A small business that stayed small on purpose
How we got here
The business started in 2015 with one mower and a trailer, doing lawns for neighbours who had asked often enough that it seemed worth charging for. The first year was almost entirely mowing. The garden maintenance and weed control came later, largely because clients kept asking who they should call for the rest of it and we ran out of people to recommend.
What we learned early is that most of the complaints people have about garden services are not about the quality of the cut. They are about the van that did not show up, the invoice that arrived larger than the quote, and the fact that nobody answered the phone to explain either. Those are all solvable problems, and solving them turned out to matter more than being the cheapest option in the area.
So the shape of the business is deliberate. We work a tight geographic run so travel time does not end up in your invoice. We cap the number of properties on regular schedule so the calendar has slack in it for the weeks when it rains for four days straight. And we quote fixed prices, which means the risk of a job taking longer than expected sits with us rather than with you.
The trade-off is that we are sometimes booked out, and we occasionally say no to work outside the run. We think that is the correct trade. A business that says yes to everything is a business that is about to start missing appointments.
Four things we will not trade away
- We quote the job, not the customerThe price comes from the square metreage, the access and the state of the site. It does not go up because of the postcode or the car in the driveway.
- We will talk you out of workIf a lawn needs water rather than fertiliser, we say so. Selling a treatment that will not fix the problem costs us the next five years of the relationship.
- We turn up when we saidIf weather or a breakdown moves us, you hear about it that morning rather than wondering at 4pm. This is most of what people actually want from a trade.
- Green waste goes to compostEverything we remove goes to a licensed facility rather than landfill. It costs marginally more and it is the right end for the material.