Offer a service where you will leave almost everything to the landscapers. Offer a service to top the services offered by landscapers. What you would do is charge $50 an hour to plant colorful flowers, and change them twice a year.
Today, gardening does not only involve the growing of flowers, mowing lawns, and trimming hedges. There are lots to do with the help of landscaping. Landscapers generally beautify a garden, and make it much more presentable. However, you can offer a service to top the services offered by landscapers. Offer a service of planting beautiful and colorful flowers in these landscaped gardens to highlight its beauty.
Offering this service of making pretty gardens much prettier at a rate of $50 an hour, you can offer specialized services where you visit the garden and select the right planter, shape, color, size, and style for the garden. You have to change the flowers at least twice a year so that the planters look perfect at all times. Some planters bloom in certain seasons, and others in other seasons.
You can not only add color to the landscape, but also specialize in pruning it as well. Of course, this specialization means that you don't just trim shrubs and trees into balls and squares like other companies do; you have to hand prune the shrubs to maintain a clean and natural appearance. You are bound to get more clients if you also specialize in winter rose pruning. This is because, though roses bloom well in spring, they have to be properly pruned in winter months to do this.
Of course, to get started on this business, it is necessary to make some investments. You will have to invest in good gardening tools, planters and have a good knowledge of gardening, pruning, and planters; and of course, a love of gardening. Having a vehicle will be an added convenience to you, as you have to carry your tools and planters, which will be quite difficult otherwise. If needed, you could also get someone to help you. This will help you complete your jobs faster, and thus enable you to get more customers. However, remember that if you do have people to help you, you have to keep their pay in consideration when charging your clients. You do not want to end up in a loss because of the salary and extra costs employees bring you!
Once you set up this business, you have to be punctual and regular in the maintenance of the gardens. More and more customers with gardening needs will approach you, only if you are regular, punctual, and professional.
You will need some marketing like a few advertisements posted in the local gardening stores and local shopping centers. Having a website may also boost your sales. Make sure you create an order form, which the potential customers can fill out to get their orders through to you. It is then up to you to follow up on these orders.
It is also a good idea to find out if your customers have color preferences or allergies to certain types of flowers. Some flowers will attract bees also and your customer may prefer not to have them flying around. Then again, they might like to attract humming-birds and butterflies; these are also good questions to ask them.
Besides offering your gardening services, you could also teach those who are interested in gardening and the secrets of successful gardening. To make things easier, you could create online forms that interested people can fill out, and once a substantial number of students sign up, you could start a course. Be sure and charge reasonable rates for these courses if you want many people to attend them.
Resources:
http://www.seedman.com/
http://homeharvest.com/
http://www.freevistadeals.com/?gclid=CJCqprXmnpQCFRZZiAod_mOtzw
http://www.sba.gov/smallbusinessplanner/index.html
www.customplantings.com
December 25, 2009
