It is every garden designers dream to win a gold or silver medal at a top show and to be honest will be one of the greatest marketing opportunities that are available - get noticed by the right person, magazine or television and you are away.
For the landscaper, involvement in a gold winning garden can easily spell disaster if you are not careful, and it is imperative that you are not stereotyped as the do-er and not the thinker.
Bring a garden designer to you for greater success rather than migrate to them; that way you can influence the design brief to suit your building style and capabilities.
Landscape gardeners can design and build, which will bring the greater credibility because you are viewed very much as a thinker, but if you build only and you spend lots of time and effort into looking for the right designer to elevate your status by winning a gold medal then think again.
When my career and company was in it's ascendancy I would design the gardens myself, liaise with my client and retain full control over the build elements and along the way.
As the company grew and the workforce tougher to coordinate, I spent many an hour procrastinating the issue of ditching the design element and let designers invite us to build their creations - and there lie the biggest challenge.
Going down this route I felt we would become the do-er rather than the thinker and our responsibility for the creative element of the gardens would have been taken away.
Advertising our design services continued as an in-house package with designers employed directly. It makes it easier to interact directly with the client too.
So if you are thinking about expanding then why consider keeping garden design in-house and retaining the creative edge?
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