Is anyone a professional gardener? Changed career?

Kristen,

If they are advertising and attempting to provide a professional service they should have the knowledge, the amount of bad work Ive seen from ignorant people claiming to be gardeners is shocking, same with tree surgery ....... just as with gardening a lot of people claim to offer tree surgery yet haven't a clue.

I have some (limited) climbing experience, chainsaw tickets including ropes and practical experience of heavy felling and forestry yet id never ever advertise as a tree surgeon. I do a bit of felling often large fells on agricultural and park land but thats my limit in fact the closest I get to ropes is spiking up to set a pull line. Any tree surgery gets passed on to a local tree surgeon. Same with stone walling, brickwork and large patios, I pass it on to a local stone mason/ builder. I could offer all these services but running a professional business I know that my knowledge of these subjects and experience in them is limited therefore I wouldn't dream of doing them.

When I get my truck serviced I expect the person who I'm paying a professional fee too and who advertises a professional service to have more mechanical skill than myself, I want to come back and find a complete job not stand over and supervise showing them how to change the break pads.

Part of the problem with the industry is that it is perceived to be relatively skills there are farr too many incompetents charging peanuts doing shabby work. For me this is something I have always used to my advantage as having proper knowledge and really good equipment and a very organized and tidy vehicle makes my business a cut above and allows farr higher pricing. I have never needed to sign write or advertise since my work is generated by word of mouth.

 

Thanks everyone for the helpful replies.

I realise I'm nowhere near professional standard yet, but it's an aspiration. I'm hoping that an intensive year doing an RHS certificate, reading, experimenting with my own garden, vitising other gardens, helping out neighbours and friends etc will get me up to standard to at least start doing basic work.

The plant knowledge thing scares the heck out of me though. Doesn't it take years and years and years to build that up to a standard where you are always more knowledgable than your customers? (there are some very clued-up amateurs out there after all!)

Lastly, many people have said that they "just started up" their own business. How, in practical terms, do you do this? Is it, in a nutshell, a case of tooling yourself up and putting an add in the paper (and all the rest of it - business cards, flyers, touting yourself to friends in the pub etc) and the work will come? What if it doesn't?!

 

"What if it doesn't?!"

I would imagine the Job Centre will assist you. No idea what is available, but I would expect them to pay you some sort of Support whilst you are starting your own business as a "cushion".

 

Andrew, I started my business up by leafleting, also a few recommendations from contacts I had. For a couple of years I also advertised in a local directory. Ive never advertised since as all work now comes via recommendation.

Re what if it doesn't, This is Why you need a contingency fund, If you setup spring/ summer you should find work but I guarantee that the winter will be very lean.

For my first two years over the lean winter months I did night shift as an agency temp forklift driver aswell as working the day jobs I had.... crazy stuff thinking back, I was surviving on 3 hours sleep and many cups of coffee and even fell asleep at the wheel once driving back from the shift !!

Re plant knowledge, I learn mine from childhood, but to learn in your position I would suggest going around freinds gardens etc photoing plants and looking them up, consider doing voluntary work for the national trust, in this way you could probably learn quite a bit simply by looking and asking.

 

I've read all the posts on this thread, thinking about my experiences of working for myself/ for a council/ private contractor. All have their own positives and negatives. Working for yourself can be stressful in ways that you may have not thought about. Pro-Gard is right, a contingency fund is vital.

I was fortunate for my first winters I found some sub-contracting work through another gardener friend planting hedges. Trust me middle of the winter, in a waterlogged clay field in the middle of an equine centre, you really think that working for someone may be a better idea!

Plant knowledge is something that you can only accumulate with doing the job. You will find that most supermarket car parks, parks/open spaces etc have planting around, and they have a very common theme. This will give you a basic knowledge of plants that are not in your garden. I also found that a good couple of garden plant books in the van were always a good idea, as 'Mmm, I'll get back to you on that one' was a frequently used phrase, until I could have a read up on something!

If you are no-longer in work, then working for this summer for a contractor or council or as a volunteer may be beneficial for you. You will see how a large professional outfit works, and you will pick up more knowledge by speaking to those knowledgeable people within the company. You may just be doing something like strimming or constantly weeding, but time spent doing the work, will show how physically fit you will need to be!

I think that reliability is something that people look for in a gardener, followed by knowing what you are doing. I also think that attention to detail is something that people want to see also. One of the questions that I always asked was 'is there anything that you think needs doing in the garden?' I would find that some customers would identify something that I had either forgotten, or didn't think to do. I would also make sure that the views from the house where the owner would stand/view from the longest looked the best. This would be looking from the kitchen window, and by the front/back doors.

I knew that once I started on this thread, I'd witter on for a while, but having been in a similar position that you are in I thought that I would say my piece!

Hope this Helps!

