New Business - Life time Interest is now my work

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I haven’t been on here for nearly a year, it maybe more, but I realise I may appreciate the knowledge and input from members and friends to help me in my day to day work.

A lot has happened since I was last on here, I was working full time at the local Health Service in a job which gave no satisfaction and drove me insane on a daily basis. After the contract had ended I found myself at a bit of a loss what to do. I needed to work as my untamed brain can be pretty destructive, and we needed a bit more income to keep ourselves fluid. I decided to advertise myself as a gardener in our local paper. I got many calls and ended up with 4 clients whose gardens were projects rather than just maintenance.
For those of us on here who have employed disappointing individuals (myself included) to tend to their gardens, the general consensus think that lack of communication and knowledge are the two main bug-bears, so coming from a back-ground of customer service and project management I was able to make client interface the ethos behind my work.
Things really started to take off. I decided to make things official and in February 2011, I launched
Plant-Scape – A professional service for your outdoor space. I only operate locally (the Isle of Wight) so this isn’t an advert for my company, it is just an update to all friends and members and all newbies who I haven’t interacted with for so long.
I suppose I am looking for a bit of feedback from the diverse expertise on GOY.
Here are some of my projects;
The Willowherb Soap Company
This client wanted me to plant and design her garden so there was year round interest and to use plants that she could use in the manufacture of her soap. This was a tight budget so I used many plug plants and encouraged maintenance and watering until established.

Before

After – evergreen sage of different colours, red stemmed cornus to compliment the bark of the birch and heather for Winter colour

After, the herb garden. A horseshoe path was created in this deep bed and the flag-stones were surrounded with thyme, sedum and marjoram. This is only 3 months old and look how everything has grown!

After – The herb border which includes dying plants and fragrance plants, plus poppy seeds and rose hips.

Before – Garden in Cowes Isle of Wight. A partially shady border with little interest.

After – herbaceous perennials and bulbs will give all year round interest – the clients were thrilled.

The following photos are a regeneration project in Shanklin IOW, which on face value looked like a bit of digging and general soil improvement, but as I started to work with the soil, I encountered a different story.
The soil was green, slimy and nutrient starved and I had to encourage my client to invest in the structure of her soil before I could introduce plants. For a large project like this I would normally use a micro-digger, but access to the property wouldn’t allow this. Five days later, 3 strong lads, and little old me and a full 12ft skip, the garden looked great and the soil structure and nutrient value had increased.
Before

Before

Before Shanklin

After Shanklin

After Shanklin

Sometimes whilst working I am lucky enough to get a glimpse of our local wildlife. The Isle of Wight is one of the few places in the UK which has a thriving population of red squirrels and no greys. This little chap was gathering his nuts from the feeder – bless.

Please have a look at my website and tell me what you think, and your comments on this blog will help me enormously – I may even post the odd question when I come across a problem and all of your help would be much appreciated. Copy and paste the following address into your web-browser
www.plant-scape.com

• 5 Jul, 2011
• 2 likes

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