An exciting but uncertain time…

Well what an exciting time we have been having meeting the Royal Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall. 

But now we are back to the serious work. 

1 –We have to make sales in the private sector on the strength of the Evolution Garden success at Sandringham. On our Commercial Side – its going to be doubly difficult with the recent Public sector cuts. 

2 – What is going to take up slack in the slight slow down of the public sector works? 

Well personally I have a gut feeling it’s not going to be as bad as we are led to believe. 

I do not think the public sector cuts will have a big enough effect to completely knock the other re-emerging markets other than the public sector that is again kicking off to boost the economy and take up slack.

Last Thursday I was interviewed by Stephen Nowland of BBC 5 Live shortly after he had interviewed the minister on what effects the recent drastic public spending cuts would have on developers and landscapes companies like ourselves who historically have relied on quite a large proportion of their turnover coming from public sector work. He particularly wanted to try to get a feel for how the staff on the ground were dealing with the recent cuts. (Did it make them less confident employment wise??)

I could only give him the view from where I sat, which was that the future looks bright for us. In the history of this company we have never had so many opportunities to tender come through the door. But it would be still very difficult in the interim to bridge the gap to get to the future. In our case we are drawing confidence from the fact we have been doing some high profile projects to expand our exposure to markets other than Government Departments that are becoming more buoyant.

Steve Nowland gave figures on how it has started to improve – this is believed to continue but it is going to be slip back to higher unemployment in the wake of recent public sector cuts.   

See my Interview on Radio 5 Live

 -Roger

Keeping up with the Jones’s and busy Jane’s prolific blogging!

My job as MD is to see the balance is kept between our private sector work and our very credible commercial Department. I used to be paranoid about keeping these two departments separate but when you look at it – what is the difference? For instance, the private sector work can carry to over 100 K where as a British Heritage project such as Grey Friars Tower in Kings Lynn can be a few hundred thousand pound project with even more detailed planting and intricate hard landscaping than some in the private sector. Then there are cross- over projects such as the garden at Milton Road Primary School Cambridge which would be classed as commercial but bossy Jane from our design department in the private sector got totally involved and provided the planting design for their world inspired courtyard garden. Jane chose historic plants from different cultures and countries that feature in the school’s curriculum so that the children could get a feel for what plants different culture’s and historical times used.

But getting away from plant’s and all things landscaping – Principal Designer Steve’s wife has produced a healthy and well mannered baby boy called Benjamin who postponed his arrival just long enough so that his Dad could be introduced to Prince Charles at Sandringham Flower show last week. Benjamin seems to be just like his Dad – at only 2 hours old his hair was already down to the lobe of his ears!