Gardening is said to be one of the most stress-relieving hobbies one can have. If you have extensive knowledge and would love to turn it up a notch with your experience by offering your expertise to other people, you can start your own gardening business.

How big your business is going to depends on you, your free time, the scale of services you would offer and of course the money you can afford to invest in the business. These are the basics on how to set up a gardening business. Here are the talking points.

• How to Start a Gardening Business
• Gardening Business Tips For Beginners
• Tools and Equipment You Will Need For Your Gardening Business
• Advantages and Disadvantages of Starting a Gardening Business
• How to Make Money Gardening
• How to Make Your Gardening Business Bloom
• What Can I Grow in my Garden to Make Money?
• Is a Gardening Business Profitable?
• How Can I Make Money With my Vegetable Garden?
• Online Gardening Business
• How to Make Money With Flowers
• How to Make Money in Your Backyard
• How to Make Money From Your Garden UK
• How do I Get Customers For my Gardening Business?
• How Much do I Get Paid as a Gardener?
• How Much Should You Pay Your Gardener?
• What is The Most Profitable Vegetable to Grow And Sell?

How to Start a Gardening Business

Essential Skills and Requirements to Start a Gardening Business

Natural skills

If you’re wondering how to become a landscape gardener for profit, first you’ll need to have the most important base of the craft, and that’s natural skills. The best you can offer from yourself is experience. If you have no expertise whatsoever, you might need to invest time, money and effort in training.

As a gardener, you will have to function in different ways and with a different vision for every project. For that, your most valuable skill is flexibility. Before committing yourself to the gardening business, see if you possess the following skills:

● A creative mindset
● An ability to understand people and communicate clearly
● A good attitude toward planning, organization and design
● General and preferably above average gardening proficiency
● Negotiation skills that can make both you and the client happy with the costs and profit of the individual service
● Flexibility when someone changes his or her mind, or in the occasion of accidents and unforeseen circumstances
● Reliability to your business name
● Fearless attitude towards weather
● Basic administrative skills for keeping your documentation organized
● Basic marketing skills to make yourself noticed
● An attitude towards growth no matter how successful you get
● An eye towards innovation
● Interest for new ideas all the time

Premises

You will need a building for a home office. You will have to keep your administration somewhere. It can be your own home. If you live in a house with a back yard, you can exercise new ideas there and even use it as an example of your work.

A landscape gardener needs the right tools. With time, you can expand, but make sure you have the basic, most important tools for a beginner:

● Spade
● Gloves
● Kneeler/knee pads
● Hand trowel
● Garden fork
● Garden hoe
● Dandelion digger
● Rake
● Hand cultivator
● Bypass pruners
● Loppers
● A long hose
● Lawn mower
● A laptop for administrative work
● A van for transport to distant locations

It’s a good idea to invest in all the tools. You will most likely start local, so you won’t need the van that much, but with time, as your business expands, it will be your most valuable companion.

Write a Business Plan

Your business plan is the core of your whole endeavor. In order to have a successful start and execution of your gardening business, you have to look at a few basic points. Here is an example:
1. Objective: Create an independent service provider for gardening and landscaping offers.

2. Mission: Provide good quality gardening services at affordable rates for local households.

3. StartUp: Long-term assets
● Laptop
● Transport van

Short-term assets
● Tools
● Supplies

4. List of Services + Prices
Garden Design
Garden Maintenance
Lawn Mowing
Garden Clearance
Patio Cleaning
Outdoor Repair

5. Competition Research
● Scale of competitors
● Service offers by competitors
● Location coverage by competitors
● Experience and quality of work by competitors
● Marketing strategy by competitors

6. Financial Strategy
A detailed investment/profit analysis with a forecast for the first 6 months.

7. Marketing Strategy
● Recognize target audience
● Implement exposure channels
● Create a business portfolio

Target Clients

Your target client who would most probably need any type of gardening service is basically anyone with an outdoor space.

You might think it will mostly be old people and pensioners, the baby boomer generation. And that’s true to an extent. But it’s also true that retired people tend to have a lot of free time on their hands and would prefer to do the gardening themselves.

Most experienced gardeners would tell you that they mostly help out young families, young professionals and people who often go on trips out of town.

Busy people.

People who simply want their outdoor space to look good, or at least a little neater. This is why your most frequently purchased service would be mowing lawns and trimming bushes. Maybe watering a few plants.

Traditional young families who can afford a garden might hire you for a full landscaping project with planting flowers, adding decorations, even looking for fancy customized garden design to brag about to their neighbors. These people would look for good quality and would also pay for your most expensive services.

There is also the group that has no idea their outdoor space needs to be taken care of until someone points that out. And, that someone could even be you. A good walk around the neighborhood could tell you which house is in need of your services. A group like that will most probably look for your cheapest offers.

Finances

How much does it cost to start a landscaping business? The good news is, gardening and landscaping businesses do not require big outside funding.

You can work small scale with what you have and what you know. Then, gradually start to expand the tools and the coverage of your services as you gain popularity in the niche.

Training

Assuming you have no prior expertise in anything involving the gardening business, you should spend a good amount of money and time on education and practical work.

Tools and Travel

Most of your financial investments will go for tools and travel expenses if you’re doing a job away from your local neighborhood.

Suppliers

Signing a contract with a big supplier is the most secure decision you can make, but this is better saved for when your business is booming. As a start, you can shop in wholesale stores and find deals online.

