Business / personal name
Bowerbird Landscapes
Primary telephone number:
07892426499
About you and your business ( please complete)
Self employed gardener for about 10yrs, but design side is just taking off.
Business category
Landscaper
Where did you hear about Landscape Juice
Comments
She also remembers Sam Joyce (was Woodruff) as one of the design lecturers - she now owns the Gallium Garden in Wales.
Anna remembers Timotay - she applied for a job there as a designer soon after finishing at Moulton. They were offering £14k for a 40+ hour week, so she turned them down.
The way you've described starting out in business is pretty much exactly as we started. After a couple of design-only jobs, where the client sourced their own landscapers to work with our plans, we found a couple of landscapers and partnered up with them to install our gardens. As for how we work together - Anna is full-time as the qualified designer and does all the design work and project management, plus planting and maintenance. I work full-time outside the business (as a graphic designer) and my spare time is taken up with assisting with the plans drawing, costing, estimating and all marketing.
Our work has settled into the design and build sector now, but we are looking at some larger projects now which are beyond our build capacity, so we're back to design only on those. We do see ourselves as designers first and foremost.
You are ahead of us in getting your van graphics done! We've put it off for the last three years, and it's no closer to being finished.
Leicestershire/Derbyshire (we're right on the border) is great - loads of space and it has its own identity, if you know what I mean. I couldn't help feeling Clapham was just part of London's commuter belt, but we're sandwiched between Derby and Leicester, each of which have their own unique character.
Nick is still at Pod and as helpful and friendly as ever! When i first started gardening for a living i was working for Timotay Landscapes, who were the company that Pod used when customers requested a design or build. Does Anna remember them?
I did a RHS general cert at Moulton while i was with Timotay, which was about 2000. And went back to Moulton & started the design foundation degree, P/T in 2006. But I only did the first term and a bit after Christmas....... really struggled with the quantity of work and got very behind! But really enjoyed what i had done on the course.
How did Anna find the course? I did find if difficult to stay awake and concentrate in a warm lab after
lunch!!
I have only just done my first full design, with 2 builder friends, who do the hard stuff-they prefer landscaping to general building and have been doing it for years.
We work really well together, as the 3 of us can cover the skills needed and are working on another design.
So have just taken the exciting step of having a website done, and van signs made!!
I do maintenance and planting too. So just hoping to build up design side more.
While i was studying at Moulton I did a design with my best friend for her dad in Olney. She teaches Permaculture, so we tried to get a bit of that in too!
Was really chuffed with it, but didnt enjoy working with the builders who had just built the house and then were doing the garden that i had designed.
The house build overran a fare bit, and so the garden was rushed and I felt they didnt really want to do it! .....not a great experience, but taught me a lot, which is a plus!!
So how do you two work together? From what you said in some of your other posts, you have done generally designy jobs anyway?
How are you finding Leicestershire?
We lived in Clapham from 2002-2007, with the kids attending Sharnbrook. Anna worked at Podington from 05-07, while she was studying garden design at Moulton College in Northampton. Anna worked with Nick Warliker, Sheila K, Philip and Jonathan Read and many others.
We still have friends in Turvey and friends who used to live in Bromham, but we never really felt settled in Clapham, having moved there from London, and moved to Leicestershire in 2007 to set up the garden design business full time.
How are you finding the garden design market in N.Beds?
Welcome to the Landscape Juice Network.
Thanks for joining and I hope you find the site useful.
Kind regards
Phil Voice