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
I know what you mean about the rota though - I have resigned myself to the fact that I am only human and there are only so many days in the week available for work. And if things don't get done this week they will have to be done next week - people do understand if you have to delay due to weather. I used to hate putting people off but its just a fact of gardening life I think.
I just keep telling myself that work will wait - family & life won't!
I also use this time to keep up to date on new stuff or machinery etc or catch up with other businesses in my area - spot of networking never hurts.
I know I could carry on and get soaked right through but the ground doesn't like it, I might get struck down with flu, have tp put the damage right in the spring and be even further behind!
Winters the time for recharging the batteries isn't it? the odd day/week off will be good for you and it looks like your very professional - even turning up when its chucking it!
It throws the rotas out big time as it is a hell of a job to catch up one or two days in the remainding days of the week. I do howver try to keep Mondays and Fridays slightly less booked out so it does help with rescheduling to a degree but then this has a knock on effect with other jobs!
Worst still is the impact to cash flow if the clients are pay per cut!
You can't feel guilty its just a fact of life and at the end of the day it isn't life or death. Thankfully the really bad rain days haven't impacted us that much this season when compared to previous years but tomorrow morning looks interesting!!
Question is, will I dry out in time to put the clothes back on to cut back a rhodie tomorrow?
Pro Gard said:
One advantage with lots of rain is that it makes you keep a mental list of rain jobs as you know that you will need them. There is usually something you can do that is a bit sheltered. Also for me it depends so much on the layout of the garden. For example when it's blowing a gale & pouring I will do a town job rather than an exposed seaside garden.
I also make a point of varying which days per week or fortnight that I visit a customer so that I always have the flexibility to change it.
I'm finding the rain a bit depressing now. I am also having to put work back and back because of it. The gloomy skies are giving me sun-withdrawal symptoms and the other factor is a couple of machine break-downs adding to the grief.
I am off out today, at least I can do weeding and litter-picking plus a bit of shrub-trimming if needed, but I know I will have to go back to sites to finish the lawns.
How are you coping? Any tips?
Machinery breakdowns this end too - thankfully fixed without too much trouble!
We have told our lawn cut customers that if they don't want their lawns cut in the rain (and most don't) then we can't stick to specific days and all are happy with that. All are within 10 mins drive so when we get a dry day are just working through them. I am glad we only have a small percentage of lawn cuts though. Was talking to another gardener yesterday who rang a customer 15 miles away to see if it was OK to come yesterday am, he drove there and it started raining and she sent him away again - he was livid! She told him rain was due to stop at 6.30 pm and to come back then. He needs the cash so he had to..
On the positive, and its hard to find these miserable days we are getting asked to do lots of gutter clears!
My machinery is also suffering with, which had to be wet weather related.