Paul Brunton joined Ed’s as an Operator in Bristol in July 2011. This is what Paul has to say about his journey so far with Ed’s.

“When I joined Ed’s four years ago, it was the freedom of running my own business with an established name behind me that really attracted me. At the time, I was the first operator to join so far away from London, which made the venture feel even more exciting.

“With lots of Ed’s support behind me, I went on to build a strong gardening business that delivered a good income with lots of freedom and a fun outdoorsy lifestyle. Perfect!

“Although my lifestyle objectives haven’t changed since I joined Ed’s, my personal circumstances certainly have. I’ve very recently become a dad and although I couldn’t be happier about that, clearly parenthood is an expensive business!

“However, the beauty of Ed’s is that you really can make your business what you want it to be. I love doing what I do and certainly didn’t want to change that but I felt that I wanted to scale up my business to take on larger, commercial projects to increase my profitability.

“This was clearly uncharted territory for me personally but my gut instinct was that with my own experience and appetite for hard work and the Ed’s brand and professional knowledge behind me, there was no reason why I couldn’t achieve my goal.

“As it turns out, I was right to be optimistic as I have pretty much transformed my business since the start of 2015. I am now providing garden maintenance services to a national house builder for a number of projects and this has been great for my business.

“It has been challenging in that the work is very varied with tight timescales and it’s quite different from providing residential gardening services on a smaller scale. However, I’ve kept a cool head and at no point have I felt that I’ve been in over my head (despite the photo!). I’ve always felt that there was always someone back at the office to discuss things with if there was something I wasn’t sure about.

“I also feel that the Ed’s brand helps a lot to give me a stamp of authenticity in project tenders – I think it would be hard to be taken seriously without it. At the moment I’m feeling happy, challenged and fulfilled and a little bit proud of myself – as a new dad and as a successful gardener.”