And, if you don’t have a laptop by now, you’d better get one.

Marketing strategy

You might need to hire a marketing specialist or pay a few one-time fees to independent promoters in order to gain some exposure in the service market. Of course, you can always do this job by yourself, which is the topic of our next point.

Exposure Channels

When you ask yourself how to start your own gardening business, if you’re not hiring a marketing expert from the start, you should consider doing the promotional stuff yourself. The word won’t spread if you don’t help it a little.

With that said, what you need to do is find all your available exposure channels and take good advantage of their benefits. And, since you’re starting on your own, your first stop is the Internet.

Create a Website

The best way to give enough information about yourself is a website. Here are the most important things your official website should contain:
● Information about all your services
● Location coverage of all your services
● Contacts for your clients – phone, email, fax, address, booking form, etc.

Create a Social Media Presence

Most people would find you in social media, so make sure you can be found. Make an individual user profile and a business profile on the following sites:
● Facebook
● Twitter
● Google+ (for better exposure in the Google search engine)
● Pinterest

Create a Blog

It’s a good idea to invest some free time in a blog for your website. Write about gardening topics. You can attract the attention of garden enthusiasts and, with some luck, expand your audience and list of possible clients.

Create a Mailing List

If your blog earns a following, you can add a mailing list feature in order to keep your subscribers up to date with your gardening topics and new ideas.

Business Portfolio

A portfolio is the best way to promote yourself to potential clients and possible partners. It’s the best way to present yourself and your work.

Why Do You Need a Portfolio?

Without a business portfolio, it will be hard to showcase your work to clients and business partners. The competition is huge just about everywhere in the gardening business. So, you need to show everyone why you’re a gardener worth hiring.

How to Create a Gardening Business Portfolio

1. Include samples of your work. As a gardener, photos, video and other visual materials speak best. You can make before and after albums, or record the process of your work step by step. Or, you can have a real-life presentation of your own garden if your potential clients can come to you.

2. Make a list of accomplishments. Every gardener has ups and downs, so this is the section where you boast with all your ups. If you managed to do something exceptional like setting a record for speedy execution, or coming up with a really interesting innovation in garden design or technique, mention it with all the best words you can find in the English language.

3. List your best traits. Every professional is good at something more than at something else. If your best work is about garden design, or lawn care, or anything else, mention it. This can ease your client so they would know what to hire you for at first.

4. Include a table of contents. If you have a lot of things to present, it would be better to ease the reader.

5. Make it presentable. If your portfolio turns out to be a huge folder or notebook of photos and lists, make it smooth and shiny, with hard covers. Format it in a way to be easily read and understood.

6. Make the digital copy of the portfolio. Your target audience is both young and old people, and these days, even the old ones have computers. If your potential customers are on the other side of town, you need a good way to pass your portfolio, and that means relying on the Internet.

7. Add reviews and references. No portfolio is finished without at least a few testimonials from previous clients. If someone enjoyed the fruit of your work, ask them for a review. In this section, you should also include references from contests and other professionals in the field, if you have any.

Gardening Business Tips For Beginners

*Take on any job that is presented to you. At first, there shouldn’t be anything too big or too small for you to handle. Jump on any opportunity, as long as you have the tools and expertise to complete it.

* If bookings for projects are not going well, you can always sell tools and products, and even advice.

* Attend gardening events in your area. If you have the time, attend national ones as well. Get in touch with other gardeners and get noticed in the community. Attend contests. Find and share new ideas.

* Keep up to date with technology and innovation. New tools and products come out on a regular basis. Make sure to check and test them. This can also help you expand the scale of your services. Customers love when there’s more to pick from.

* Organize your documentation. You will be getting lots and lots of jobs; some will come though the phone, others through email, or by chat, and even in person. Keep the documentation of each booking. Keep the invoices. Keep a copy of the receipt you give. A well-organized hard drive is perfect for the job. The easier it is to open a file of a long-passed booking, the better. Be the chief of bureaucracy.

* Be friendly and pleasant to all your clients. People are different. With some, it will be easy to talk to and communicate their best interest. With others, not so much. Make sure you have a personal approach to each and always be polite, even to the tough ones. A good relationship may at any time bloom into a lifetime opportunity.

Tools and Equipment You Will Need For Your Gardening Business

When you’re starting a gardening business, be it gardening, selling products or offering landscape design services, you’ll need various forms of equipment to get you started. Here we offer a look at some of the items of equipment you may need to consider.

There’s a lot to think about when you’re starting to run a business, but one key element is getting yourself equipped with all the items you need to successfully run a business. If you’re starting a gardening business from scratch, you’re likely to need a number of essential items to get you started.

If you’re selling your services as a gardener, handyman or landscape designer, then there are several key essentials that you’ll need to have at hand. For example:

• Gardening tools, such as a trowel, spade, shears, fork, kneeler, watering can, wheelbarrow and secateurs.
• Garden products, such as compost, lawn care items, paving and soil.
• Plants, such as flowers, trees, shrubs and seeds.
• Large pieces of equipment, such as a lawnmower or hedge cutter.
• Gardening wear, such as gloves and other safety items.
• Garden design tools, such as a drawing board and laptop to create designs on.

