Starting a Gardening Business

If you are going to look into starting a gardening business it might be a good idea to find out what do Gardening Consultants and Landscapers actually do!

Typical Services

A gardening business generally involves designing and planting gardens for your clients. You may also be required to maintain the garden on an ongoing basis for some of your clients.

This might involve mowing lawns, weeding garden beds, and clearing leaf litter from paths and paved areas.

You might be required to prune shrubs, bushes or trees and remove any garden waste for your clients.

Qualifications?

You might not need formal qualifications to be a gardening consultant, but trade qualifications in horticulture will certainly gain you a certain amount of credibility with new clients.

Regardless of whether or not you have qualifications you should have extensive knowledge of plants, both indigenous and exotic, the climatic conditions in your region and the growing seasons.

Equipment?

If you are already a keen gardener, you will probably have many of the tools you will need for your business, but some of them may need to be upgraded.

The tools you will need may include, hand tools, a lawn mower, lawn edgers, a rotary hoe, a wheelbarrow, and a blower-vac. You will also need a trailer or a vehicle large enough to carry all of your equipment.

To fully equip your business, you can expect to spend anywhere between $5,000 to $10,000.

More if you need to buy a vehicle!

Setup Costs?

Your startup costs will include the cost of your initial supplies or consumables like garden supplements (i.e. blood and bone), seeds, pesticides and weed killers.

You will also need to set aside some money to pay for advertising and the production of promotional materials, like pamphlets and business cards.

You might want to consider sign-writing for your vehicle, to give your business more visibility in the areas that you are working.

You should also look organizing some business insurance to cover you against loss or damage to your clients properties, income protection for yourself and worker's compensation for any employees.

Potential Earnings?

With a gardening business you can either negotiate an hourly rate for the work you do or work to a quoted price for a 'piece' of work.

If you are working alone, your yearly income will range between $40,000 - $60,000.

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