On feeling inspired.

On feeling inspired.

Everyone needs a little inspiration from time to time.  This last couple of weeks have been as wet, cold and miserable as any since I started my new venture, and I certainly needed some. How nice then to hear today from one of my lovely customers in Long Preston, who has given me rather a challenge with her recently somewhat neglected plot.  I noticed she had been painting her fences and power washing her drive and commented upon it.  She said I’d inspired her to do so!  Fantastic, all the inspiration I needed too, to get on with the job in hand, despite the weather (at least until the heaven’s opened once again anyway).  Thanks JW!!  Also absolutely loved being told by another customer this morning she’d recommended me to someone in  Eldroth – “hope it’s not too far for you?”.  Of course not JM, and many thanks to you too!  The train is at Inspiration Station today, all fuelled up and ready to go.
October 19, 2011 — Andrew Lay
Now the hard work really begins!

Now the hard work really begins!

Red letter day on Wednesday this week.  We found out we’d been granted change of use permission by the planners, and can now work towards opening our “pocket” Lay of the Land Garden Centre in Spring next year.  It will be small, but we’re absolutely determined to make sure it’s perfectly formed.  We want it to be a Garden Centre for serious gardeners, as well as an informative and interesting place to visit.  We want it to say something about who we are and what we do, so you can expect it to be a little more design focused and individual, than large scale and mass produced.  We want to make sure we provide the very best in service and value, really adding something new to the mix of retail businesses in Settle.  We’re not setting out to be competition for other businesses in the town, but rather to be complementary.  We already have an excellent timber merchants in Timberworks, and a very convenient builders merchant at Settle Coal, and between us we will be able to supply almost anything customers want or need in terms of planning and building gardens.  On top of that we have some excellent DIY counters and shops, Ashfield DIY, Timberworks, Practically Everything and a clutch of shops selling seasonal, and popular, bedding plants and both gardening and non gardening goods and gifts.  What we don’t have is anywhere really local with a larger selection of plants and garden sundries to complement the existing suppliers filling a part of this space.  Inevitably this encourages people to visit the larger towns and stores a car journey away from the town, and that only encourages people to spend their precious money somewhere other than Settle.  I’m certain no-one in the business community in Settle wants to see that happen.
October 15, 2011 — Andrew Lay

Autumn Jobs

Another busy week behind me.  This week I’ve been doing a lot of autumn tidying for customers:

  • Cutting back perennial plants
  • Autumn weed and feed on lawns
  • Raking up the dead leaves which drop in endless waves at this time of year
  • Renovation pruning

Top Tip:

When renovating a really overgrown shrub (and believe me I’ve dealt with some these last few weeks) it’s best to tackle it over 2 or even 3 years.  Hacking an 8 foot monster back to the 2 foot space originally allocated may just prove too much of a shock for the plant if done all at once.  Instead take out roughly a third of the oldest stems right to the base this year and repeat next year.  The other stems can be reduced by a third to a half of their length.  You need to be aware of the flowering habit of the shrub however – does it flower on last years growth for instance – to avoid, if possible, a year or two without flowers.

Next week I’ve got a couple of garden plans to draw up, which is fortunate because the weather’s looking a little shaky.

October 15, 2011 — Andrew Lay
A new garden shed

A new garden shed

This summer (as Dad had a little more time on his hands, or so we thought) it was decided that the old garden shed, which as you can see from the photo was my childhood workshop, was past it’s best and should be rebuilt. Dad would need a potting shed if he was going to be a real gardener, and one that he could be proud of! So I set to work on the design; Dad wanted a green roof and for me it needed to be interesting.  Reality meant we had to build it out of easily sourced and affordable materials. It still needs a little bit of painting but this is what we came up with.  It’s built to last a lifetime and we think it’s pretty stylish. Hopefully with a little R&D we will might sell some through Lay of the Land?.. anyone interested?

