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.
Replies
Welcome to the network.
If I offer one piece of advice - start at the beginning and don't try to run too fast. There's loads and loads to learn because the garden/landscape trade is so diverse.
I am sure others will chip in with their tips too.
All the best and good luck.
Phil Voice
As Phil rightly says the trade is diverse. So your first challenge must be to decide what kind of work you want to do. For example, do you see yourself as a garden maintainer; garden designer; or hard/soft landscaper. Are you going to start with one discipline and aim to add other skills over time?
Then you'll need to decide whether you want to undertake qualifications, be self-employed or want to learn your 'trade' working for someone else
Once you've determined where you want to start then it will be easier for fellow LNJ members to offer you practical pointers.
Have a think and let us know!
Donny
Phil and Donny have given you sound advice. Hope it all work out.
Kerrie
Good Luck with your enterprise!
just a couple of things:
1) Gibz may be be your nickname but i'd drop it from your company name if I was you. 'Gibos' could be confused for our 'traveller' friends (and you don't want that do you!).
2) This may sound cheesy but you may want to give your company a name such as 'Great Hall Gardens' or something similar as 'Hall' is quite a posh sounding surname and most customers like being 'posh'!
3) Get a new email address. Maybe use Googlemail as its got loads of storage. Use it for business only.
4) Set up a simple website to advertise your services. A blog is the easiest way to do it.
5) Get some full colour flyers professionally produced and post these where you think sensible. Put them in newsagents windows.
6) If this is your first venture into the horticulture world, start off doing a basic grass cutting and clearance jobs etc service for OAP's. Do this for a few years to build up a 'round' whilst doing some basic courses at your local FE/land college. Obtaining spraying/chainsaw certificates is a good idea as is basic bricklaying/paving.
#What david says is very good advice. thats how i started. admitidly it was as a 16 year old who wanted to earn a bit of money ontop of my garden centre wages. Where abouts are you in the country? As there are many coleges in the contry and some are beter than others. Also It may be a good idea to contact local companys and ask if you could sub contract to them but advise them of your situation. especialy of your experience level. It realy ordepends what type of horticulture you would like to specialise in. In my opinion maintenance is the best way to start then maybe start with the odd landscape project.
Pro Gard said:
Well where to start, im going to see if I can answer all these questions in one post.
So here goes
Well im 25 and I started gardening as secondary income just to push me out of the struggling line and in to the just getting by lane. After a while I found that I really enjoyed what I was doing and started to notice that I would take great pride and go that extra mile to get the result I wanted. This made me think of maybe going into gardening as a profession and after the announcement that my company was closing down it seemed like fate was giving me an opportunity to do get into something I enjoy and get out of my dead end job. I live in Eastbourne on the south coast which is a rather large seaside town with a huge attraction for retirement, which for a gardener is perfect as there will always be OAP’s in need of their gardens attending to.
My current experience at this present time is only small jobs that have been jungle clearance or tidy up’s / maintenance, id eventually like to end up being a designer and then landscaping my designs for clients but id never take on any job that I feel was a bit more than I could chew for fear of making a pigs ear of them. I’ve always been a keen DIY’er so I would defiantly want to add building trade skills to my arsenal so I may have a wider range of versatility to my designs.
We only Have a few colleges that offer any sort of horticulture course near us which is Plumpton and Battle but unfortunately for me, I am very independent person and don’t have the option of moving back in with my parents and wouldn’t be able to take on any full time courses as I have a flat to pay for and would need more than a benefited income to keep me afloat.
Check to see if you colleges run the Rhs General Certificate as this is normally run on a part time basis.
Good look with your venture.
Paul