Hello Jan and Paul, I too work with my partner (of seven years) Karen, doing mostly maintenance now. Don't think there's too many 'man and wife' teams about ... not sure ... I see you're just starting - we're still finding out things too, Phil has done a wonderful thing with this site and it's been so useful to us. I'm no-one to give advise but I'd like to tell you how we're getting along.

I began gardening in the early eighties but gave it up - couldn't make it pay.

Our two favourite jobs are year round contracts at residential estates - in both places the people seem mostly retired and I think they find us, as a couple, more approachable than your regular beefy 'landscape contractors' - we've got to know all the different characters and their stories - we have fun being there and there's always tons to do - big gardens - and our 'message' is much the same as yours.

Phil's right about pricing, we've done a lot of running around in the past, for not much profit - now we will charge up to £40ph - but saying 30 or 40 sounds a lot when spoken - even though its only half that per man of course .... so we prefer to give a price for our day or half day, some agree - some don't. Both of the contracts only pay about £25 - but we like the security of the year round work. The management put out a tender each year so there's not much we can do except normal 8% increase each april - maybe thats why one of them was really in quite a bad state when we started .... which made us wonder how do people get these positions in the first place. --- These two jobs and my first one (first one for a long time) - a four acre place - a good place for Karen to start learning - we were introduced to by friends.. We haven't thought about our own web-site - the two estate jobs aren't guaranteed so I think maybe we should!

We've spent ages trying to carefully select petrol tools that can best help us do the job - all except for a shredder - we've ended up with an electric Bosch 25TC - it's ok, but I do wish I'd gone with the petrol Makita. We compost most of our so called waste (but not conifers) in a 20' long wood bin divided into four, down on our allotment. We grow herbaceous perennials here alongside the vegetables - we love it down there, and I just had my first win on e-bay - a potato fork!

Sorry, are you still there? Platform hedge ladders I wouldn't be without - I have a Hedgemaster but there's also the Henchman. The other thing that we've just managed to afford and has been a godsend is an automatic (for Karen) Sprinter van - so good to be able to stand up and move around in something after the old volvo estate.

I'm sure you both will learn a lot from the amazing accumulated knowledge on LJ, - Karen doesn't take part but she likes to read it all and keep up to date. Stick up for yourselves (and eachother) - Pete.