Outdoors calling for a budding landscape gardener

Niall McAdams is a happy man. His work hours are long, he's outdoors come rain or shine and the physical demands on his 24-year-old body are huge. But landscape gardening is what he's always wanted to do and he's more than willing, and able, to take on all that the job demands in return for the rewards.

"One of the big things about landscaping is the variety," he says, "the moving from place to place - and of course the weather. But I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be self-employed and that this was the kind of work I wanted to do." Very young in Niall McAdams case was 12 years old. "I'd a great interest from that age and started working part-time in a garden centre at weekends. All unofficial of course, since I was so young, but I kept doing it all through my teens and built up a great deal of gardening knowledge and expertise."

He went to school too, studying for his Leaving Certificate at Newpark Comprehensive on Newtownpark Avenue in Blackrock, Dublin. He says now that it wasn't the Leaving Cert results "as such" which got him his subsequent place on the amenity horticulture course in Glasnevin's Botanic Gardens. "It had more to do with overall aptitude and the interview was very important," he explains.

He spent three years in the Botanic Gardens, studying under Paul Cusack, the Principal of the College of Amenity Horticulture there. "There were about 50 of us in the first year, a great mix of ages and as many women as men. We worked a lot with Dublin Corporation's Parks Department and in gardening centres." He enjoyed the course, found it "good - though I was very knowledgeable before I did it, so I might not have appreciated it as much as some of the others. I wanted the three years and the diploma in amenity horticulture and that's what I got."

Two years ago, with the diploma in his fist, he "went straight into self employment". His Landscape Company is, for now, based in his parents' house in Blackrock, Co Dublin, and he's got one employee - "a very good lad who works with me. Machinery does a lot of the work and you need it if you want small staff numbers. I've invested about £30,000 - £40,000 in machinery and that doesn't include a van and small truck." So, what about those long hours? "In the summertime I can, and do, work 80 hour weeks. It's a 10-hour day, six days a week plus 2-3 hours in my office in the evenings pricing and looking at jobs."

The nature of the business is that he must tender for jobs, so he will constantly look at designs of other gardeners and decide how much he will charge to do the work. "Jobs can vary greatly," he explains. "I recently did a garden which cost £2,500, whereas in January next I'm scheduled to landscape five acres in Wicklow which will cost £25,000. Then again I did a job in Dalkey a while ago where it cost £23,000 to sort out a garden which was in an awful state." He says that gardening jobs of between £10,000 and £12,000 are the average.

When The Landscape Company move in on a garden they "basically pull it apart. We clear it with diggers and mark it out and then we go about reconstructing the whole garden, starting with the paving area (or hard landscape) and working our way through to the patio, decking and ponds. The last thing, generally, is the roll out lawn and planting." Most people want a fairly traditional design, he says, though "the odd time someone does want something different, like a Japanese garden". Water, he says, is "very interesting to work with though it can be quite tricky since it will escape wherever it can".

It's all "very hard physically - and very hard too having to rely on other people for deliveries and skips and things like that. There's a lot of hassle involved and a lot of hassled people about - I think this Celtic Tiger will kill us all," he jokes. He's recently bought a house in Wicklow with his girlfriend and sees it as a vindication of what he's doing. "To be able to buy a house these days I must be doing something right!"