These are just a few examples and you may well think of many more – when you start thinking them through or writing them down, it’s amazing how they add up, both in number and in terms of cost. If you’ve written a proper business plan, these essentials should have been included within it and ideally budgeted for, so you know how much you can buy at the outset and what you need to save for.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Starting a Gardening Business

Whether you are starting a vegetable garden, and herb garden or a flower garden, if you have a passion for gardening and a desire to help others’ get their gardens started, a small business as a gardener may be the perfect business idea for you.

Advantages

• Keeps you fit. Yes, being a gardener means doing loads of exercise which is good because you can become even healthier. Gardening includes various tasks, such as watering, trimming, raking, planting and much more.
• Great for outdoor lovers. If you love being outside and you can’t imagine working behind a desk, then this job is probably your dream job. Obviously, besides just loving the nature, you should have some knowledge about it too, which will be a great boost for your success.
• Consistent and ongoing. Gardens require constant maintaining. There is a high probability that once you’ve got a client, s/he will be your client for a long time.
• Flexible working hours. Everything depends on you. If you want to work today you can work but it’s totally up to you to keep some days free for family matters.
• Good salary. The amount of work you do depends only on you, so the more days you work, the more you earn. Do you want to earn well? Then you know what to do!

Disadvantages

• Affects your health. Gardening can have both good and bad effects on your health. Unfortunately, you might end up having back and joint problems because of the constant need to bend and reach. Check with your doctor first before you start your gardening business.
• Seasonal work. The amount of money you make highly depends on the weather. In winter you most likely will have a lot of free days in your calendar. Keep that in mind!
• Expensive tools. At the beginning, you might need just a few basic tools, but if you want to offer more services you’ll need to buy more tools. Unfortunately, good gardening tools can be very expensive.
• Requires office work. Any business, including gardening businesses, requires some office work to be done. You’ll need to send invoices and quotes and track expenses in order to have a successful business with positive cash flow.
• Always in the sun. Very often, the gardening tasks you’ll need to accomplish are in the sun. Being too much in the sun can lead to serious health problems. So before you start, consider how you’re going to protect yourself from the sun.

You don’t need a lot of investment to start a gardening business: a license, insurance, truck, flyers, garden equipment, business cards and, of course, great physical health.

How to Make Money Gardening

Indoor Salad Gardening

January is when everyone’s making new years resolutions to live healthier and eat more salads, but it’s a pretty rough time for gardening in most places. If right around the end of the year you plan ahead with an indoor salad gardening setup, you’ll be in the perfect position to market micro greens and sprouts when they’re in high demand.

Local farms around here sell winter micro greens CSA’s and unlike summer shares where they net less than a dollar on a head of lettuce, winter greens command high prices. A small bag of specialty micro greens runs $12 to 15 each.  And I really mean a small bag, maybe 3 cups of at most.

The trick is to grow high quality, specialty greens that get people excited when the grocery store options are minimal. The book Year Round Indoor Salad Gardening is a great resource to get started, and covers all you’d need to know to grow your own greens.  At that point, the problem is scaling up and marketing.

Start a Small Backyard Seed Company

You may think you need to be some kind of multi-national to sell seeds, but in reality, customers are looking toward sustainably grown seed for specialty heirloom varieties these days.  It doesn’t get much more sustainable than a backyard garden, and buying seed locally ensures that you’ll get varieties perfectly suited to a particular growing region.

Choosing the right crops is key to generating a good income selling seeds.  Tomato seed, for example, is very easy to save and a single tomato often has enough seed to supply a dozen seed packets.  The flowers are self-contained, and it actually takes work for plant breeders to hybridize a variety, which means they’ll come true to variety even with many different types grown in the same garden. 

Most importantly, people get really excited about tomatoes.  Ever wonder why 1/3 of any seed catalog seems to be tomato seed?  With all that love for tomatoes, customers are liable to drop $5 for a locally grown packet of seeds for a really great variety.

While tomatoes are really easy, there are many varieties that aren’t much harder.  You need to know a bit about seed saving, not only harvesting and cleaning the seed, but about how pollination and selection works by variety.  Some varieties require a minimum population size to avoid inbreeding in the long term, and all that’s important to know before you get started. 

• Seed to Seed is generally recognized as the most encyclopedic book on seed saving, covering just about every variety you can imagine.  It has great breadth to get you started, but not a whole lot of depth.
• The Seed Garden is hands down my favorite seed saving book.  It’s well written and covers varieties in great depth.  It’s authored by The Seed Savers Exchange which does great work in the field of preserving heirloom varieties.
• The Complete Guide to Seed Saving has a lot of stellar reviews, and it’s the next one I’m going to add to my gardening library.

Even in a small town environment here in Rural Vermont, there are about a dozen local seed companies. High Mowing Seed started out really small just down the road from us, and now they’re a big national brand.  Milkweed Medicinals sells specialty seed that’s hard to find, and they now sell in all the local coops. 

Find your niche and there’s a great income to be made with homegrown seed.

Sell Your Produce

Whether you decide to set up a roadside stand or join your local farmer’s market, selling your homegrown produce is the most obvious way to make money growing vegetables. Here is some great information about starting your own CSA program.

Locally grown produce is in very high demand, don’t be afraid to speak with local restaurant owners, caterers, event venues, and grocery stores about buying your produce as well.

Try growing some exotic fruit or offer your clients something different with one of these vegetables that stand out at market.

Sell your garden photos

Do you take quality photos? If so, stock photo sites may wish to purchase your work! Take pictures of your seeds, plants, flowers, leaves, produce, and garden area in general. Submit your best photos to sites that purchase images to sell as stock photos. There is always a need for nature and gardening content, so you should be able to move a few.

