Landscaping After Covid 19

Hello and welcome to another blog where we discuss all things landscaping and trades.

This blog I want to delve into how the coronavirus pandemic changed the landscaping trade.

So picture this 4th of march 2020 more cases of the covid 19 virus were being reported, the whole country started hearing more and more about this deadly virus over the radio, tv and social media.

13th of march 2020, Visiting is limited in hospitals to help prevent the spread of the virus. Our restaurants, coffee shops, retail shops and other facilities are “temporarily closed” to members of the public.

16th march 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson delivers the first of many daily news conferences urging everybody in the UK to work from home to give the NHS time to cope with the pandemic.  

23rd march 2020 The first UK lockdown is announced by the Prime Minister on national television who says: “From this evening I must give the British people a very simple instruction – you must stay at home.”  It wasn’t till much later it was announced you can still work if you were key worker, with all distancing and mask rules.

 During this time it was 1 big question mark where this would leave landscaping and indeed all self employed trades people.

Where are we going to get our money from? What about our bills? Are merchants still open? We had found out from an earlier announcement that employed people would received furlough which was 80% of their pay but what about self employed people? We did eventually receive some support but much later.

To support the self-employed through the coronavirus outbreak, in March 2020 the Government announced the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS). Initially the Scheme paid taxable grants worth 80% of someone's average monthly trading profit, for a three-month period. However self employed people wouldn’t see any of the grants till 13th of may onwards leaving many to worry about their future.

During this uncertain time I did try to make the most of the extra time at home to watch my little girl grow up. Even when she was born, I only took 2 weeks paternity leave, even working through that, quoting and doing site visits. Needs must when you’re self employed. But this time we were given, at the start of Lockdown was made special (if worrying) as I got to spend 6 weeks with my family. In glorious weather, we went for walks, I built a fort (that even my wife struggled to climb) for my little girl in the garden. We watched her take her first steps together. We grew vegetables. A lot of this was happening in our own back garden which became a little haven of fun, and love and family. Like a lot of families throughout the UK. I think this is when people realized that their garden space was worth investing in.

During all this time things moved to a much slower pace, a lot of people where spending more times outside due to the wonderful weather and this in turn got people thinking….. how can I make my outside space more liveable?

As traveling abroad got a lot harder and more complicated with, a lot of people didn’t want to go on holiday…..they wanted to spend more time in their own outside space.

This created a massive boom in landscaping, calls where coming in fast, profits started to climb and more exciting designs come flooding through. With all this happening, and with a lot of people having to still work from home it created a demand for outside rooms, garden offices and summer houses.

A space away from the house which was specifically for you to continue your work. Even merchants had noticed this boom boasting between 10 -20% more sales than was predicted. This however had a few downsides, as sadly a lot of people lost their jobs, some of them took up landscaping assuming it was an easy way to make some money. Over this period they had been nick named ‘The Lockdown Landscapers’. Offering cheap gardens with little to no knowledge of longevity or style.

Now of course lockdown ended and the boom did calm down and not every company that started landscaping over the pandemic did bad work….some in fact found a passion for their craft.

One other downside during the pandemic was the increased cost of all imported material. The costs of some things skyrocketed such as timber and natural stone to an unbelievable degree which never did come back down to pre-covid prices. It did however get the nation thinking about their gardens again, invigorating the love for a usable outside space in which they could make their own mark and express themselves, ourselves included (look out for my wife’s blog soon talking about her finally getting our back garden landscaped, and how she found the whole process).

Thanks for reading and I hope you find this blogs interesting. If you have any recommendations and what you would like read about in upcoming blogs please email me at k.w.slackandson@live.co.uk or comment on the blog below.