Business idea: Would you be interested in planting consultation services?

If you charmed us and we really liked you then we might 😂 but that wont be on the original advertising.

The grunt work as in the digging? You would do that.

The difference to MN garden board / friends and family would be:

• A finished planting scheme with correct quantities (as opposed suggestions and having to figure it out yourself)
• Access to heavily discounted plants compared to garden centre c. 50% to 30% off depending on what it is (so will pay for itself in at a minimum or save you money)
• As you say our talent. Our garden design business is award winning and our work has been featured in prestige locations like Gardens Illustrated and on Gardeners world. But that is a luxury brand with a really personalised high level of service with pretty much permanent duty of care and aftercare advice. And our fees reflect that. So we can’t do these smaller jobs under that brand for lots of reasons (protecting the quality of outcome (we install and usually maintain), protecting the ‘brand image’ in terms style/calibre of design, protecting our chain of referrals ie. You are referred work similar to what you do and protecting our time in terms of back and forth revisions). So this is a way to do a lot more gardens and give people a cheaper quicker way to access us whilst mainly protecting our time and not confusing our initial brand with a lower level of service.

Thanks everyone 😊

Lots of great ideas!

This is the plan partly but not a full 3D type thing. More a visual photomontage which we create but it shows which plants will be in bloom with one another through the year. We already have all these so it’s just choosing the plants and slotting them in and then you have a visual calendar. It’s the way we have always designed and it’s really fun activity which I thought clients might enjoy doing together.

Thank you, I have been researching others who do similar and some do online. I am reluctant about that though. To do this right I really do need to look/ touch the soil and I just get an instinct when I am there to what will grow by looking at the surroundings, weeds and existing plants.

I like the idea of the option for full design day to be done part at home if you want. I just really want to limit the back and forth and revisions with this budget option. Getting it right first time and protecting our time is what the model is based around. As opposed our existing garden design business which involves a much more in depth back and forth and somewhat perpetual duty of care 😂

That’s ok, thank you for your comments though 😊

No we would not guarantee plants as we don’t have any involvement in aftercare. We would inspect/ pick plants before they get to you so choose good ones. And you would be able to reject immediately on receipt. But you wouldn’t be able to plant it, not water it, let it die and then want a refund.

In some garden designs we do we sometimes put in hedge your bet -plants (not to be confused with hedging but I don’t know another word). So say for example there’s a very poor soil new build garden, lots of rubbish in soil and rubble, poor drainage so water logs, but also poor moisture retention due to lack of soil structure. In these gardens we sometimes put in a couple of pairs of opposing species. With clients full knowledge that there’s a high chance one of each of these pairs might not survive. But we can’t tell which way it will swing until we try.

I would love to help! But I apologise I said I wouldn’t tout for work so will stand true to my word 😅

Where would you look out of interest to find something like this? Google, Social Media, somewhere else? If it’s meant to be perhaps we will bump into each other off mumsnet.

When people say charge more… how much are you imagining.

The profit is my time on these days and then we would put a small mark up on plants from the nursery which would add up.

We have 15 years experience and a method for building planting schemes which takes very little time as pulls content from our existing templates. So we can make these calendars in a matter of minutes and the aftercare guides (bar the maintenance one) will all be templates (where I can delete out specific interventions for soil type for example).

As we grow the maintenance notes will also start to build so when we repeat plants this will begin to become automated like the plant scheme calendars.

On going revenue - the idea is this business does not have the model. You can come back for more plants or a new area/ scheme but the idea with this is the aftercare is limited and so the price reflects that protection of our ongoing/ future time. It’s an in and out model in a way.

Oh wow! In writing the above comment, getting a tea and dealing with babe so much feedback. Thank you 😊

Thanks @JaninaDuszejko

Yes I was thinking that. I don’t want people to be put off thinking they are stuck with me for 5 hours 😂

I would need to test the timing with some friends and family.

From experience doing our garden design it’s often c. 30 minutes just walking round chatting about the garden as an intro to site. And then our mid phase design review consultations can be anything from 1-2 hours.

So I imagine:
30 mins - hi and garden walk chat
1-2 hours - measuring alone (whilst I give them a brochure of plant styles and inspiration pictures to peruse if they wish)
1-2 hours - sit down and make a planting palette together

So that’s how I got to the 2.5 and 5 hours. Depends on the scale of the job and how fast the client is really.