Forum

Late payers & how to lose a client without causing upset

I have two clients who I do weekly maintenance for and invoice them monthly. They have increasingly become late payers and I end uo doing over a months work without having been paid for the last. Should I continue to work there if not been paid, alth

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Awkward Site.

Hi, great site, only just discovered today.I`ve got an awkward site to maintain at present, its an apartment block that has its gardens on high walls an very steep, stepped gabions. I`ve been instructed to plant climbers or trailing plants that provi

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Institute of Groundsman Saltex Exhibition

I will be at the IOG Saltex show at Windsor Race Course on either the 3rd or 4th of September if anyone wants to meet up? I will be attending with Mike Seaton and combining my Weed Free role as Marketing Manager with some Landscape Juice work. If any

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Sloping site

I have just been asked to do a job on a sloping site 12m wide by 6m depth sloping away with a 2m fall the customer has asked for the grass to be killed and bark to be put down then planted with shrubs or anything which grows about 3m high . i said if

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"Living Wall" Planters

Does anyone know please where I can source some "Living Wall" or "Vertical Garden" planters. I have managed to find them in the USA but they do not ship to the UK or have a UK distributor. Any help gratefully received so I can recreate the hanging ga

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Pond - safety grill for children

helloI am designing a wildife pond with bog and scree ramp and was wondering if anyone has used a screen/grill to ensure children do not drown? My client has grand-children and we want to ensure they come to no harm. I have never had to use one befor

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Profile Pictures

Ok, i give up. I admit defeat!What resolution picture do i need to set my profile picture properly... I did a 96x96 resolution image of my logo, but it only shows a few characters.Any help much appreciated.thanksDavid

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Commercial Work / Contracts

Hi All.Does anyone have any experiance on how to break into commercial landscaping / groundworks etc? At present all my work is residential which is to be expected givem my current marketing (local papers and directories).Im in the process of getting

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Skype Chat and Conference Call Monday 28th July

We are going to attempt to do something very special and different this coming Monday at 7.30pm GMT. I believe this could be the first for any Garden Network in the UK and that is to gather together our members and demonstrate the power of the intern

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Protecting photos on the web and getting them in images.

Hi there-am hoping to sell photos via my website but am worried that they will be copied so how do l protect them. Also how do you get them to appear in image searches. Many thanks for any help.

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Getting rid of garden waste

How do you guys get rid of your waste from a job? Typically I use my customer's recyle bin, however recently I've been invloved in a number of quite big jobs where I've had 3 or 4 large bags of waste.Basically guys I'm looking for an environmentally

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covering of ground

thanks for your help guys next questions,how long do you leave a covering on the ground to also kill weeds.and id you have good soil would you put manure on the earth

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Soil Improvement advice and best practice

Hi there-really could do with some good ideas. Hope l have put this in the right group?

Anyway l have 2 gardens that are doing my head in. The first has large established shrubs/perennials but had become overgrown with honeysuckle. After removing abou

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How Many Clients

How many customers do you need for a profitable gardening round thanks

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How do you define the left/right sides of the property?

I have been struggling with how to define the left/right sides of the yard. Do you stand facing the front of the house, or do you stand in the backyard facing the back of the house? I'm interesting in learning the feng shui of design and cannot find

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GREEN WASTE RANT

I have been speaking to my Local Council for advice of where I can recycle my green waste as a business. They explained that I should use the local waste management companies, of which I explained they don't recycle and that I want my green waste to

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City and Guilds versus RHS General Certificate in horticulture

Please could I ask you to be frank and put me in the picture as reguards which course to do.

I do not want to commit myself to a course only for people further down the line to say that is not really worth the paper it is written on.

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NGS Membership

Hi, everyone - great to see the site growing almost as quickly as the weeds in the Garden !Just thought I would post this discussion starter. We were accepted for NGS membership last year and have just opened our garden for the scheme. We had a great

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frustrated and unsure ???

I may have the chance to quit my job of 10 years and actually do a job i enjoy. I have a young family and would love to be my own boss dictating what hours i work whilst fitting in with my family and clients needs. I am fortunate enough not to be und

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Pictures of Roses

Hi Folks,I'm going to start developing a 50m long flower border here in Spain later this year. I have a catalogue from a local nursery that lists 11 varieties. I will buy from this range as they'll have been proven to do well in this environment. I'v

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How do designers decide which plants to use ?

Excuse me while I leap onto my hobby horse....why do designers not give more thought to where their clients can source their plants from ?We seem to have a regular flow of customers who arrive on our nursery triumphantly clutching a garden design, fo

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The Lawn maintenance thread

One of the biggest assets of any garden, apart from the plants, has to be the lawn. It is usually the single largest part of any garden yet it is often overlooked or just ignored by home-owners and to a great extent professionals who just do not have

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Do you have a cancellation clause?

Hi All,

Hope your all enjoying the good weather.

Im just tidying up my T&Cs and noticed i didnt have a cancellation clause. I would be interested to know if/how you others deal with cancellations?

