Foreword
by Phil Tremayne of The Association of Professional Landscapers
I actually started working for the Horticultural Trades Association (HTA) 14 years ago. I was, what was then known as a membership account manager, overseeing memberships in Garden Centres, Nurseries and Landscapes. This was a new role after a long career in Nurseries and Landscaping that has now spanned nearly 4 decades. Whilst in my role with HTA, I realised there were a large number of landscapers, that were basically in membership, but not getting the support they needed or deserved. These were members of the Association of Professional Landscapers (APL).
In 2012, I started to look deeper into this membership, established that it had been set up with the HTA in 1995, by none other than “Alan Sargent”. It was then that my close working relationship with Alan started, and here we are 10 years on with a membership that has grown by over 50% and a community that is supportive, passionate and vibrant.
Alan has been a key part to this development, his undying enthusiasm coupled with enormous amounts of knowledge is both invaluable and infectious.
Alan played a key part in the development of The APL’s Landscapers work book back in the 90’s. This has sadly disappeared over the years, but this book takes those principles, expands on them and brings them up to date. The book takes you through a journey of how to become a truly professional landscaper, but importantly highlighting the pitfalls that can occur on the way by a man who has lived and breathed them… Whilst also avoiding a few.
Not simply delivered as a totally non-fiction reference book, this is delivered as an interesting read, a story of a man’s career, speckled with humour and hard facts. We are indeed in an ever-changing world, with many different pressures and issues to overcome. But still some of the basic principles remain. This book delivers admirably on both fronts.
Simply put, if you are looking to start out a career in landscaping, this book is an absolute must, but even if you are an established business, there are still some excellent nuggets of information in here, just like the ones Alan has helped to deliver over the many APL Zoom sessions he has attended.
Alan has played a part in inspiring many initiatives in the landscape world, he has also played a part in inspiring me as APL manager to push the APL and its members to raise standards complimented by our own construction codes of practice, inspire training academies like The Landscape Academy, Shore and TASK to form, complimenting the work already being delivered through APL WSUK and APL Apprenticeship. Work that along with Alan is training to the next generation of landscapers.
His guidance and support has been immeasurable and I look forward to many more years of working with Alan. So sit back, and enjoy immersing yourself into the world of professional landscaping, written by a man who has done just that for many, many years.
Chapter One: Introduction
I have been extraordinarily fortunate in my career in horticulture. Due to many chapters in my life – each related, yet at the time seemingly random – I have achieved a lifetime in what must be the most rewarding and wonderful business in the world!
Raised on a farm in Surrey, I was only a small boy when my father used to let me join him in the vegetable garden, planting seeds and digging up root crops, where he would guide me and explain each step as we went along.
After I left school aged fifteen, following a brief spell working on the farm, we moved as a family to Sussex, where the only industry in our tiny village was a firm of specialist Horticulturists, Hamer, Gayner & Constanduros. They were consultants, working for various chemical firms, including Murphy, May & Baker and ICI.
I was offered casual work as a technician, which involved a lot of repetitive duties, including washing thousands of cabbage roots (for cabbage root fly), weighing and examining hundreds of apples (for gleosporium etc), counting the number of weeds in a given area of grassland and a host of other such exercises.
This work gave me another building block, or chapter in my life, working firstly with my father, teaching me to appreciate nature, and a confidence beyond my years, and laboratory skills to analyse problems. This work was seasonal, and in order to fill my time, I followed the traditional route of working in other people’s gardens. This involved anything and everything from clearing dog’s mess, to mowing, ditching, hedge cutting and just about all things mundane. My weekends were spent walking around nursery centres (this was before garden centres as we know them today) where trees and shrubs were lifted seasonally and carefully wrapped in hessian, brown paper and lots of string, to be taken to the nearest railway station for dispatch around the country.
One firm involved, Cheals of Pulborough, used to exhibit at Chelsea, where they took orders, pre-credit card and therefore with no real record of sale. I eventually went to work for them, and had the amazing experience of working in the Great Chelsea Marquee, the sights and smells never to be forgotten!
At the nursery, trees were top worked, roses budded and grafted – the whole industry was somehow gentle yet pressured at the same time. I spent many hours looking at the names on labels, trying to remember what I had seen during the week, and relating these plants to their names. Many times I could not pronounce them, or mispronounced them, much to the good natured hilarity of the staff.
As the years went by, I ran my own firm, and developed into what could be called landscaping, and I worked for many wonderful people who taught me so much about what I call ‘garden etiquette’. Even now, more than five decades later, I can clearly remember the exhortations – ‘If you must remove that plant, cut the blooms and present them to the lady of the house’ and ‘keep all the lawn edges neat and tidy and the rest of the garden will appear tidy as well’, and a wealth of other phrases that have stood me in good stead.
Later on, I gained experience in the design and construction of Show Gardens, mainly at Chelsea, but also Hampton Court, Tatton Park and Gardeners World Live/NEC, eventually achieving a total of sixty RHS Show Gardens between 1983 and 2005 – every medal from Bronze to Gold and (one) Best In Show.
