If you are looking for a new challenge, possess a skill and talent for creative garden design, and are physically fit and healthy with oodles of stamina, starting your own gardening and landscaping business is a fantastic idea that is certainly worth pursuing.
However, it is not just the adoration for being outdoors that is necessary to ensure you have a sustainable and solvent business plan with which you can make your dreams a reality, as there is significantly more to consider than one may first think.
With this in mind, continue reading to learn how to start your own gardening and landscaping business.
What Does Becoming A Professional Landscaper Actually Involve?
As with any other profession, it is important to fully acquaint yourself with what the role of a professional gardener and landscaper actually entails.
General characteristics of the role include, but are not limited to:
- Being outdoors in all weathers
- Drawing accurate and informative designs for customers
- Setting timelines for each project
- Accurately predicting the budget for each project
- The handling of poisonous shrubs and plants
- Working with pesticides
- Using and maintaining machinery
- Possessing a good working knowledge of everything from stonework to drainage
- Developing a working knowledge of current trends in garden designs
Start With Your Business Plan
Every business, especially one you are starting yourself from scratch, should be built on a strong and professionally advised business plan, which contains an executive synopsis of both yourself and your new company.
Focus on the reasons behind starting your business in the first place, and be sure to include information about your target market, your proposed sales forecasts and start-up budget, plans for increasing sales and marketing, and your unique selling point designed to set you above and apart from your competitors.
Start With A Strong & Varied Inventory
Naturally, the more varied and extensive your equipment, machinery, and tool inventory is for your new gardening business, the better. It is important to ensure not only that you have everything you need but also that you don’t waste any of your start-up budget on poor-quality products.
It is strongly advisable, therefore, to invest in high-quality yet cost-effective tools from reputable, renowned, and established gardening and landscaping suppliers, such as arbourlandscapesolutions.co.uk, to ensure your tools will be as long-lasting as you need them to be.
Decide Who You Will Market Your Business To
Professional gardeners and landscapers cater to a wide range of different clients, and it is important, in the early stages of developing your business into a solvent and eventually profitable one, that you clearly define who your target market will be.
You could choose to, at least for now, solely work with private and individual customers to lay the groundwork (a little gardening pun there) before you expand. Alternatively, however, you could start as you mean to go on and target a wider range of customers, the main options being:
- Private Landlords
- Managers or Owners of Holiday Lettings
- Managers of Property Companies
- Commercial Parks & Grounds
- Government-Owned Public Spaces
- Larger Private Homes
- Realtors