The Garden Company, a Hertfordshire-based landscape design and build business led by James Scott MSGD, has two reasons to celebrate this month. The company had already made plans to mark its 25th anniversary with an all-staff party, and the ‘icing on the cake’ was provided by the news that the company has won a national BALI award. This brings the number of national awards won by the company since it was founded in 1991 to a total of 21. The winning garden project this year (in Pinner) is in the Domestic Garden Construction category and met the judging panel’s requirement for extremely high standards of professionalism and ability.

James Scott commented: “This year we are celebrating 25 successful years in business. We started out back in 1991 in Barnet with just two of us and a few garden maintenance clients. I’d like to say a huge thank you to all of our clients over the years since then for trusting us with their precious gardens and outdoor spaces. We know that they choose us with great care, and it is a real privilege to work for them to create, develop and nurture beautiful gardens. We have a fantastic track record in meeting clients’ needs and evidence for this can be found in our long trail of national landscaping awards. Winning these awards is always a huge professional achievement and we believe it reflects not only our technical ‘knowhow’ but also our focus on ‘wow-ing’ our clients.”

“Thank you too to our close suppliers, business partners and those fellow designers who choose us to build their gardens for them because they know that we will endeavour to build their creations as envisaged. Over the years we have worked with many designers and I am grateful to them all.”

“I would also like to thank and applaud everybody working in the business today, whether out in all weathers building and maintaining gardens or in the office, managing teams and projects and keeping the business running. Between us we have nearly 100 years of service – so people that joined us recently have joined a company with a huge amount of knowledge and expertise. We are equally proud to welcome our recent joiners and delighted that our apprenticeship scheme will be put to great use in the coming year, with 4 more team members signed up to work on NVQs Levels 2 and 3. Thank you too of course to Kathie Coss who set up the business with me originally, and came back to celebrate our anniversary with us.”

“On a personal note, I genuinely look forward to steering the company from strength to strength in the coming years while ‘putting something back’ by association with two great professional bodies, BALI and the SGD. Landscape design and horticulture is a wonderful place to work but not always recognized as such, and attracting and developing new talent into the industry is for me one of the most exciting challenges that we face in the years ahead.”