Landscape Juice

Landscape Collaborative Working Group proposals

Has anyone read the article in Hort Week last week - Landscapers band together to stand up for the industry? It talks about proposals that encourage all groups to work more closely together. On the face of it it all sounds very agreeable. Not many people with argue that a more integrated approach is needed if the landscape industry was to become more serious about promoting itself to the widest possible audience. However, these (new?) proposals come from small groups working for the benefit of small groups. I haven't seen any invitation that asks the entire landscape industry practitioners to... Read more →

Rogue trader convicted for a second time for fraudulent use of logos

A Darlington based rogue trader has been prosecuted for the second time in four years for the misuse of a trade organisations' marketing material. Shane Shipton, who traded as Darlington Driveways, was fined £80.00 for falsely claiming he was a Marshalls Register approved contractor. In 2010 Shipton - trading as J Groves Gardening Services - was sentenced to a 12 month community order, with a condition to complete 150 hours of community service, and ordered to pay £100 costs for the misuse of the BALI logo. Read more →

Power in partnership - shoulder to shoulder or on shaky ground?

Three women explain what it’s like to work in their partner’s landscaping business Your business is growing; you’re rushed off your feet. Maintenance work is jostling with one-off builds. And if you don’t get those quotes off soon, you might as well not bother. Employing a stranger to ease the workload would just be more hassle. But what about your wife? Asks Helen Gazeley. (image right: Yasmin and Mark Roworth) With business news on the media dominated by big conglomerates and stock flotations, a husband-and-wife business seems quaint—Ruth and David in The Archers—or redolent of a useful tax dodge. Might... Read more →

UK Landscape awards confined to tight geographic pockets

Whilst the landscape associations have much greater efforts to be inclusive in recent months I still get a feeling that old habits die hard. Take the geographic distribution of their respective landscape awards, for example. Analysis shows that there are definite patters of concentration for the various schemes. I have uploaded the data for Marshalls Register, APL and BALI into Google maps - see the live map here. Whilst one would expect BALI and the APL to show clusters of award winners in the affluent south east, Marshalls, however, are clustered around the industrialised north of England. What can this... Read more →