Did you ever imagine you could make money gardening? When you are out toiling in your garden this year, consider these ways to make money from your garden. It may just help pay for itself!

Teach Gardening Classes

After a few years in the garden, there’s no doubt that you’ve picked up some skills that you could share to help other gardeners. Check with local schools, garden centers, a community garden, or even the YMCA to see if they’ll allow you to teach classes at their facility.

If you don’t want to host them at home, check with local schools, garden centers, a community garden, or even the YMCA to see if they’ll allow you to teach classes at their facility.

Some ideas for classes include saving and starting seeds, transplanting seedlings, garden planning, pruning tomatoes, or arranging cut flowers.

Hot Farm to Table Dinners And Parties

A garden is a lovely place to have a dinner party, bridal shower, or a club meeting. Maybe your garden is less formal and is a fun place for kids birthday parties.

If you have an area in your garden where you can place a few tables and some twinkle lights, then you could easily rent out your space for a farm to table dinner. Talk to wedding planners and caterers to let them know you have space available and offer them a tour.

Make sure you protect yourself by speaking to your homeowner’s insurance company before you allow the public on your property, especially if you plan to allow adult beverages.

How to Make Your Gardening Business Bloom

Check in with previous clients

If some of your clients haven’t used your services over the winter, now’s the time to check in and see if their gardens need some attention again. A friendly email or phone call should do the trick, ideally with some personalised suggestions for what you could do with their garden this year.

Refresh your website

Now is also a good time to spring-clean your business website and social media platforms, making sure that all your details are up-to-date and that your website includes a full list of your services. If you have a blog, consider writing an article with some spring 2017 gardening tips, including what you’ll be planting this year.

Offer a spring tidy-up service

One good way of attracting new clients and reconnecting with previous clients could be to offer a well-priced tidy-up service for gardens that need some attention after winter. Your spring package could include basics like mowing, trimming and weeding, getting gardens neat and prepped for planting.

Go to spring shows

Spring brings a whole bunch of gardening events around the country, including plant fairs and shows. Events like these can be a great chance to chat to other people in the industry and to meet potential clients. Remember to take plenty of business cards and flyers.

At some events, you may be able to apply for a stall so that you can sell your homegrown products or run a workshop, which could be good ways of promoting your gardening business.

But remember, it’s likely that you’ll need stallholder insurance if you’re going to trade at events.

Don’t get caught out

Although warm, wet weather is predicted for late spring, forecasters reckon we could still experience some frosts and even snow during late March and early April, especially in the north of the UK, so don’t plant anything tender too early.

Make sure you’re protected

With a busy few months ahead, gardeners will be visiting more clients and getting their hands dirty with more work.

Sorting out public liability insurance – which can cover you if you injure a member of the public or cause damage to their property – should be high on the priority list before the work picks up. It’s also worth keeping in mind that you’ll legally need to cover any employees – even if they’re only temporary – with employers’ liability insurance.

Find the right kit in the sales

As it looks like we’re likely to experience all kinds of weather over the next few months, make sure you’re properly kitted out. Look out for spring sales, as you may be able to get a good discount on clothes for wet and wintry weather. Good boots, micro fleeces, and waterproof jackets and trousers should see you through bad weather.

What Can I Grow in my Garden to Make Money?

Gardening can be more than just a hobby! Learn how you can make money gardening with many ideas so you can start earning now!

1. Sell Herbs

Growing herbs is a fantastic use of your garden – home-grown ingredients to a signature dish or a garnish for an experimental cocktail, herbs are beginner friendly and the extras can be sold to friends and family or wider for an easy side income.

2. Sell Edible And Decorative Flowers

Did you know that there are home-grown edible flowers available to buy? You can find them stocked at health stores and you may come across them at a restaurant. The important thing to remember is that some flowers are sold as decoration (daffodils) while others are edible (for example dandelions) – do your research and sell both.

3. Keep Livestock

Another common option for making a little extra money is through livestock. Livestock is a common option: quails, chickens and ducks can form a platform for a small business all from your back garden.

4. Hire Out Your Garden For Parties

As well as selling from your garden you can hire out your garden for different purposes. For example, if you have a well set up garden you can hire it out for parties – we advise starting off with children’s parties as they do not involve needing an alcohol license and do not risk issues with noise pollution through loud music, however you may need to look into insurance and CRB checks. You can expect to make between £800-850 for your time, effort and resources.

5. Hire Out Your Garden For Camping

Similarly, you can expect to make some extra cash by renting your garden out for campers. This is a good idea for those with larger gardens or who are situated near places of interest. There are growingly garden huts and spaces advertised on ‘Air BnB’ which is extremely popular and an easier way to find potential renters.

6. Seeds & Seedlings

For those amongst us with green fingers – this could be one for you. Put your gardening skills to use to propagate seedlings that you can sell on at car boots and local garages, and of course to friends, family and colleagues. By growing plants in your garden, you could make £600 per month (peaking between the months of February and October).

7. Sell Organic Produce At The Market

The perfect garden enterprise – the organic market. You can grow fruit and vegetables in your personal allotments and then sell on to hungry buyers. This is a larger project that will require more time, experience and money that others listed here – but the rewards will be worthwhile. For the largest projects sell at a local market stall if you can grow and maintain enough produce.

