Business / personal name
Gardner's Gardens
Primary telephone number:
01354 655791
About you and your business ( please complete)
. I'm a garden designer and landscaper. My earliest memories of gardening are in my Grandads greenhouse where he kept a tuppawear salt shaker and he would give me a warm, ripe tomato straight from the vine. We would sprinkle it with a little (oh okay then, a lot. It was the seventies) of salt and tuck in. A tomato has never tasted so fine. After leaving school I did a lot of different jobs up until my late twenties when passers by and neighbours kept commenting on my front garden and saying I should do it professionally. Well I knew enough to know that I didn't know enough. So I enrolled in a series of courses at Capel Manor Horticultural College. I studied "Hard Landscaping", "Garden Design" and "RHS Cert Horticulture" for three years before setting up my own Garden Design and Construction Business. It's been an exciting time and one job has led to another and I've been improving all the time. I started off doing the odd patio and within six years I found myself on a Learjet with a well known celebrity flying off to design the gardens at one of their properties in Europe. It has been a richly rewarding career so far and I'm looking forward to the future. I still thoroughly enjoy doing smaller projects where it is easier to build a relationship with the client and I can be more involved with the actual construction. Designing has it's rewards but building something with your hands and taking the time and trouble to prepare the soil and select the plants before planting them is still one of the most satisfying jobs in the world. When I started it all I never really felt comfortable calling myself a "Gardener". Not having watched my Grandad. From him I knew that real gardeners had heaps of patience and at the time I wanted to make instant gardens. That is why the one achievement that I am most proud of is that I am now a "Gardener", along the way I have learned patience and I know that preparation is everything (still can't convince clients though). .
Business category
Landscaper, Garden Designer
Where did you hear about Landscape Juice
invitation
Comments
I love your oak fence panels, I have looked at them on here before. Very healthy for a small garden too, as you'd get a bit of air flow through them.
Last time I used oak on a job was in Madrid. I designed some heavy wrought iron scroll work fence panels and framed them in 4" of air dyed, aged English oak. It was all made here by two separate firms and not put together until it got to site in Spain. I was sweating for a while as a wrong dimension on one of my drawings would have been a costly mistake. It all went well though and they looked fantastic. Shame I don't have a few more clients who can afford that kind of quality.
I will keep your panels in mind for when a suitable client comes up.
He lives up the road from me & we see him often was having dinner with him last night when he was telling me to befriend you
Now hes called me a theif on facebook!
Seriously life is strange
Haven't posted on here for ages.
Work has been steady considering, and the best sales tool for me is just being out there creating gardens. I think we all know that the best marketing tool is recommendation and our shop window is the work that we've done.
I've just done some design work for a group in Downham Market, Norfolk for a project called "The World Garden" it will be a new public garden with an educational message. Hopefully the build will be under way soon as I am really happy to be involved in a garden that is free to everyone and not just for those that can afford it.
My website got 1,000 unique visitors in March which is a great improvement on the 20 or so it was getting before I re-built it last year (if you want something done right....).It still needs a bit of a polish and there are a few more projects I will be adding soon.
I've just agreed a marketing tie in with the builders merchant that supplies most of my materials, I'm not sure it will bring in much work but it will be beneficial in building on an already good relationship with my supplier.
Finally I had a four page article published in Gardens Monthly in January, which is great for showing to potential clients that have not come through recommendation and who need a little push to build there confidence in me.
Good luck to you all, fingers crossed for a good summer.