For the love of landscaping

Anything you can imagine related to horticulture or gardens, the team at Brown and Company Ltd. have probably done.

Abseiling down a cliff face over Harrington Sound to remove invasive casuarinas, building an executive tree house, complete with necessary wiring and a zip line into a swimming pool, hard and soft landscaping, conservation management plans, renovating gardens and designing and planting them from scratch.

Managed by the father daughter team of Martin and Poppy Brown, Martin, 56, founded the company more than 20 years ago, but has been doing landscaping since he was 18 years old:

“I fell into it. It was a summer job, working with the tree guys years ago and I just enjoyed it,” he says. He did an apprenticeship before going overseas for formal training. When he returned to Bermuda he worked briefly for his former employer before moving to the Parks Department as senior superintendent and director. He missed the creative side of design and horticulture however, and so Brown and Company was born.

“In the 20 years since we started, we’ve done nothing but grow and it’s a very viable, very busy business,” he continues. The work is varied and includes landscaping for high-end development work, such as the Loren, which is where they opened their own nursery almost two years ago to complement the rest of their business. There, they grow what they need for their clients and sell by appointment.

While Martin and Poppy both love what they do, there’s no denying it’s hard work, typically 10 hours a day, six days a week.

“We meet in the yard at 7.30 every morning, I set the guys up for their days. This morning I had plants on my van ready to go. I went to Somerset, laid them all out and then usually I spend a couple of hours in the office doing emails, admin, quotes. I have customer meetings to look at new work. Running about getting the guys what they need for what jobs are on,” says Poppy.

While the hours may be typical, the work is not and that is their favourite part of the job. “It’s very different every day,” continues Poppy. “The best part’s the creative side, making a garden look really pretty, especially on really big jobs, when you’re back every day on a job site for weeks and then you see the finished product. That’s really satisfying.”

One of the more unusual projects the team worked on was a sensory garden for Child and Adolescent Services at the Mid-Atlantic Wellness Institute. This was a charity project, designed by them, which included timber decking, brick and Bermuda stone paving, concrete imprinting, artificial turf installation, sensory plants and a sailboat play fixture.

A downside of the job however, is the summer heat: “I stay hydrated as much as possible,” says Poppy, who loves to jump in the water as soon as she gets home from work. “I have a pretty bad ‘farmers’ tan,” she laughs.