If viewing and making landscape more beautiful is a passion for you, rather than a hobby, then you may want to consider starting your own landscape service. There are many people out there who want a beautiful lawn but don’t have the time, energy, or the artistic ability to do it on their own. Just like people need interior designers, they also need exterior designers.

Having beautiful landscape grace their home is a priority for many because it beautifies the community along with raising property values. They want to hire a team that can get the job done right and make their yard look magnificent.

You may want to consider hiring a team to help you. This might not be all that important until you get a few regular clients, however, if your good you will need help before you know it. Having a great reputation and getting word of mouth referrals is the best way to expand your landscape business quickly.

There are other methods of advertising your landscape service. You can create flyers to post around your city, you can place an ad in your towns largest newspaper, you can hand out business cards to potential contacts, or you can try to merge with an already established local landscape service and build a clientele that way. If you have a large vehicle, or buy one specifically for your business, you will want to be sure to put an advertisement on the side of it. More people will learn about your business that way than any other.

Other things you will have to consider are: applying for a business license, whether you will run your company from home or from a small office, and getting a loan for a building, tools, and company transportation.

Remember, starting a business is hard work but, if landscape is truly your passion, then it will all be worth it in the end. Think about waking up everyday and being excited about going to work! If you need help with any landscape ideas check out your local home improvement store or simply do some searching on the internet. Your sure to find some great ideas.

David Dunlap is the founder of The Landscaping Pro and Pure Landscaping, two online resource directories designed to help with any sized landscaping project. For more information on landscape lighting or landscaping equipment , visit http://thelandscapingpro.com or http://purelandscaping.com

Price : $7.31

Product Description

A Dyer’s Garden touches on the history and nature of dye plants and walks you through a garden season from design to planting to harvesting for the dyepot.

Customer Reviews

Review date : 2007-07-03
This was my first introduction to the world of dyeing with plants. The photography is terrific and gives you a good idea of what you’ll get from each plant. Mordants are discussed, and the plants that are included are covered thoroughly for both cultivation and dye recipes. My only regret? That I can’t find the seeds for the Japanese Indigo! I recommended this book to several people when we attended our local fiber festival.

Review date : 2007-04-09
This book focuses mainly on the home growing and use of dye plants. There is even a section devoted to the layout of the home dye garden. General mordanting and dye bath info is given at the beginning of the book. In the "Portfolio of Dye Plants" which follows, two pages are devoted to each dye plant. For each plant, 4-10 color photos illustrate the results obtained with various mordants on different fibers. The instructions for using different plants are not in traditional recipe form. Instead, Buchanan indicates how much plant material is generally required for a given amount of fiber ("flowers from 8 plants," etc). This fits in with Buchanan’s emphasis on diversity of color over reproducibility, but it could be troublesome for users of purchased dyestuffs. In short, this book is nice to look at, easy to use, and appears to contain highly useful information for dyer/gardeners.

Review date : 2006-03-13
the recipient was very happy, & is busy putting in beds of plants to do home dyeing of medieval faire clothing.

Review date : 2006-01-02
For those doing creative re-enactment (SCA, Renn faires), this is an essential reference for growing and using natural dye plants. The book includes plants to grow, plants NOT to grow (invasive species), and plants that pay off with dye materials in one season. The margins of the book are organized by color family, and there are lovely schematics on how to organize a dye-plant garden for production or for high-intensity cultivation with raised rows–or just a pretty border. There are some basics of plant dyeing, information on mordants (salts that change color or cause it to stick to fiber.) A small but potent book, probably a must for anyone doing authentic reproduction of antique fibers or for anyone who likes the idea of home-dyed fiber but with naturally-obtained materials. Great for home schooling. Highly recommended.

Review date : 1999-10-26
I particularly recommend this book as a visual source for historical re-enactors.

Too often there are descriptions of what dye-plants were used to color garments, but, no examples of what those colors would look like. This book provides clear, vivid color photos on a whole range of dye-plants grown during pre-medieval, medieval, Colonial, and later times. Additionally, it shows the same dye used on different fibers, sometimes with different mordants (fixers). Fiber samples include linen, wool, silk, and cotton.

I recommend this book to people interested in making clothing from "modern" material…it gives them the best opprotunity possible to try to find close color-matches. Alternately, it provides solid information to dye cloth by hand.

Also, the low price can’t be beat!
 

Price : $13.70

Customer Reviews

Review date : 2007-12-12
I discovered Nora Roberts just this year. I have found that most of her series are must reads and keepers. I love her sense of fun and I also like the research she does prior to writing. It makes her books more believable.

Review date : 2007-09-15
This book series was fun for me to read. It combined romance, suspense, and the supernatural- all of which I enjoy reading about. I didn’t want to put these books down.

Review date : 2007-06-08
Nora Roberts always comes through with a new spin on an idea that works so well. The realtionships are well done and interesting and the books work great as a set. Read them in any order, but read them