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Considered project

How landscapers and garden designers get clients: a 90-day plan

How your buyer buys: High price, long deliberation. The buyer decides on proof of past work.

The first warm weekend in March sends the same homeowner to three landscapers at once. They have a patio or a full garden in mind, a rough budget, and a wish to be sitting out by June. They choose on before-and-after photos, on a quote that arrives the day after the visit, and on whether you ring back that evening.

A garden design client moves more slowly and reads more. They look at finished gardens on Houzz and Instagram, check for an APL or BALI badge, and expect to pay for a design consultation. A patio and fencing customer in October, by contrast, has to be found, because almost nobody thinks of a landscaper in the dark months.

That sets the order. Photos from the same upstairs window, before and after, because every page and every card reuses them. Then the three-way quote, the paid consultation and the follow-up, which win the spring jobs you already visit. Then the waiting list and the email that sells patios and design work into winter, from the enquiries you could not take in May.

Step zero

The free checklist, before the plan.

The checklist repairs what you already have: the phone, the profile, the booking path. This page is the plan for new work on top of it, and the two are different jobs.

The Landscaper's DIY Growth Checklist

The free checklist for landscapers and garden designers: every repair to the phone, the profile and the booking path, as step-by-step actions. Sent by email.

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Where they look

Where your customers actually look.

  • Association of Professional Landscapers

    The APL has a public member search and an accreditation that garden design clients look for. The badge beside your quote answers the question of whether you will still be trading when the planting needs a year's care.

  • BALI

    The British Association of Landscape Industries. Membership is checked by commercial clients and by homeowners spending on a full garden build, so the find-a-member listing needs your area and services current.

  • Houzz(opens in a new tab)

    Where garden design clients collect ideas before they look for a designer. A profile with each project captioned by town and year reaches them months before the spring search.

  • Marshalls Register

    An approved installer listing for a paving brand many customers already have in mind. Once registered, the enquiry arrives with the product chosen and the budget half set.

  • Checkatrade(opens in a new tab)

    Still a starting point for patio and fencing customers in many towns. Run it with an exit date and compare its cost per job with what your own pages bring in.

  • Google Business Profile(opens in a new tab)

    Patio installer and garden designer searches with the town end in the map pack. Category Landscaper, with designer, paving and fencing added, and the before-and-after pairs refreshed every season.

Your year

When the phone rings, and when to start.

Enquiries climb from late February and peak March to June; winter suits hard landscaping and design work.

  1. Jan: quiet
  2. Feb
  3. Mar: peak
  4. Apr: peak
  5. May: peak
  6. Jun: peak
  7. Jul
  8. Aug
  9. Sep
  10. Oct: quiet
  11. Nov: quiet
  12. Dec: quiet, start the visibility work

Amber months are the peak, grey months are quiet, and "start" marks the month the visibility work has to begin in.

  • March to June peak: start by December, because local search takes about three months to move.

Enquiries climb from late February and run March to June, which fills the diary faster than any landscaper can build. October to January is quiet, because homeowners do not think about the garden in the dark. Search takes a quarter to catch up with new photos and pages, so the work for spring starts in December, in the middle of the quiet months. In September, email the list about winter patios and fencing, and message the spring quotes that did not go ahead with dates from November. In November, email again about design work for next year. The winter diary is built in September, and the spring diary in December.

The 90-day plan

Four phases, in the order that pays back fastest.

Each step names its channel, its cost band from the technique register, the effort it takes, and how long until the first enquiry or booking.

Week 0

  1. Photograph every job

    Photograph each garden from the same upstairs window before you start and on the day you finish

    • Cost: Free
    • Low effort
    • First result in 4 to 12 weeks

  2. Answer the phone, text back missed calls

    Have missed calls text back asking for the job and postcode, and ring back that evening

    • Cost: £
    • Low effort
    • First result within a week

  3. Google Business Profile, complete

    Set Landscaper as the primary category, add Landscape designer, Paving and Fencing contractor, and refresh before-and-after pairs each season

    • Cost: Free
    • Low effort
    • About 30 minutes a week
    • First result in 4 to 12 weeks

Month 1

  1. Ask every client for a review

    Text your review link the day you finish, while the client is standing in the new garden

    • Cost: Free
    • Low effort
    • First result in 4 to 12 weeks
    In the kit and the bundle

  2. Sharpen the offer

    Price each garden three ways: the patio alone, the patio with fencing and turf, and the full build with planting and lighting

    • Cost: Free
    • Low effort
    • First result in 1 to 4 weeks

  3. Same-day quote, then follow up

    Send the quote with site photos the day after the visit, then text on day 5 and at two weeks

