As we find ourselves already halfway through Green Careers Week, we look back at a panel discussion from FutureScape focusing securing your success within horticulture and landscaping.

Titled ‘Navigating Success: Building a thriving business’ it featured four panelists and a chair discussing how they navigated their own trials to get to the place they are today.

Hosted by Marc Britton, it featured: Elohim Tisserand, from Tisserand English Gardens, Justin Himpson, from JJH Landscapes, Will Burberry from Radial Landscapes and Darren Williams from Hide Landscapes.

The panel began with introductions to what each of their overall businesses do, with each of the five panelists giving the audience an overview. A brief, yet crucial contextualising question to the rest of the debate.

The second question to the panel focused on how and why you start your business, yet it was the host that immediately latched onto an endearing and heartfelt reply to his own question.

Britton says: “For me it was something that I fell into when I left school, as a summer job, at 16. I thought I’d go back, I thought I’d do A-levels, I would do all of the university stuff but actually I found that I just absolutely loved it.

“It’s just such a great career for so many different reasons there’s a human element of the interaction the collaborations and just the creativity and sense of achievement.”

Himpson adds: “For me, I come from a civil engineering background, I’ve always done landscaping work over the years as private work but for me Covid was what forced me to start my landscaping business.”

There were chuckles in agreement as Tisserand spoke about how the expansion tended to just happen, as he says: “I think a lot of us probably start on maintenance, ‘Oh I can do a bit of fencing’ or ‘I can lay a patio’ and looking back on some of the jobs I was learning, I was definitely learning at the same time.”

Yet he led onto a key point, when he adds: “I think the more you find your niche in your industry, your place you can scale up on that, with natural growth and people start recognising you for what you do and what you’re really good at.”

The panel agreed that keeping humble, acknowledging your strengths and what you can and cannot do is a big help.

Burberry took the conversation in a different, but especially pertinent point given the current week, as he discussed how he is a big proponent of not taking the university route.

He explains: “I was a little bit different, I went straight from school, straight into working for a landscaper. I didn’t like school, didn’t like college so I just wanted to be hands on so I’ve learned everything on site, which I do think you can do.

“I think there’s a lot of people, especially nowadays think you do need to go to uni to be successful. I don’t, you need a trade, that’s it.”

There were consistent light-hearted tangents which often had the crowd smiling with panelists clearly on very good terms with one another, which hugely helped any panel during FutureScape. The panel were then asked about things that have guided them, whether it be in a positive or a negative direction, which made you focus on particular aspects.

Himpson immediately replies: “I think nailing down communication with clients is something we worked on a lot recently. Having budgets from the start, so much time and resources are lost from working on things where people just don’t have the budget for it. They say ‘oh we don’t know what we want to spend on it’ and then when you throw a number at them all of a sudden they’ve got a budget.

“You have to be confident when speaking about money.”

This drew wide agreement from the rest of panel.

The question after centred around whether there has been a moment in their careers where you thought, ‘you know what, actually, I think we’ve sort of got there, we’re doing alright.’

Both Himpson and Burberry credit the Association of Professional Landscapers for its support, with the former praising the wider support meetings and the latter for its assistance with paperwork.

The theme of support was crucial and made for a wholesome closer to the panel.

Tisserand replies: “For me it has been ups and downs: ‘yeah we’re really good, we’re nailing this I’m loving it’ and then something happens and you’re rock bottom. So it’s always trying to make those curves and smooth them out a bit.

“They’re never going to be fully stable.”

Host Britton agrees: “Something to take from that then is that just be confident that the process will work and yes you get the great times which you should enjoy and then when you get the slightly low times don’t worry too much. Go with it, talk to the people around you.

“There are people around who will help, there are people in the industry at all levels who want to see you do well and will always pick up a phone and give you that support.”

Tisserand concludes: “You’re not alone.”