I founded the company in Burgh st peter, Norfolk way back in 1996 after being made redundant. And having several years experience of  mower servicing and mower repairs and garden machinery maintenance,  we decided this would be the basis of the business at that time, and decided on horticultural engineers as the name of the business.

At that time we had no money to purchase stock or spares so every machine repair that came in had to have parts ordered as needed, it was a very precarious financial situation to be in, but we managed to keep going and slowly build a stock of parts and grow our customer base, at this time all our work was lawnmower and garden machinery servicing & repairs with the very occasional machine sale.

Within the first year of us trading the local shop closed leaving a gap in the market for supply of lpg (bottled gas) and pre-packed coal,  after a few phone calls we had a supplier willing to supply us with bottled gas and coal, and in those early years (and lower prices) those 2 lines were very worthwhile and helped us along enormously  especially during the winters.

So year on year we very steadily grew the business,  added more stock and spares and invested in various pieces of equipment to make servicing and repairs easier or quicker.  

Having the business grow was good but  very quickly it became clear that during our busiest times (spring mainly) it was becoming almost impossible for me to cope with the actual work, admin and deliveries / collections on my own. And as my wife was kept busy with our young children I was forced to employ extra help during these times  for several years.

This  extra help enabled us to keep the vast majority of our customers happy although there were issues with quality of the repairs carried out as it was impossible for me to personally check every machine that left the workshop, I found this of great concern and annoyance as my work ethic had always been that once a machine has been fixed I did not want to see it again for at least a year for the same problem, now I had machines coming back as they were not right, to add insult to injury It not only cost me to put them right but I had already paid for it to be done in the first place!  I was not a particularly pleasant employer at this time and eventually at the end of spring decided to let our employee/s go.

My wife decided that she could come into the business on a part time basis now as we had one child at school and the other at a pre school group 4 mornings a week so she would be in the shop with me during those times, She picked up the mechanics of the job very quickly, quicker that some of our employees who said they were mechanically minded and wanted to learn!  She also shares my outlook of  ‘if you are going to repair something, do it right, or don’t bother’ .

In 2007 now that our children are both at school my wife has now joined me in the business  full time which is one of the reasons we have been able to diversify into wrought ironwork and also to take on cycle repairs in the mower workshop.

The last few years have been difficult to say the least as between us we have lost 3 parents within 4 years,  but we are going to keep going in their memory as they were all very proud of what we are doing and would help out in the shop or in whatever way they could while they were able.