Gardening company
woman&home meets one woman who has set up her own gardening company
Eve Vine, 56, lives with her partner, Roger, 57, a Royal Mail manager, in Horsham, East Sussex. She has two grown-up sons.
Old job: Ran an IT project office
New job: Runs a gardening company
Start-up costs: £1,000
Expected first year’s earnings: About £10,000
Top tip: Be flexible – ideas evolve so try to go with the flow
My passion
“I love plants and flowers and used to make up hanging baskets as birthday gifts for friends and family. Last year, I was having a drink in a local pub when I noticed their window boxes were in a terrible state.
I’d recently been made redundant after ten years in IT and moved out of London to live with Roger in East Sussex. At first I lived off my redundancy pay and savings and, as we didn’t have a mortgage, I could manage.
Getting started
I’d lived in the same house in London for 13 years and really enjoyed my garden. So setting up a business that involved getting my hands into soil seemed ideal. When I noticed an advert for a weekend business start-up workshop run by Business Link, I was really excited.
The course was inspiring and informative. I was itching to get started and set up some kind of gardening business. I bought a greenhouse and started planting seeds, buying compost, patio boxes and water butts. I grow some flowers in the greenhouse at home, but buy most of my stock from local nurseries and source pots and baskets from garden centres.
I realised that if people don’t know you – or of you – they’re unlikely to call on your services. So I started going into shops and asking the owners or managers if they needed flowers or hanging baskets.
Attending courses
I also attended as many free courses as I could, including business planning, marketing and book-keeping. On the way home after an accountancy seminar, I popped into several shops and came home with orders for flowers at an angling shop, cycling shop and estate agents.
I specialise in seasonal window boxes and planters, and design and maintain them. I’m passionate about container gardening because it can bring colour and excitement to the smallest patio or at the front of a business. You can also afford to be bold and daring, as things can easily be changed.
The business has started slowly but I now have regular contracts at the local pub and with a new local hotel that’s opening soon, and I have several private customers too.
People are always stopping to comment on my flowers. One regular at the local pub told me that whenever he sees my plants they make him smile. No one ever said anything like that to me when I worked in IT.”
Visit Eve's website at gardeningofeden.co.uk
Read about more career opportunities with flowers:
Floristry
Flower farmer
