[agla]

The key for that designer was the nursery. Whether or not you think it makes sense, a great deal of people don't know where to start when needing a landscape and the local nursery is the first place they start looking.

It gets back to that thing about getting leads. You have to be where people will look for you at the moment that they need you. People go to a nursery when they need something to do with their gardens. That is like putting a net at the end of the chute from the truck that stocks the pond with fish. It is a good place to be if you are a designer.

If you think you can approach a local nursery and snag a steady stream of work, you might find that a bit tough. Most know the value of this and will have staff designers or designers on call, but the nursery will usually not pay very much to the designer simply because they don't have to. I believe we have had a few nursery designers post here who were not happy about their pay. They believed that they were responsible for big sales and were not compensated enough. The reality is that without the hot prospects from the nursery, the designer would have no work and there are plenty of designers with little work that would step into that position as fast as it is vacated.

It is much more a matter of positioning yourself so that the right client FINDS YOU at the right time whether you work out of a nursery, a design/build, your home, or a professional office, than it is about how well you draw, what school you went to, what certificates or licenses you have, or what programs you use. Lots of those things can help you position yourself, but they don't do it on their own.

Being in a family with a busy nursery is not the only way to take the elevator rather than the stairs. Anytime you can work for the people who are already well positioned in the market, you have the opportunity to become equal to the position. When you become equal to the position, you can step out of their elevator and onto the floor it is at. By equal to the position, I mean that you have to be seen from outside of the company and recognized as being fully capable - not just having a big name on your resume. Resumes don't matter until someone is interested in reaing it.