    • Cost: Free
    • Low effort
    • First result in 1 to 3 weeks

  4. Sharpen the offer

    Charge for the design consultation and credit the fee against the build

    • Cost: Free
    • Low effort
    • First result in 2 to 6 weeks
    In the kit and the bundle

Months 2 to 3

  1. An email list, emailed each season

    Add every overflow enquiry to the waiting list, with an autoresponder that confirms their place and when you expect to have a slot

    • Cost: £
    • Medium effort
    • About 30 minutes a week
    • First result in 2 to 8 weeks
    In the kit and the bundle

  2. A page per service and per town

    A page each for patios, decking, fencing, turfing, planting design and full garden builds, with the town in the title

    • Cost: ££
    • Medium effort
    • First result in 8 to 16 weeks
    In the bundle

  3. Reciprocal trade partners

    Agree a swap with a builder who finishes extensions and a tree surgeon: each passes on the garden that follows their job

    • Cost: Free
    • Low effort
    • First result in 8 to 16 weeks

Month 3 onward

  1. An email list, emailed each season

    In September and November, email the list about winter patios, fencing and design work for next spring

    • Cost: £
    • Low effort
    • First result in 2 to 6 weeks
    In the kit and the bundle

  2. Go back to old enquiries

    In September, message everyone you quoted in spring who did not go ahead, offering patio and fencing dates from November

    • Cost: Free
    • Low effort
    • First result in 1 to 4 weeks

  3. Leaflets round a finished job

    On the last day, with the van still outside, put a card showing the finished garden through the doors either side and opposite

    • Cost: ££
    • Low effort
    • First result in 2 to 8 weeks

  4. Ask for the referral at the high point

    On the final walk round, ask which neighbours have been looking over the fence, and leave a card for them

    • Cost: Free
    • Low effort
    • First result in 2 to 8 weeks
The cost of waiting

What doing nothing costs landscapers and garden designers.

The leaks below are the ones the landscapers and garden designers page already names. Put a figure on each, see what the fix gets back a month, and how many weeks the kit or the bundle takes to pay for itself.

Industry estimates, not client results

Industry-typical ranges for a small landscaping firm: patios, decking and planting schemes in the low thousands, about three in ten site visits signing, and a minority of clients coming back for a second phase within the year.

Every number below is prefilled from that estimate and editable. Put your own figures in and the leaks, gains and payback recalculate as you type.

Your numbers

Further purchases per won customer in a year

Baseline revenue on these figures: £13,669 a month, counting this month's new customers and a twelfth of their repeat business.

Where it leaks

  • Drains enquiries

    Spring enquiries overflow and the overflow is simply lost

    Leaking now
    £3,417 a month
    Gain from the fix
    £2,050 a month
    The fix
    Waiting list and email engine (about £700 one-off)
    Pays back in
    1.5 weeks

  • Drains close rate

    Site visits eat unbillable hours on jobs that never sign

    Leaking now
    £2,412 a month
    Gain from the fix
    £965 a month
    The fix
    Paid site-visit booking (about £450 one-off)
    Pays back in
    2.0 weeks

  • Drains enquiries

    Your best transformations are on Instagram where they vanish in a day

    Leaking now
    £3,417 a month
    Gain from the fix
    £1,367 a month
    The fix
    Portfolio website (about £1,750 one-off)
    Pays back in
    5.5 weeks

  • Drains close rate

    Reviews get forgotten because the job ends and you move on

    Leaking now
    £1,519 a month
    Gain from the fix
    £759 a month
    The fix
    Review engine (about £475 one-off)
    Pays back in
    2.7 weeks

On these figures

£10,765 a month leaking

Fixing every leak above gets back about £5,141 a month, with each leak counted on its own against the same baseline.

The Booked-Out-Year System (£1,895)
Pays back in 1.6 weeks
The Landscaper Growth Kit (£49)
Pays back in under a week

Inside the 90-day window on these figures. Change any field above to test it against your own numbers for landscapers and garden designers.

What matters most

The levers that carry the most weight here.

A landscaper's plan hangs on four steps. Before-and-after photos from the same window, because the garden is sold on the pair. The waiting list, with an autoresponder that confirms the place and the likely slot, because the enquiries you turn away in May are the patios you build in November. Three prices on every garden, patio alone up to the full build with planting and lighting, since the middle option is the one most choose. And the September message to everyone quoted in spring who went quiet, offering dates from November. The paid design consultation, credited against the build, runs beside those and filters out the site visits that would never sign.

See every lever for landscapers and garden designers in the register

Reading for landscapers and garden designers

All insights

If you would rather we did this for you

The same plan, built and run for landscapers and garden designers: the phone, the profile, the pages and the follow-up, priced up front.

See what we build for landscapers and garden designers

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