How To Start A Career In Gardening
Designing, building and caring for gardens are some of the most rewarding careers anybody could have. The feeling of accomplishment you get from doing even the simplest of tasks is amazing. And what’s more, there are so many ways to get involved that almost anyone could have a career in gardening.
What Careers In Gardening Are Possible?
A career in gardening could take many forms.
Garden Designer
A garden designer uses creative skills and technical knowledge to help householders and commercial property owners to plan their outdoor spaces. The work involves gathering information about the site, learning how the clients want to use their garden and designing layouts and planting plans that landscapers can work with the build the garden.
Garden design is more than creating a visual image of the client’s dream garden. It requires a sound understanding of the way that soil, water, plants and landscaping materials behave and knowing how to ensure that a finished garden is usable and sustainable. Having said that, creativity is also a crucial factor in garden design. A successful career often involves the ability to ‘think outside of the box”.
Landscaper
A landscaper uses a range of hands-on skills to build attractive and functional outdoor spaces. As a landscaper you could find yourself building patios and driveways from stone, porcelain or clay pavers. You may work with timber to create bespoke features such as pergolas, fences or decking. It’s not unusual for landscapers to work with metal, ceramic tiles, concrete, soil, turf, plants and trees. In landscaping, no two days are the same and you have plenty of opportunities to develop your skills set.
Professional Gardener
A professional gardener maintains gardens once they have been designed and built. The work may involve lawn care, weeding, mulching, pruning, planting, growing food crops, hedge trimming, controlling plant pests and diseases and caring for hard landscaped surfaces. You may work in private gardens, on commercial sites such as schools and care homes, or in the UK’s beautiful heritage gardens. It’s a terrific job where you can forge close working relationships with garden owners and get involved in updating and developing spaces for people to enjoy.
Arborist
If you love being outdoors, working with machines and working at heights, you may well enjoy a career as an arborist. An arborist cares for trees of all shapes and sizes. The job involves safely removing dead branches, re-shaping and pruning mature specimens and sometimes felling trees. As your career develops you will learn a great deal about identifying and preventing tree diseases, conservation techniques and more. It’s an interesting career with opportunities in forestry, private gardens, local authority work, phone and electricity companies and our wonderful heritage gardens and arboretums.
Content Creator/Marketer
Not every career in gardening involves getting your hands dirty. Garden designers, landscapers, professional gardeners and arborists all need to promote their businesses. Which means opportunities for photographers, videographers, social media content creators, article writers, journalists and more. It will help your career if you have good industry knowledge. And you will definitely benefit from being an Associate Member of the Association of Professional Landscapers where regular meet ups will keep you up to date with industry trends.
Grower
Without plants the world would not survive and plant growers hold pride of place in the garden design, landscaping and professional gardening industries. There’s also a massive cross-over with garden centres, nurseries and online retailers.
A career in plant growing involves learning and perfecting many different propagation and plant care techniques, becoming an expert at irrigation and plant nutrition. Some growers are also involved in breeding new plant varieties.
Depending on your preferences, you could study to become a full blown horticulturist, you could grow food to feed the nation or you could take a sideways step into into a science based career.
Supplier
Every industry needs suppliers and there is a surprisingly large range of them in the garden industry. Your career in gardening might take the form of working in product development or in sales. You may even, in time, become an industry expert and take on consultancy or teaching work.
How To Start Your Career In Gardening
The first step to a career in gardening is doing some research to discover what appeals to you the most. You could consider volunteering at a garden to see if you enjoy the work. Or you could ask a local landscaper if they would offer you some work experience. A word of caution - please ensure that whoever you work with has proper insurance and works to a very high standard. There’s no sense in starting off on the wrong foot.
Colleges offer a wide range of garden design, landscaping and horticultural courses. They can also advise on funding for learning and may be able to help you find an apprenticeship.
If your employer is a member of the Association of Professional Landscapers, they may be able to enrol you on an APL apprenticeship scheme which has been specially tailored to give young landscapers the very best grounding in their trade.
Learning through a college will give you an opportunity to compete in the World Skills Competition which will enhance your future career opportunities. Research by Frontier Economics found that young people who have been involved with WorldSkillls UK competitions earn around 60% more than their peers who haven’t taken part
Should you begin your career in gardening by starting your own business? Certainly some of todays celebrity gardeners started off by mowing lawns for their neighbours. However, running a reputable business, is complicated and involves unseen expenses such as insurances. You also need good knowledge of writing contracts, carrying out risk assessments, managing cashflow and more. The advice from APL experts is to learn your trade thoroughly before investing in your own business as mistakes can be very costly indeed.
We hope this blog has given you plenty of food for thought. If you would like to start a career in gardening, why not become a student member of the APL? Membership is free and lasts until the first anniversary of your course completion date. Benefits include access to cluster meetings where you can be supported by and learn from more experienced garden builders. Click here to learn more about APL Student Membership.