Gardening Business: Common Challenges and Solutions

A gardening business can be extremely rewarding. It’ll allow to get time outdoors and physical activity into your working day. Plus, since millions of houses in the UK come with gardens attached, and gardens are constantly growing – and so they’re in constant need of maintenance.

This isn’t to say that a gardening business won’t run into a few different challenges. Let’s take a look at a few of those challenges and see what can be done about them.

Common gardening challenges

It’s in the nature of the business that you’ll get the majority of your work during summer. This means that you might struggle to turn a profit during winter.

As well as seasonality, there’s the economic cycle to consider. When consumers don’t have as much disposable income, they’ll be less inclined to bring in a professional gardener. This means that you might face particular disruption during a recession.

Before you launch your business, you’ll want an idea of the local competition and what they’re offering. Look at how you can differentiate yourself, but don’t be tempted to compete on price alone. The changes are that there’s plenty of business to go around.

You can build up a loyal customer base through word of mouth – provided that the quality of your service is sufficient. On the other hand, you might just as easily build up a poor reputation. Bad news can spread quickly, especially during the internet age. As such, it’s worth talking to customers and determining that everyone’s happy before you move on.

Overcoming the challenges

Your business should start with a well thought-out plan. This should include an estimate of how much money you expect to bring in. This will help you to make decisions, and to assess the quality of those decisions later on.

You should have a robust hiring policy in place, and an onboarding process that will provide your new recruits with the training they need. You should also provide them with the best possible tools and equipment, and put together a schedule for maintaining them. Certain items, like a batter leaf blower, will tend to save you plenty of time – especially if you often find yourself blowing leaves.

There are several ways that you can cope with seasonality. The first is to spend your time wisely during the colder months, making sure that you have everything prepared for peak season. For example, you might conduct that tool maintenance during winter, so that everything’s sharpened and ready to go when you get back to work in spring. As far as regulation goes, you’re supply services, and so you’re covered by consumer rights law. You should also be aware that if you’re going to make severe structural changes to a garden, you might need to build supporting walls – which are covered by building regulations.