find was zero value for our money for over five years. I didn't renew.
I did find a national organisation was employing a consultant to come up with tool kits for TMOs, running national and regional conferences with workshops, essentially aimed at struggling TMOs like ours. Our involvement with them allowed us to benchmark, develop our first business plan and were one of the first TMOs to get the Good Governance Kitemark. All inside two years. Their conferences, workshops and networking with others also helped me turn the management boar around. When I joined I was the only tenant, the rest were white 'middle class' and well educated. After 20 years of tenant management 2007 AGM saw a more representative board with better mix of tenants/leasholders and our first BME board member. BME representation after the 2008 AGM was 25%.
The NFTMO not only monitrors what is going on, but plays an active role in shaping government thinking and legislation and reports back to its members. It sees the way things are going and does what it can to prepare members for change.
If a trade organisation is not doing its utmost to keep its members at the forefront and well informed then I don't think it is worth the money. Sadly when things are good it is too easy to take out membership of an organisation and just renew each year. It is just as easy for them to become complacent.
One example of the massive failings of these organisations is:
The Landscape Research Group, Landscape Institute in the UK and CEMAGRAF in France have been busy implementing strategies to move forward with the EU landscape convention, (only recently ratified by the UK), of which a significant part involves the realisation of large scale urban 'greening', particularly in post industrial sites. As such public consultation has been widespread and indeed has sculptured the designs - YET no one has bothered to get the practioners / landscapers themselves involved in the process. This is recognised on the Academic circuit, but there is no organisation out there to help with this. A huge loss of money and probably more importantly 'Pride' to the landscaping industry. Consequently throughout the UK and the rest of Europe, work on these schemes has been rolled out, with the only input from professional landscapers at the end, after most of the money has been spent, trying to quote for contracts which have not had the practical applications thought through at any stage.
Rant over
Nearly one year on and I still have to explain to all potential clients exactly what Trustmark is and who the APL are. I'm thinking that I could offer an independent warranty that is at least as good as that which the APL offers.
The only things that I hear from the APL and the HTA seem to concern retail outfits, a scheme to collate financial information from members (at a cost to participants) and a seminar on how to 'recession proof your business' scheduled for the middle of April when any self-respecting landscaper is already working 7 days a week and can't spare the time to attend. Oh yeah, they also sent a letter saying that rather than a site visit this year to assess standards they were going to undertake an office visit instead which from an initial reading of their criteria there is going to have to be a lot more paperwork of dubious worth.
All in all it looks like I'm paying nearly £35 per issue for HTA News as this is the only tangible benefit my APL membership brings me.
Is BALI any better?
At the end of day it is about proving our own proffesionalism and as such we can do no more than keep such networking as this alive. As we said in another thread once we are not members of either group, which suits our business model, (we don't touch commercial contracts), so should'nt really comment but it is frustrating to hear of how these organisations who are meant to be heading up the industry as a whole are doing little of this. So far the LJN appears to be the strongest method in actually allowing a customer base to feed directly into the mass of different branches of this industry. One hopes that the future of the industry at some stage will be reshaped to allow us the chance of fighting on our own merit and thus protecting the industry from the flooding of non-landscapers.