A New LifeA husband and wife left their nine-to-five jobs to set up a landscaping business together, writes Claire O'Connell
When Alison Leonard and her husband Declan Beirne left their "safe" jobs to set up a garden design and landscape company, people said they were off their rockers. For a start, they had no clients.
But they had faith in their idea and after a year of hard work, the business is blossoming and they get to spend more time together and with their young daughter.
The seeds of the business were sown back when Beirne attended agricultural college in Galway after leaving school. But he soon got sidetracked into the area of logistics and stock control, working for many years in construction and for computer companies, including IBM.
"I fell into it," he says. "But I did enjoy all that. I got into investigating where things went wrong in processes, how something might go missing, and then doing adjustments and reconciliation."
Meanwhile, Leonard had forgone her first choice to study horticulture and started working in an insurance company. "When I was leaving school in the early 1980s it wasn't the thing for young girls to go off and do horticulture," she says. So she worked her way into the financial services industry, eventually becoming a fees manager for JP Morgan in Dublin.
She then took a break from the high-flying world of finance to follow her dream and study horticulture in Warrenstown, Co Meath, but with no long-term job prospects, she returned to the "safe income" of managing global pension funds.
When the couple had their daughter, Leonie, Leonard started to think about how she could work part time. She already had a small sideline job designing gardens in her spare time, but found it wasn't quite enough for clients.
"Very few people buy the design on its own; they want the landscaping too," she says.
The couple saw a potential opportunity there, especially as people were becoming more interested in their gardens thanks in part to the likes of Diarmuid Gavin, says Leonard.
"He's like the catwalk of gardens and he has really brought it together for the industry; he has made a big impact."
So after a lot of thinking, they finally decided to leave their nine-to-five jobs and set up Dig Landscaping and Design, a one-stop shop with Leonard designing gardens and buying plants and Beirne managing the landscaping side, bringing in contractors to do craftwork like decking.
To drum up business, they pushed flyers into letterboxes close to their home in Drumcondra in north Dublin.
"I was quite surprised at the calls that came in," says Beirne.
"I don't read flyers myself, I put them in the bin, but people called us and trusted us and we built it from there.
"I will never leave a garden unless I am satisfied with the work that is carried out. You are only as good as your last job and you are relying on them to give you good word of mouth," she says.
Now they also have clients in Kildare, Meath, Clontarf, Dún Laoghaire and Blackrock. Landscaping and maintaining private gardens and commercial properties keep them on their toes, and the couple are happiest when getting their hands dirty, digging beds, planting, weeding and cutting hedges.
Beirne in particular is reaping the benefits of physical work outdoors. "My cholesterol has gone down a lot and I haven't changed my lifestyle in terms of what I eat. When I was sitting at a desk I wasn't physically doing the work, I was only moving for tea and lunch breaks and my cholesterol was up," he says.
"But now it has come down dramatically because I am moving constantly for 10 hours a day."
So what is it like working cheek by jowl with your spouse?
"I think we work well as a team and it has the benefit of having two people who can't walk away from it - we don't have to worry about the trust element, it's an equal partnership," says Leonard.
"We're not saying it's all rosy, but we can kill each other and still get over it," she laughs.
And while the couple are now putting in longer hours than before, they are based at home and find the work rewarding. Plus they get to spend more time together as a family. "You are in control of your own destiny, and the fact that we are in it together has been more beneficial for Leonie," says Leonard.
Beirne agrees that the hard graft is worth it: "One of the big things is that I've always worked hard all my life but other people have reaped the rewards. So I don't have a problem doing it for myself.
"I've always wanted to do it for myself and if it doesn't work out, I can then say I've tried."
For more information e-mail info@diglandscaping.ie