Ed’s Garden Maintenance is a member of the BFA and will be exhibiting at The National Franchise Exhibition, 30th September & 1st October at the NEC Birmingham (2011). This is a great opportunity for you to come and find out more about an Ed’s Garden Maintenance Business and meet some of our team.
Ed’s is on a roll
Ed’s Gar
den Maintenance has recently taken on 5 new enthusiastic operators to join the successful and rapidly expanding Ed’s Garden Maintenance Team. By joining Ed’s each operator receives a solid support structure and ongoing training which combined with our operators enthusiasm should give them an excellent start in their respective new areas. We wish all the new operators success with their new business ventures.
den Maintenance has recently taken on 5 new enthusiastic operators to join the successful and rapidly expanding Ed’s Garden Maintenance Team. By joining Ed’s each operator receives a solid support structure and ongoing training which combined with our operators enthusiasm should give them an excellent start in their respective new areas. We wish all the new operators success with their new business ventures.To find out more about Ed’s and becoming an operator please look at ‘Join Us’ on the Ed’s web site or come and meet us at the NEC Franchise Show.
Garden make over by Rodney Collett
A town house garden has recently been transformed by Rodney from Eds Garden Maintenance. His remit was to create a relaxed seating area with the minimum amount of maintenance – I think the results speak for themselves. Rodney and some other Ed’s operators are happy to take on landscaping work so please contact us at Ed’s to find out more. The start of the clearing
Paving base laid and the late stage of the paving
Paving complete with a 15 year guarantee with the stain stop dry treat. Note all stain stop impregnation does not guarantee to keep the stains out as you still have to clear up if you spill a red wine on the stones especially if it is a porous stone
Make use of the dead space
Eds Garden Business now covering Wokingham, Bracknell,Windsor and Ascot
Marcus Richardson
has started his training with a view to starting his Eds Garden Maintenance Business at the beginning of August.
Having already completed the initial induction covering subjects such as the importance of customer service and delivering a professional service he has now been learning the tips and tricks to deliver excellent results in the garden from mowing the lawn (including strimming the edges) to cutting and trimming hedges.
“I thought I knew quite a lot about mowing lawns and cutting hedges but now I have professional equipment the results are really quote impressive. I’ve surprised myself!”
As it happens, while perfecting the techniques, he received two calls from customers wanting gardening services in his area and has already gained some regular work mowing lawns while the customer is on holiday.
Female Entrepreneur Of The Year
Ed’s Garden Maintenance is very proud to announce that Sarah Whaley was a runner up in the The Zimbabwe Achievers Award for Female Entrepreneur. In order to achieve this award Sarah has had to demonstrate a commitment to excellence. The event was held on Saturday 9th April 2011 at the Mermaid Theatre Blackfriars. Sarah said “It is fantastic to win this award and I have to thank Ed’s who have always been very supportive of my business growth. I have a mix of wonderful clients and hardworking, passionate employees that has allowed me to grow my business in a time of recession. I would like to say ‘thank you’ to everyone who voted.”
Sarah covers Central London and has been delivering lawn mowing and garden services with Ed’s since 2009.
Ed’s Garden Franchise Business opens in North London
James Leonard recently joined Ed’s Garden Maintenance and will be operating in North London.
James says:- “I’ve just started with Ed’s in the North London region, and can’t wait to get started. As I grew up in the heart of the Kent countryside, I’ve really missed the outdoors since living in London, so what better compromise could I find than by becoming an Ed’s Operator and do something that I’ve missed for years! What attracts me to Ed’s is their substantial support and training to start my business and the positive comments from existing operators who are clearly running successful businesses and having a lifestyle I would like to have.”
New Operators are starting all the time and to find out more please visit ‘Join Us’ on EdsGardenMaintenance.co.uk.
May in the garden
‘Just living is not enough,’ said the butterfly.
‘One must have sunshine, freedom,
and a little flower.’
Hans Christian Andersen
Well with all those long weekends that we’ve all enjoyed lately I’m sure your gardens are looking beautiful, It was hard to tell what season we were in at times, everything seems to have had a huge growth spurt and at times it has had the feel of summer.