By the way, I’m Pete, Andy’s eldest son here to help out whenever he breaks this website, or needs design advice!

October 15, 2011 — Peter Lay

The Giggleswick Gardener – Lessons Learned.

A few lessons we’ve learned along the way.

Good tools are essential for a start, but good doesn’t always mean most expensive. A cheap pair of secateurs may last a season or two in one private garden but in the hands of a “pro” they can explode after a couple of weeks, and we’ve shifted acres of prunings! Allegedly Felco make the best secateurs on the planet, and I sort of hankered after a couple of pairs of them at first, but the rather prohibitive price tag put me off. In the end I saw a company called Darlac at the RHS Cardiff Flower Show, and bought 4 pairs of secateurs, and some excellent extendable loppers, for roughly the same price as a pair and a half of Felco’s, and have been extremely satisfied with them. The loppers in particular are very heavy duty, whilst at the same time being light and very easy to use. I’d recommend them to anyone. (Mind you, it’s possible to be perfectly satisfied with a BMW yet if offered a Roll’s Royce, who would turn it down, eh? Are you reading this Messrs Felco!)

Plants are available from all sorts of places. DIY stores, Garden Centres, corner shops and online from a whole variety of suppliers. The quality and the prices vary enormously. The cheapest plants aren’t always the poorest quality, but are rarely the best, and the most expensive aren’t always the best quality, and in some cases can actually be quite poor. It’s important to know what a fair price is, and what a good plant looks like. In my experience many people don’t and end up paying too much, or too little, for a plant doomed from the day it was planted. I’ve purchased quite a few online with hugely varying results. Some have grown well, some haven’t grown at all. Some have arrived well packed and perfectly protected. Some have been bashed up and rather mangled. Some have been a real surprise. My Echinacea Purpurea “White Swan” turned out to be an altogether different variety when in bloom, which could have been a real disaster!

Too many of the places I’ve visited to buy plants are only really interested in selling things. I’ll want to know where you want to plant it, what your soil and aspect is like and try to advise on the basis of that how likely your chosen plant is to thrive.

Customers are individuals. Well, I knew that of course from my previous life, but up close and personal this truth becomes so much sharper. There is no substitute for understanding a customer’s needs, motivation, budget and expectations. From a sustenance point of view it also helps to remember who probably will and who probably won’t offer a cup of tea, and remember to pack a flask when visiting the latter! Some customers almost kill with kindness, and some don’t. It’s o.k either way, but also further proof that “Thank Heaven” we are all very different!

That builder who took ages to return my calls, then took ages to visit, and even more ages to produce a quote, and then didn’t come when he said he would (real story from this year, but it’s happened to me many times before) isn’t a bad person. He’s just too busy and reluctant to say “no”. How do I know. Lesson learned. If I have one client that client expects my 100% attention and will get it too. Add another one and there is a 50% expectation gap already. Add 10 more and the potential for disappointing someone increases exponentially. Business owners have to become expert jugglers very quickly, often without anyone to teach them, so hardly surprising that sometimes the balls get dropped. Thankfully, when I took a little longer than the clients were hoping, a sincere apology and a good job seem to have restored the status quo. I quickly learned to stem my kamikaze optimism on time scales!

Brilliant gardens full of interest and colour are free. Or at least that is what many people seem to believe. The budget initially allocated to this wonderful outdoor room is often woefully mismatched against what the customer would like to achieve. I’m not sure why this is. Maybe it’s because gardeners aren’t seen as specialists (and they should be) or maybe it’s because even the most sensational garden newly planted will soon become a wilderness if not maintained. Whatever the reason, the most difficult part of the job can often be to help customers understand that a garden is never free, even if they do it themselves. A well designed garden, well built and planted, and then well maintained, will reward it’s owner with years and years of pride and pleasure.  An overgrown and unkempt mess of a plot is likely to depress it’s owner, knowingly or not, every time they clap eyes on it. If I’ve heard “plants are sooo expensive” once I’ve heard it a hundred times, yet the average price for herbaceous perennials is probably about £6 to £7 each, and for that it will bloom for years. On the other hand the money could be spent on a pint and three quarters of beer, a “reasonable” bottle of wine or a fraction of the average monthly cost of purchasing a Sky TV package!  What’s the definition of value then?