8. Hire Out Your Garden As Allotments

More people are getting into gardening – however, not everyone has the resources. This is where you come in. You can hire out your garden to people as allotments. This is a project best suited to those with a side gate access to the garden. If you are London’s liver – you are sure to be a success.

9. Open Your Garden To The Public

For those of you with a large and beautiful garden – why not share your pride and joy with others? Hosting an open garden event is an easy way to make money, and can be a great way to raise money for charity. If you pick to get involved in charity raising through your garden you can advertise for free through The National Garden Society or Open Gardens.

10. Sell Freshly Cut Flowers

As well as selling organic fruit and veg, homegrown flowers are another way to make money through your garden. Arrange them in bouquets and sell them locally to run a small business right from your back garden.

11. Sell Fruit Smoothies With Produce From Your Garden

Using the produce from your own organic garden, why not start-up business in the kitchen and blend up some signature smoothies. With the health kick that’s currently in motion, your smoothies could be a successful way to make a second income.

12. Make Homemade Jams & Chutneys

Selling home-grown jams and chutneys is an innovative way to make an extra wage. Why not try personalising with a ribbon and some bespoke homemade packaging to really grab people’s attention? Something the whole family will enjoy – a jam or chutney (or both!) business could be fun as well as money-making.

13. Create Garden Art

If you’re a creative soul why not share your work with others. You could paint scenes in your garden if you are a still-life painter, or take artful photography if that is your passion. If you can make money from your hobby, you are going to enjoy your work immensely. Sell locally and online and share your work with friends and strangers.

14. Hire Out Your Garden To Paint Classes

Who knew you could hire out your garden for so many exciting events? If you have a particularly impressive garden, with particular visual interest, such as exotic plants or mysterious nooks and crannies and other hideaways you could make £100+ by hiring out your spot to painting classes.

15. Sell Festive Gifts And Decorations

During the festive season, why not sell homemade gifts and decorations for others. Using holly and mistletoe you can create Christmas bouquets, cards and other festive details and gifts for neighbours and friends.

Is a Gardening Business Profitable?

Gardening can be a profitable business and provide a good work/life balance when managed properly.
To be successful you need to be one of the best! Although there is no minimum criteria required to start a garden maintenance business you should seek formal training so that you can stand out from well meaning amateur labourers.

This is one of the reasons why members of The Gardeners Guild must have at least one horticultural qualification. This guide will help you make your gardening business successful and appealing to your customers.

How Can I Make Money With my Vegetable Garden?

There are multiple different ways that you can make money growing vegetables. For instance, you may have a small plot of land and want to sell produce directly to your customers through roadside stands, farmers markets, and community-supported agriculture.

For the environmentally conscious, there are opportunities to establish a farm-to-table business by selling your products directly to local restaurants, grocery stores, and markets. Regardless of how you decide to sell your vegetables you must create a productive vegetable garden.

Online Gardening Business

Starting a gardening business online is not as tricky as one might imagine. Practically setting up and nurturing a gardening store online requires time, patience, devotion, and hard work. The task gets a lot easier in the 21st century due to advanced technology which provides you with all the tools at your fingertips. Nowadays almost all the necessary products are available in the online market.

The e-commerce market flourishes on user-friendly software platforms which makes it simple to start businesses online for those who are not tech-savvy.

1. Business License

Getting the business license is the first job. You have to go through the expected long drawn bureaucratic process and you must be acquainted with the rules and regulations affecting your business and they may vary from place to place.

Getting the license might turn out to be a costly job at the end. Naming the store can be a tricky task as a catchy and trending name can attract customers.

2. The Products You Want to Sell

You have to decide the supplies you want to sell because gardening requires a lot of items like spades, seeds, plant food, hoses. It is important to figure out the variety of products you want to sell as this is an integral process of creating your own brand. It is also good to specialize in a few goods.

3. Selection of Suppliers

Next comes the selection of suppliers from whom you will buy the products. It is important to maintain a partnership with wholesale distributors from whom you will buy in bulk at a low rate and sell to the customer at a markup rate to earn profits.

Maintaining partnerships with more than one wholesale distributor become useful as this helps you to switch over to others in the market when one starts asking for a higher rate or is unable to supply in bulk.

4. Research Work about the Market

A bit of research also needs to be done regarding the type of gardening products and brands that are popular in the market before you get the business up and going. You need to know the kind of competition existing in the market.

This will help you to differentiate your products from the rest of the market.  You should also take a look at the stores that are under-performing as this will keep you informed about the don’ts in the business.

5. The Technological Part

Next, you have to be spot on with the technological part. Finding the correct software will ensure the smooth functioning of your website. An experienced web designer should be hired to design the website to exact specifications.

The website design should be nice and attractive. The product details should be mentioned clearly. In addition to that, your site must also have a shopping cart with 128-bit security encryption, customers should feel secure in making online payments through the website.

Feedback should also be taken from customers through online rating and there should be a section on the website that caters to the grievances of the customers relating to services, payments etc. Choosing the courier service provider is also a pertinent task for swift and smooth delivery.   

6. The timing of Launch and Promotion

The timing of the launch is an extremely important part of your business; a wrong step can prove to be detrimental to your business interests. A soft launch can be good to start with, but it will require patience as it may take weeks before you get popular among the customers.

Promoting your business before a full-fledged launch will help your store in getting customers faster than expected. Promotion can be done through aggressive marketing in the social media platforms like Facebook.