This work brought me to the attention of the Royal Horticultural Society hierarchy, and I became a Chelsea Show panellist, helping to set up the Show, then a Show Gardens Assessor and finally a Show Gardens Judge, a position I held for seven years.
In 1978 I joined The British Association of Landscape Industries (BALI), initially becoming involved as Regional Secretary, Regional Chairman, on to National Council and Chairman of PR and Marketing for the Association.
In 1984 I was immensely proud to be admitted as a Member into the newly formed Institute of Horticulture, and raised to Fellow in 2011.
In 1995 I left BALI to form the Association of Professional Landscapers (APL), which in turn led me to being asked to form a similar industry association in Russia (in 2001). After a somewhat convoluted evaluation of the Russian – or more precisely, the Moscow and St Petersburg business models – I helped to form the Russian Academy of Landscape Architecture and Design (which has been through a number of name changes since).
In 1991, I began a series of seminars, all based on personal ‘home spun’ philosophy and work skills, including ‘Working With Natural Stone’, ‘Gardeners Site Skills and Etiquette’ plus ‘Water Gardening’ (which led me to become the Pond Doctor for the Water Gardener magazine), and most recently, ‘Managing as a Head Gardener’, for head gardeners and senior gardens staff, and ‘Million Dollar Gardens’ for garden designers and those involved in building large and expensive projects.
In 2001, I was invited to become head gardener to Goodwood House and Estate. I had often longed to be a ‘real’ gardener, after so many years of building gardens for others, or transient Show Gardens, with their inherent ‘build it and break it down’ theatrical nature. (I built sixty RHS Show Gardens, none of which ‘lived’ for more than a week!).
Goodwood needed someone who could deal with events. The Festival of Speed was by then a major international success, the world’s largest motor sport event. The Goodwood Revival meeting, which was fairly new in 2001, quickly became the world’s largest ever period event.
The grounds of the Estate were routinely ‘trashed’ by traffic and metal tracking, all of which needed to be restored in double-quick time for other house events, weddings etc, plus Glorious Goodwood race week, when hundreds of cars and coaches passed through the grounds. This was also the time when the private gardens were to be rebuilt/redesigned and it was a job made in heaven for a gardener with a shows/landscape background – and so it proved to be!
Lord and Lady March kindly permitted me to continue with my consultancy/ design/RHS work, which meant I could maintain my interest in training and seminars.
In 2007, I left Goodwood, having overseen the creation of the refurbished west wing of the private gardens and went into consultancy full time, specialising in training (LANTRA industry representative 2007 – 2010) and historic gardens, especially 18th and 19th century.
This consultancy manifested itself, somewhat unexpectedly, in my acting as part time head gardener for several large gardens in Sussex and Surrey, supervising existing staff who were groundsmen, yet lacking in horticultural skills – especially management of their areas. I realised just how difficult it was to find, employ and retain good qualified people to become head gardeners or gardeners-in-charge. Or indeed, how difficult it was for keen, would-be head gardeners to gain those management skills.
I ‘sit in’ at job interviews, to help select suitable candidates for such jobs, and often feel frustrated on their behalf. With encouragement from The Professional Gardeners Guild (PGG), and Tony Arnold, the Chairman, in particular, and Kate Lowe, Editor of The Horticulture Week, I set out to write The Head Gardener’s Survival Manual in 2012.
The success of The Head Gardener’s Survival Manual, and the realisation that nobody has put their head on the block and written a similar book for Landscapers – everyone involved in the design, construction and maintenance of gardens in the private sector – led me to write The Landscaper’s Survival Manual. This was followed by a number of other books over the next few years, including other ‘Survival’ Manuals for Designers and Professional Gardeners.
In many ways, I have had a unique career. Maintenance contractor, Landscaper in the UK (also in Spain, France, Gibraltar, Jersey and Russia), Garden Designer, Head Gardener, Author (especially for The Horticulture Week, winning four Finalist awards at the Garden Media Guild Awards event) plus Outstanding Contribution to The Industry award at the Garden Custodian of The Year Awards, topped off with Top Twenty-five Most Influential Landscape Personalities 2022 (ProLandscaper Awards) – I feel I have seen the industry from the widest possible range of aspects
In 2016, I founded The Professional Garden Consultant’s Association (PGCA) with members including over fifty individuals, all experts in their chosen fields, in a wide range of disciplines, covering the whole of the UK and Ireland.
In 2020, I founded The Landscape Library, a unique collection of books, essays, articles, features and templates, all written by a number of industry leading authors, covering all aspects from Design to Consultancy, Landscaping to Maintenance and Estate Management.
My work nowadays, having ceased physical work through age and lack of flexible joints, is that of an Expert Witness, dealing with disputes and Court claims across the UK, specialising in hard landscaping projects ( as well as being the main author and administrator involved with The Landscape Library). All comments and opinions are mine – home spun philosophy – I hope you find my thoughts useful to your career.
Read this book from cover to cover, and become immersed in its philosophy. They are the product of fifty-five years of blood, sweat and a lot of tears!
Alan Sargent FCIHort FPGCA
March 2023
