About

Hi, I’m Kate Wolseley-Charles, the author of The Garden Design Professional Website

I qualified as a garden designer in 2019. My Diploma was amazing, but it didn’t prepare me for everything that’s not design - setting up my business, deciding on what services to offer, protecting the business and my clients with T&Cs, Contracts, Insurance and Policies, financial management, dealing with other professionals - and feeling completely inadequate sometimes.

Fortunately, I had a good grounding in running a business from working with my Dad in the successful business he ran for many years.

I also had lots of good advice and support, without which everything would have been a lot harder. Even so, I made some mistakes, and sometimes wondered if I’d made a mistake changing careers. I don’t anymore - my business is thriving, and I love running it.

A couple of years ago I decided I wanted to be able to talk to other designers, and, finding no easy way to do that, created a facebook group - Garden Design Professionals - which rapidly expanded and has become an amazing, vibrant, and supportive space.

I quickly realised that the questions that people asked on that group kept coming up again and again - clearly there was a need for a central resource to find the answers to those questions easily. I have to be honest, I didn’t realise what an enormous task it would be to build this website, and what you see today is only the start of the plans (so many plans!) I have for it.

If you like what you see, let me know via the Contact Page, and if you can think of improvements, do the same.

I hope you love it and find all the different elements useful.

Thanks,

Kate Wolseley-Charles