All-Ways Gardening

Selling Price
$100,000.00 - OBO
Period for Sale
Immediately
Number of Employees
3

All-Ways Gardening is locally owned and operated and has earned the professional integrity of serving the community for 22 years. We take pride in the awe-inspiring natural grace of the East Coast and know how to beautify properties in their natural surroundings. We are proud that All-Ways Gardening services most homes and businesses in the area seeking landscape design and gardening from Bridgetown to Meteghan, Nova Scotia.
What sets our business apart is our unique ability to specialize in various garden design ideas for our expanding and diverse client list. We cater to the individual needs of our clients by offering 100% organic solutions or with minimal chemical additives. All-Ways Gardening believes in making exceptional landscapes offering everything from conventional gardening and maintenance to custom design, topiary and edible flora.

All-Ways Gardening has been a family run, community focused business for the past 22 years. We have proudly received the awards for “Best Gardens in Annapolis Royal” 2012, Outstanding achievements in community involvement and in the “off-season” donated management hours and financing to the fruition and overall organization of the Bear River Winter Carnival.
History

Ultimately there can be a shortage of work in the Digby and Annapolis Counties surrounding areas. Susan Comeau was an avid landscaper and was brought on as a crew boss at the Upper Clements Theme Park as it was first being built 1989. She was quickly promoted from Crew Boss to Landscape Designer and then Director of Grounds. Only 2 years later, she was offered to take over the landscaping for the Cornwallis Military Base. Susan accepted the position at the military base and managed the generous space until it closed 4 years later. During this time, she introduced the local community and neighboring towns to “crest gardens” as she designed and grew the first for the area, on the Cornwallis Military Base. When the base closed, the well-established Digby Pines propositioned Susan to come and work for them to restore the grounds to their once full potential. Susan transformed the gardens into a tourist attraction of elaborate beauty by bringing lifelike topiary hedges to the grounds. Shown to the right is an image of the topiaries “Hank and Trudy”. These became a designated stop on tourists’ travel itinerary when visiting Digby, Nova Scotia.

After seeing her work, locals began asking Susan repeatedly to service their private homes and businesses. It was then Susan knew it was time to start her own business. To be able to use her creative and artistic design skills to beautify her community and to proudly be able to say this was her work and to ultimately be the boss of her own domain is powerful. Susan created All-Ways Gardening in 1996 and for 22 years it has been cash-flow positive, operating as a seasonal business. There was potential in this small town and she saw that, and there is more now than ever before. Since its inception, All-Ways Gardening continues to be the premiere landscaping organization in Digby County, Annapolis County.

Clientele

The business began with a handful of clients while Susan continued her existing contract at the Pines. All-Ways Gardening clients quickly grew to 80 – 100 properties annually, with a majority of them being annual repeat customers.

All-Ways Gardening has a healthy mix of both commercial and residential clients. Some of the more noteworthy commercial clients from past and present are:
 The City of Digby
 The City of Annapolis
 The Town of Bear River
 The King Fisher Motel
 The Fisherman’s Memorial (the largest park in Digby)
 Kentucky Fried Chicken
 McDonald’s
 The Bodhi Spa
 Ducks Unlimited
 Jayne’s Funeral Parlor Group

There is no job too big or too small for All-Ways Gardening and servicing these clients with honesty, integrity and Susan’s unique skill set has allowed her to develop a reputation that is unsurpassed in the landscaping industry in the South-Eastern Nova Scotia.

There are thousands of residential and commercial properties from Bridgetown to Yarmouth that are potential new clients, while the existing clients have the potential to expand their current contracted services. With All-Ways Gardening operating as a seasonal business, 7 months out of the year, there is earnings potential for snow removal (the average annual snowfall for the area is 74”), winterization and year-round property management for the business owner who is looking to expand All-Ways Gardening to its full potential.

Services Offered

All-Ways Gardening is known for beautifying properties with integrity. Offering the peace of mind to all clients that they are getting fair and honest material pricing and labor costs. Services currently include:

 Edible landscaping
 Organic practices
 Culinary gardens
 Designing intimate, relaxing spaces
 Gardening practices to attract different birds, bees and butterflies
 Healthy Landscapes
 Creating zero maintenance gardening
 Custom topiary design
 Crest design work for commercial properties.

Marketing

All-Ways Gardening has an impeccable reputation and with virtually no advertising and has developed into the premiere business in their region for landscape gardening, design and maintenance. It is evident there is more demand than they have been able to service. Over the past 22 years there have been quite a few landscape start-ups looking to share in the potential opportunity. However, at this time there is no other competition primarily due to the lack of horticulture knowledge and client loyalty that All-Ways Gardening brings. The area is extremely underserviced and with a capable crew, the potential is endless.

Growth

In 2017 All-Ways Gardening shrunk slightly due to Susan’s business partner and husband becoming gravely ill. While they were able to keep their current clients happy, they couldn’t take on any of new clients who were looking to hire All-Ways Gardening to service their homes and businesses. Instead of experiencing the anticipated growth, All-Ways Gardening saw a small decrease in sales and profits for the year.

In 2018 Susan Comeau’s husband and business partner passed away from his illness, which expedited the need to sell the business so the 80+ loyal clients could continue to be serviced.

All-Ways Gardening has focused solely on the spring and summer operations of landscape design and maintenance as they have kept the business profitable with a small crew. There are tremendous opportunities to expand with the right person taking over the business. Potential revenue streams which are not currently serviced by All-Ways Gardening include but are not limited to:
 Lawn mowing
 Large tree removal
 Bucket tree pruning
 Snow removal
 Hardscaping
 Decking
 Patio Design
 Turfing Services
 Rockeries
 Fencing Services
 Pond Installation & Clearance Services

It is important to note that the success of All-Ways Gardening over the past 22 years has been solely on word-of-mouth. There has not been a single marketing dollar spent on this business. For the business savvy mind, a creative and effective marketing campaign could catapult this business into an even bigger and more lucrative success story.