Thanks

David

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Make hay while the sun shines

I have not posted much in the last day or two but I have read every post and it is great to see such continued activity. I do not want to mention the other site but save to say, for 1900 (?) users, there is a tiny percentage who are posting but the a

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Philosophy, Plants and Life

Firstly, would anyone know of a book which deals with the theme of my thread.I have always been absolutely fascinated by nature, to the point that it's design is remarkable and exact, so much so, it has to be design, hasn't it?Yesterday, I eventually

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Landscaping, Garden Maintenance and Design Jobs Wanted

If you are looking for a gardening, landscaping or garden design job then add your details here. Please do not add any other information i.e. replies - contact the job offerer directly via the message facility. Please read 'finding good staff' for ot

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Landscaping, Garden Maintenance and Design Jobs Offered

If you have a vacancy that you are looking to fill then why not add the details here. Please keep the post to the job description, salary (if you want to included this) and location of the job with any relevant details specific to the employment. Ple

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Finding Good Staff

Just wondering how you all find staff. We are down to my husband and 2 guys at the moment as our senior guy has just announced he is leaving tomorrow!!! aghhh. Oh well, maybe life wants us to slow down a bit....but I was thinking of advertising again

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What memories to you have of your childhood garden?

I love nostalgia and often recall memories of growing up.

I wrote a rather self indulgent post some while back called - Memories of my childhood garden - on Landscape Juice.

Do you have any particularly strong memories of growing up and how returni

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Do you need to pay for good business advice?

Out of our trade members, how many of you are members of the APL or BALI? What is your view on membership of these trade organisations and do you feel it is justified to charge a fee to allow you in? What is more, do trade organisation just tend to c

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Fixed quotes?

Hi All.

I always tended to try and offer the client a fixed price quote so they could budget ok.

However, i keep overrunning and incurring extra costs which im currently absorbing, but im wondering whether i need to actually offer fixed price jobs.

For

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A question for the Garden Design group

I am keen to get the groups going a bit more (although I do not wish to thwart the great activity on the forums either). I asked a question in the garden design group a while back and I wonder what your thoughts are? https://landscapejuice.ning.com/gr

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Accepting electronic payments for garden maintenance

Related to the discussion about charging, I thought I would mention the idea of electronic payments for regular gardening and share some of my experiences.

Until this year, I have almost always insisted on payment by cheque from my clients - it seem

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Gardening chargeout rates and mindset management

You are all adding some great stuff and I can tell you that the feed back from members about the site, and members on other members, is so positive and I am delighted it is going so well. I would like to draw attention to this post from Phil Luscombe

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Forum thread changes

I have tweaked the forum categories and added a few extra. The main changes are the addition of a Garden Design thread and the splitting of the general thread into Landscaping and Gardening. I have also added a Machinery thread and a thread for Garde

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Site updates and strange goings on!

You might have noticed that occasionally, things do not reappear where you last left them and it may take a little bit of time to find it.

The reason this can happen is when Ning update their software that drives the engine room of this network and

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Small business advice - free downloads

I hope that you are find the resources here of great use. I intend to add to these resources over time as when I find the right one to promote. I do not have all the answers to the potential problems that your business my encounter, either as a start

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Garden design software - what does it do and what does it cost?

There are a number of garden software packages out there on the web. We have two members, Neil Bromhall - Complete Gardens and Tamsin Slatter who both provide different software packages.

I will let both Tamsin and Neil explain the benefits and adva

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What to do off-season?

Working in the garden maintenance side of horticulture, concentrating on domestic gardens, I have quite a lengthy off-season from about mid-December to about mid/late-February. I often only have bitty jobs from late November onwards as much of the wi

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Get shot of under performing contracts

Let us assume that you have five separate contracts each week and that four of them are accurate when it comes to the charge out rate.

The fifth one however only covers one fifth (20%) of your yearly cost (assuming it is a day a week for the year).

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Try this simple hourly rate test

Establishing what is the right rate to charge yourself out at is the tricky bit and nobody will get it 100% correct -but how do you know where to start?

Below is an example of how a one man band should approach setting a charge out rate.

My first con

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Treating your travel as a cost of landscape sales

Imagine quoting for two separate jobs? One job is located just 2 miles from your operating base and the other job is located 30 miles away.

For the sake of this exercise, let's say that both landscaping projects are exactly the same specification.

H

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It is never too early to seek advice

This is probably the hardest time for garden companies since the early 90's when a bleak recession gripped the United Kingdom. Many businesses ceased trading as work dried up and competition cut margins to negative figures. We are now very close to e

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Your Landscape Juice page

First, give some credit where credit is due. Richard Loader has kindly donated one of his images as the background to the Landscape Juice header - Thank you Richard. Now we do not have a global image that covers everyone so you can now completely per

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What is the legal status of a verbal contract?

I'm looking for advice on how you would all deal with this situation.I had looked after all of the maintenance needs of a small hilltop estate in Ayrshire for a Lady for 2 years. She was extremely satisfied with everything we did, how we went about d

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Garden Budgets

Just wondering what of budgets you have for your gardens? We generally do work over £15,000 (though we do the odd front garden for less here and there). Current garden is £32,000, last one was £28,000, one before, a front garden, was £6500, then ther

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