7. Business Plan

You have to fix the target groups that are likely to buy your products regularly. You can target educational institutions, parks where gardening products are required regularly in bulk. There are customers in the market who are fond of gardening or take it as a hobby, your target group should include these kinds of customers who may require a variety of gardening products all throughout the year.

Having knowledge about what kinds of flowers are popular in which season is a crucial part of your business this leads to keeping stock of the flowers or plants when they are popular and in demand.

Advertising and promoting rare and attractive gardening products (exotic flowers) that are not easily available in the retail market will result in a large number of customers visiting your website. In the beginning, the target should be sales maximization and not profit maximization. Offering discounts from time to time will help you boost your sales.

There should be a clear-cut business plan whether to offer daily deals, weekly specials or quarterly clearance sales but plans can vary according to the exigencies of time. Giving the customers enough choice is an indispensable part of online business. The price should vary from low to high to suit the purchasing power of people belonging to different income groups.

8. Maintenance

Maintenance of the flowers and growing them with care constitutes an important part of the business and this requires expertise. Hiring employees who are experienced and worthy of this job will enhance the quality of your products.

Flowers supplied should be fresh in condition, gardening products are easily available in the retail stores and people might prefer buying from these stores rather than online, hence it becomes pertinent to stay one step ahead from them.  

Hence to conclude one can say that setting up an online gardening business is not an easy task, in that case setting up a business of any product requires patience, hard work, skills of supervising, investing and managing. It requires patience because developing the business gradually requires time and it is important not to get swayed away by the profits and losses.

You need to understand the mood of the market and how the preferences of the customers are changing from time to time. You need to stay ahead of your competitors all the time by attracting customers by selling quality products, catering to their needs taking care of their convenience.

The competitors are not restricted to the online market and extend to those selling in retail shops. If you are willing and confident to start an online gardening business it may well turn out be an excellent venture, but you need to follow the steps mentioned above in setting up the business and never lose hope to establish a successful, popular online gardening business.  

How to Make Money With Flowers

Flower farming is a business on the rise. The demand for beautiful flowers is increasing every year. Here’s how you can make money growing for market:

First of all, grow really good flowers. That sounds obvious, but if you don’t have a good product, it’ll be harder to make a good profit. So make sure you flowers are grown in healthy soil. Only use organic materials, such as organic fertilizers. Your flowers will simply stay healthier, be less susceptible to diseases and have less flower stress.

Next, be sure you have mulch or another way to help control weeds. And don’t forget those pesky pests. Use insecticidal soaps, “sticky traps” or Neem. You want to keep those pests away.

You should also protect your flowers from wind damage. This is especially an issue if your flowers aren’t nearby trees or a building. To combat this threat, plant some tall shrubs to break the wind that won’t shade your growing area.

Now, you want to be sure you’re selling your flowers at the right places. Four of the best places to sell flowers are:

• Farmers’ markets – These markets consistently draw a big crowd looking for great local flowers and other products. Set up a stand or table with your flowers, and show everyone that stops by why your flowers are the best.
• Hotels and restaurants – Hotels and restaurants often like to make a table or entryway look nice by adding some pretty flowers. It’s an easy way to spice up any establishment. Talk to local hotels and restaurants and find out what flowers they’re looking for. If you’re able to grow those varieties, you could open yourself up to a lot of business, as these hotels and restaurants will want to keep their tables and entryways looking nice.
• Fundraisers – People will often be more willing to buy your products if they know some of the profits are going to a good cause. That’s why fundraisers are an excellent way to sell your flowers. It makes your business look good, while making your wallet happy too.
• Florists – Florists have to get their flowers from somewhere, so why not your backyard nursery? Make the rounds and talk to your local florists, and find out just what they’re looking for. Find out what they routinely pay, and see if you can give them a better deal. If you can produce flowers that they can then sell and make good money, they’ll be likely to use you over and over again.

How to Make Money in Your Backyard

Are you looking for money making side hustles and you happen to have a good size backyard laying there doing nothing except needing mowing? Did you know that’s a money-maker out there? Put it to good use with one or several opportunities to make money.

Start a Rental Property

Websites like Airbnb have contributed to the rise of small, convenient, and family-owned rental properties across the country. Turning your backyard space into a cozy vacation spot is simpler than ever. If you have a beautiful view or a convenient location close to the city and popular tourist attractions, you can create a backyard space for travelers from all around the world.

Plus, with COVID-19 changing a lot of travel plans, many vacationers are looking for smaller, more private lodging where they don’t have to share a space or interact with a lot of people.

This makes a nice backyard cabin or tiny home perfect options for safe traveling. If you don’t have the physical lodging but are still interested in renting, you can also open your yard to campers, RVers, and other travelers who just need a place to set up camp.

Start a Flock

When looking for ways to start making money from your own backyard, many people turn to hobby farming and raising livestock. Not everyone has the space, resources, or commitment levels to take on a full-fledged farm, but starting with something small—like a couple of chickens—is relatively easy.

Hens have fun personalities and can provide hours of entertainment for you and your family. They also provide many different opportunities to make money, including selling eggs or collecting feathers to use in crafting.

Get Creative With the Garden Space

Do you enjoy spending time in the garden? There are endless ways to make money from gardening. Sell your extra fruits and vegetables at your local farmers’ market. You can even directly target customers by sending out marketing mailers in colorful envelopes, people love to buy organic produce directly from farmers.