This is the month when for nature in the garden everything is happening – animals and insects are raising their young , the lovely chirping in the nests of the fluffy baby birds, native plants are coming into bloom, butterflies fill the air – if your garden isn’t as butterfly packed as you would like, try planting Honeysuckle or Buddleia ; there is now a new dwarf variety that can be grown in pots for your patio and won’t grow to the size of your house within a couple of years!
It’s time to start thinking about the summer garden. If you want to enjoy colour during the summer, spring is the time to plant out the summer flowering annuals, bulbs, perennials and shrubs. There is in fact so much to be doing this month that I could with a dozen or so pages, below I’ve listed the most important (and fun jobs)
· Lilacs should be pruned lightly after they finish blooming, removing sucker growths and dead blooms. Feed lilacs in May with a good all purpose fertilizer after they have finished blooming
· Prune privet lightly this month (wait till June if its exposed).
· After flowering, reduce tangled growth on clematis montana in positions where it cannot be allowed free rein. (The growth made this summer will flower next spring.) If space is tight, prune every year. If not, do it every few years. Clematis montana can be left unpruned indefinitely, but one day there will be a great big tangle to deal with.
· If you missed sowing some annual flowers sow some now, choose evening flowers, especially if you are out all day, then you can enjoy there fragrance in the evening…fragrant night-scented stocks, white-flowered cosmos ‘Purity’ and annual evening primroses, which open their brilliant lemon flowers at dusk, so that moths can pollinate them. Scatter them where you want the flowers.
· This is the best time to buy summer bedding plants for perking up flowerbeds and containers, as garden centers still have plenty of choice.
· Dahlias, gladiolas, tuberous begonias, lilies and cannas and other summer flowering bulbs can be planted this month. Gladiolas bulbs may be planted at 2 week increments until the first of July to provide you with cut flowers until the first frost.
· May is the month for sowing most vegetables outdoors – French and runner beans, beetroot, broccoli, cabbages, cauliflower, carrots, kale, leeks, lettuce, spring onions, parsnips, spinach and turnips. Stagger the sowings so that they crop over a longer period
· Lower the lawnmower blades to summer height and begin to cut regularly
Lawn Mowing – Moss Headaches?
Ed’s Garden Maintenance in Brighton & Hove has started trialing a unique new lawn feed and moss control product.
Manager Nick Fellows heard about this on Gardener’s Question Time and was excited by the fact that you do not need to rake out the ugly dead black moss that you are left with when using ordinary weed and feed products.
The product contains harmless bacteria that actually eat the dead moss! It is also Organic and contains a three-month slow release fertilizer – much longer than usual.
Lawn mowing can take place as normal while the product gradually does its work.
We will update as the trial progresses.
Ed’s On The Move!
Ed’s is expanding and we needed a bigger office. We were fortunate that a premise became available over the road which fitted our criteria – somewhere for Bobby to relax in the sun and still within a stone’s throw of the George and Dragon (the unofficial meeting room). The office is still in the heart of Thames Ditton Village and has a large reception area, 3 rooms and a board room where we can hold training sessions and our regular meetings.
We moved last Thursday 7th April, our telephone numbers remain the same and our new address is:-
Acorn House
3 The High Street
Thames Ditton
KT7 0SD
150 year old Olive tree comes to Richmond
Some may say that to have 4 people and a rather large crane involved are a little bit overboard for a tree but this was no ordinary tree, this was a 150 year old olive tree, direct from Italy, weighing over a tonne. And it was due to have a new home in a leafy Richmond.
I remember getting the call from the client saying he had just bought an Olive tree and could I help him to plant it, yeah no problem I said, a few phonecalls down the line and I started to realise that I couldn’t just pick this up and plant it in the ground.
So a full size crane was hired, we got digging, then the tree was elevated over the top of the roof of the house and precision dropped into the perfect hole we had created and filled with all the neccesary ingredients to give in the best start over here, a mixture of feed, sand, gravel and high grade compost were all the the list.
When finished and perfectly in situ it looked like the tree had always been there, the next step is to create a bed of beautiful Lavender and Rosemary to make it feel more at home.