 

It depends what sort of customer you go after, but I reckon you should have little trouble finding some work, but not necessarily enough to sustain you from the outset.

My mate ran a landscaping firm (hard landscaping - he didn't touch plants) for years before selling his business. He was always fully booked. In summer, people wanted new patios and decking etc when the first hint of nice weather made them want to enjoy their garden. In winter people wanted their blown down fences fixing, and in the case of one brand new housing estate that proved very lucrative for him, people wanted my mate and his lads to come and do something about the lakes that had formed on their lawns that wouldn't go away.

At the other end of the scale, I have stopped mentioning to some people that I am keen to improve my gardening skills. As soon as they find out I have an interest they all want me to go round and sort their garden out for them, thinking that just because I have an interest in it that I must be some sort of Alan Titchmarsh double. I daren't tell them that I know very little in case one day I do actually remember anything I've read and then want to charge them money to do their garden.

 

Thanks for the replies and sorry for the "bump", but I have another question for the professionals.

Things have moved quite fast in the last week or so, and it's gone from helping out mates for a pint or so, to helping out mates of mates for £20 plus a few pints.

Now, my question is, at what point do you go from "cash in hand" work to proper self-employed status? And also, how on earth do you do this?

I can easily see myself moving to "helping out mates of mates of mates for a rough hourly rate" in the not-too-distant future. Bearing in mind that I cam completely skint and couldn't afford any expensive registration or anything like that, and I'm currently also on benefits, would it be best to do it the minute I get my first "proper" paid job? Or wait to see how things are panning out, and if I end up getting more regular work, then look into proper self-employment registration or whatever?

I realise that this might be a bit "sensitive" - but practical advice rather than points of law would be appreciated (PM me if necessary!). My aim is to make sure I'm not diddling the taxpayer or anyone and doing things above board, without making my own life impossible by wrapping myself in expensive red tape for the sake of a couple of odd-jobs!

 

To register self employed, you just have to phone the tax office and tell them. They will then start charging you something like £21 per quarter for national insurance. Other than that it doesn't cost, unless you set up a limited company.

Once the taxman knows about you, expect to have to do a real nightmare of a tax return for every christmas (though not the christmas because they start at the end of your first full year). Tax returns are stressful, as they want to know everything about your financial situation so they can work out how much tax to steal.

That's the self employed thing in general, I couldn't comment on specifics of a gardening business as I have no experience in that. My business was IT related.

 

I think from a tax point of view you have 3 months to register that you are going self employed. From a benefits point of view, your personal adviser should be able to help you out with what you have to do to become self-employed. I was told last time I went to the benefits office that I could earn £20 quid a week on top of what I was getting, but I'm on ESA and not job seekers allowance. I was also told that I could receive a £40 a week return to work incentive, but that is only if I return to work on less than 15k a year. I can also work as a volunteer as much as I want, obviously not paid, but my expenses would need to be covered.

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/MoneyTaxAndBenefits/Taxes/WorkingAndPayingTax/DG_10016920

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Jobseekers/LookingForWork/DG_173931

Just a couple of pages from the Directgov website, which is a start for information, I normally have a read and then ring a number!

I would also keep a record of what work you are doing, and who for and what you are getting paid, as you can always sort out a tax position retrospectively. I would also recommend that you ask about and find a good accountant. You will be in the future having to complete a self assessment, which when you are working for yourself is a bit of a nightmare.

If you get completely stuck then the CAB will always be there to lend a hand. Its not an easy process, going from an income to the unknown, but take advice, and listen to it, and make sure that everything is written down.

I wish you luck, and if you do an honest days work, then you will be in work more than out of it.

Hope this Helps!

 

John, I didn't know about that £95/week thing. If I ever go self employed again I'll look at that. When I was self employed before, we got paid in decent sized chunks but infrequently, I'm sure I could have averaged it to within £95 per week as our business didn't exactly get very far off the ground.

 

True, but if you earn less than £95 per week you'd need to hang on to every penny of it for immediate day to day living, unless your business is a sideline in addition to being employed by someone else, in which case the employer pays your NI anyway. In the scenario that you describe, wouldn't your state pension as a married man equate to two individual ones anyway? To be honest I don't worry too much about pensions anyway because if our government get their own way we'll all be working until we are about 310 years old anyway.

 

Hi Andrew. I was a designer/modelmaker/potter until the work started drying up about six years ago. I put an ad in the local free paper as a maintenance gardener and got work straight away.
I wouldn't say that I had always been a keen gardener but most of the jobs invoved using common sense and if I didn't know, I asked or looked it up in a book. (I carry a library of ref books in the car now, along with a selection of hand tools).
I don't earn a fortune as I'd rather have free time to do other things but having just completed my third medal-winning garden at Chelsea, I must be doing something right!
My advice is - give it a go!
Good luck, Chris