Alternatively, collect seeds and propagations to sell to fellow gardeners. If you want something more exciting than your average vegetable garden, consider learning how to plant lavender, flowers or trees that you can grow an abundance of and sell, or maybe you could rent your yard space to eager gardeners in your community. Or, open up a home salon in your backyard and make a serious business out of that!

How to Make Money From Your Garden UK

No matter how small your garden may be, you can earn a sweet mint this summer with some of our clever outdoor money-making ideas. From using the soil for growing saleable produce to renting your garden for private functions, there are loads of ways to earn pretty pounds from those lovely petals. Here are a few tops tips on how to make money from your garden.

1. Grow edible flowers
2. Sell medicinal plants
3. Propagate seedlings
4. Start an organic market garden
5. Hire out your garden as allotments
6. Hire out your garden for parties
7. Hire out your garden as a campsite
8. Hire out your garden to painting groups
9. Host an open garden event
10. Start a beekeeping business
11. Open your garden to the public
12. Get free gardening equipment
13. Get free gardening seeds

Organic is big business these days. Celebrity chefs, supermarkets and health food stores tell us the benefits of organic produce for us and the environment all the time, and with a return to thrifty ways thanks to the recession there’s never been a better time to go out there and grow your own. You could even cut out the middleman and sell directly to individual customers.

How do I Get Customers For my Gardening Business?

Growing profit can be as complex as growing perfect grass on a professional sports field. But you can build a profitable landscape business if you leverage the right strategies. Use these techniques to learn how to get landscaping customers.

You’ve done all the hard work of creating your new gardening business, but once it’s up and running, even more hard work is to come – and that’s not just in the garden.

It would be nice if customers automatically knew that a new business had opened and flocked there without encouragement, but sadly it’s not that easy. In order to attract customers and clients, you need to advertise and promote your business – both in the short and long-term – and do all you can to make it seem and be appealing.

One of the ways in which you can attract customers to your gardening business is to use special offers, discounts or customer royalty schemes.

These can work for both a gardening business selling gardening products and plants, a landscape design business and one offering practical gardening services, such as lawn mowing, hedge cutting and general garden maintenance.

Special offers, such as discounts on services or products for a limited time, attract both new and existing customers and customer loyalty schemes work well with building up long-term loyalty and custom.

For example, for a customer loyalty scheme you could develop a simple card that’s stamped each time a customer spends a certain amount in a gardening shop, or books your gardening services. When they fill their card with stamps, they could be entitled to a free gift, a plant or a good discount off their next purchase.

Developing Reputable Customer Service

Another way of attracting customers is to build up a reputable customer service, so people enjoy shopping from you or using your gardening services and recommend you to their friends and colleagues.

Word of mouth recommendation is one of the best ways of building up customers, especially when you’re offering gardening or landscape design services, as new clients like to book someone that comes personally recommended.

Like any business, you may have your ups and downs and run into tricky situations with clients and customers. By having a good customer service in place – and this is something worth thinking through in advance and getting ideas laid down – you can deal with any issues quickly and efficiently and, hopefully, not lose clients in the process.

Promotion and Marketing

If you wrote a business plan, then you should already have some idea of how you’re going to promote and market your business. As well as the usual methods, such as creating posters, flyers, brochures and a website, sometimes the quirkier and unusual methods can help your business stand out.

This could include anything from getting someone to dress up as a plant and hand out leaflets, to going on the road with a decorated van and offering free plant and gardening advice for a day.

Marketing and promotion are tasks that need to be carried out regularly, so you’re able to retain the customers you already have and generate new ones. It’s hard work at times, but when you have success with attracting – and keeping clients – and your business thrives, it makes it very worthwhile.

How Much do I Get Paid as a Gardener?

An entry-level Gardener with less than 1 year experience can expect to earn an average total compensation (includes tips, bonus, and overtime pay) of $12.59 based on 21 salaries. An early career Gardener with 1-4 years of experience earns an average total compensation of $14.39 based on 204 salaries.

A mid-career Gardener with 5-9 years of experience earns an average total compensation of $16.20 based on 86 salaries. An experienced Gardener with 10-19 years of experience earns an average total compensation of $19.61 based on 123 salaries. In their late career (20 years and higher), employees earn an average total compensation of $20.

How Much Should You Pay Your Gardener?

The simple answer is ‘the same as any other tradesman’. Although you may not use a plumber or electrician every week, a gardeners expenses are very high and the work is very labour intensive.

The running costs of a professional gardening business are just as high as any other professional trade – accountant, training, insurance, transport and vehicle maintenance, tools and tool maintenance.

For example, it can cost as much to service a mower as it does to service a car. A gardener may have more than one mower plus many other petrol tools that all need servicing, oil, fuel, lubricants and replacement parts.

Compare gardeners fairly – ask about insurance, tools, experience, licenses and qualifications.

Most traders aim to earn a minimum of £150 a day – that’s £20 – £40 per hour. However, this rate will be effected by:

– Minimum call out charge – because a gardener may charge by the hour rather than by the day, much of the day will include unpaid travel from job to job. For this reason, a gardener will likely have a minimum charge equivalent to 2 hours labour. Some gardeners may specify a minimum of half a day or a full day.

– If you don’t need a gardener for hours and hours i.e. you just want the grass cut, then your gardener will likely offer a fixed price for a specific job. A fixed price will vary according to the circumstances.