Honesty is always the best policy. This one is a little linked to both the previous lessons. It’s important not to try to mislead customers when timescales or budgets start stretching. The truth is the truth and customers are never daft. It’s also about what is and isn’t possible. I’ve seen several gardens this year which have been previously “landscaped”. Some were palpably substandard. However, this may not have been because the contractors simply weren’t very good, or lacking in horticultural knowledge and technique. It may have been because the customer budget and aims didn’t match, and rather than try to explain this, and perhaps risk losing the job, the contractors worked down to the price expected, but without admitting this to the customer. Inevitably this will end up disappointing  when the short cuts, cut backs and compromise plants start to evidence themselves. If what the customer wants can’t be produced to the standard required for the budget stated it’s very important to say so.

September 30, 2011 — Andrew Lay
A busy summer in Settle and Giggleswick!

A busy summer in Settle and Giggleswick!

Wow – what happened to summer then?

I rather expected my first year as a gardener to be punctuated by spells of inactivity as I built up my customer base, enabling me to get up to date with my own garden. Wrong! The interest, and the business, was created almost from the word go, and we’ve had a very busy summer working in a whole range of gardens, from Stackhouses to Skipton, and from Cowling to Barrowford. The range has been interesting too. We’ve had commissions all the way from a complete garden re-design and re-build, through planting plans and re-laying patios, and from regular one day a week garden maintenance through to a one off tidy up or mowing a lawn every other week through the summer. As variety is the spice of life, then of course I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it all, and would like to say a big “THANKYOU” to all our regular and one off customers. In particular, thanks to PS, MH and JOC, three of my very first, and still current customers, JM for her recommendations, AM for taking a chance on me, and JW for her patience. You all know who you are!

Getting the hang of being a full time and professional gardener has been a lot easier than improving my internet skills. I plan to start including photo’s of what we’ve been up to as soon as I figure out how to download them to my computer, and then upload them to the site!

So, Lay of the Land Garden Care and Design is up and running. We’ve cared for quite a few gardens, and designed one and several bits so far. To further my designing credentials I’ve taken myself back to school (well Craven College actually) and enrolled on a Foundation Degree course in Garden Design.  It’s a profession where it’s perfectly possible, and acceptable, to be qualified through experience alone.  It will be good to fully understand all the theory, and whilst I’ve already had plenty of practice over the years, having a formally recognised qualification can’t hurt. For the same reason I also plan to study for the RHS (Royal Horticultural Society) examinations, which I’ll do by correspondence course. However, as an avid book collector and reader, I can tell you my “Plants for Places”, “Propogation Techniques” and “Encyclopedia of British Plants” are already pretty well thumbed, as are my collection of lighter weight, but equally good reading, Garden Expert and Alan Titchmarsh tomes!  I’ve applied for membership of the HTA (Horticultural Trades Association) and been accepted, and for membership of the SGD (Society of Garden Designers).

We’ve acquired premises, “The Old Joiner’s Workshop”, on King’s Mill Lane, Settle, which will be our base, and have an application for change of use in with the Planning Department. We don’t need change of use to operate a gardening business from there, but we do need it if we are to achieve our other ambition of running a “pocket” Garden Centre. This is a facility Settle doesn’t really have, the nearest ones being 8 or 10 miles away, and as we need to stock plants in future for filling up client’s gardens it seemed to make sense to try to retail them directly too. Watch this space. Oh, and if you think a Garden Centre for Settle would be a good idea, you could always lobby the Planners on our behalf and give them your view!!

September 29, 2011 — Andrew Lay