As a result, the fixed price will have no relation to the gardeners standard hourly rates. To illustrate, a window cleaner does not work for an hourly rate – it just wouldn’t be practical. Neither could a gardener cut a small lawn for an hourly rate.

– Rates may increase for regional variations.

– Will increase as the level of danger does.

– Generally excludes removal of cuttings, chemicals etc

The gardener may also have one hourly rate for manual tools and another for petrol tools. This is because of the higher cost of maintaining petrol tools and because they work faster with petrol tools.

Although he/she may charge more and work faster – being experienced and familiar with their own professional tools will result in a superior finish. Their insurance will put things right in the event of an accident and you are not responsible if they hurt themselves on their own tools.

They have an incentive to do a good job – their reputation as a professional and the prospect of repeat business and recommendations. Their professional tools have achieved much more in the time – giving you value for money.

What is The Most Profitable Vegetable to Grow And Sell?

While most of us immediately think of tomatoes or salad greens, the most profitable plants are specialty crops that are not always found in a home vegetable garden. Many specialty crops can bring as much as $90,000 per acre, and are quite easy to grow.

Best of all, most specialty crops can be grown without a full-time commitment. If you have a few extra hours a week, then you can be a specialty crop grower. Here are eight specialty crops worth growing:

1. Bamboo. Landscapers and homeowners are paying as much as $150 each for potted bamboo plants, and many growers are finding it hard to keep up with the demand. Why is bamboo so popular? It’s a versatile plant in the landscape, as it can be used for hedges, screens or as stand-alone “specimen” plants.

Bamboo is not just a tropical plant, as many cold-hardy varieties can handle sub-zero winters. Using pots in a bamboo business, it’s possible to grow thousands of dollars worth of profitable plants in a backyard nursery.

2. Flowers. If you are looking for a high-value specialty crop that can produce an income in the first year, take a look at growing flowers for profit. A flower growing business has almost unlimited possibilities, from bulbs to cut flowers to dried flowers – often called “everlastings”, for their long life.

It doesn’t cost much to get started growing flowers for profit either – just a few dollars for seeds and supplies. Most small growers find lots of eager buyers at the Saturday markets held in most towns.

3. Ginseng. Nicknamed “green gold”, the value of this plant is in it’s slow growing roots. Asians have valued ginseng for thousands of years as a healing herb and tonic.

Even though growing ginseng requires a six year wait to harvest the mature roots, most growers also sell young “rootlets” and seeds for income while waiting for the roots to mature. Over the six year period, growers can make as much as $100,000 on a half-acre plot from seeds, rootlets and mature roots.

That’s why ginseng has been prized as a specialty crop since George Washington’s day, when ginseng profits helped finance the Revolutionary war against the British. Ginseng production is only possible in areas with cold winters.

4. Ground Covers. Due to high labor costs and water shortages, ground covers are becoming the sensible, low-maintenance way to landscape. Growers like ground covers too, as they are easy to propagate, grow and sell. Bringing profits of up to $20 per square foot, ground covers are an ideal cash crop for the smaller backyard plant nursery.

5. Herbs. Growing the most popular culinary and medicinal herbs is a great way to start a profitable herb business. The most popular culinary herbs include basil, chives, cilantro and oregano. Medicinal herbs have been widely used for thousands of years, and their popularity continues to grow as people seek natural remedies for their health concerns.

Lavender, for example, has dozens of medicinal uses, as well as being a source of essential oils. Lavender is so popular, hundreds of small nurseries grow nothing but lavender plants. So to start your herb business, focus on popular plants.

6. Landscaping Trees and Shrubs. With individual plants bringing as much as $100 in a five gallon pot, many small backyard plant nurseries are enjoying success on a small scale. Those that specialize in unique or hard-to-find tree and shrub varieties can charge premium prices and still sell out each year.

The secret to success is finding a “niche” that you enjoy, and then growing the varieties that simply can not be found at your average plant nursery.

7. Mushrooms. For those without space to garden, growing mushrooms for profit can produce a great return in a small space. Exotic mushrooms, such as oyster and shiitake, make sense, as they can be grown indoors without soil.

Oyster mushrooms, for example, produce around 25 pounds per square foot of growing space in a year’s time. At the current wholesale price of $7 a pound, that’s $17,000 worth of mushrooms from a 10’x10′ space!

Exotic mushrooms do not travel well, so small local growers will always have an edge over distant producers. At our local Saturday market, the oyster mushrooms are also the first items to sell out.

8. Ornamental Grasses. Because ornamental grasses are drought-tolerant and low maintenance, landscapers are using more and more of them, as are homeowners. Because there are hundreds of shapes and sizes, they can be used for everything from ground covers to privacy screens.

It’s easy to get started growing ornamental grasses, as you simply buy the “mother” plants and divide the root clump into new plants as it grows. Using pots, it’s possible to grow thousands of plants in a small backyard nursery.

Finally

Gardening can be a very lucrative business, with lots of benefits in:

• doing what you love
• getting great exercise
• having a stable and potentially large income.

But it’s also important to remember that:

• there’ll be some down periods during the colder weather
• the equipment can be quite expensive
• the physical labor can get difficult and even dangerous.

Get your qualifications if you want to stand above the casual garden worker, choose your rates well, and connect with your customers in your local area with a friendly and accessible style.

Get your business plan worked out and buy the smaller equipment new and see if you can get the larger and more equipment used. Lastly, decide whether you need to get any extra help as this could be great for a growing business but unnecessary if you’re just starting out.