I always knew that I wanted an active job with a desire to work outside. I first became qualified in roofing, the job that I was doing when I met my wife to be, Mikki. We quickly became serious, moved in together in a village in South Oxfordshire and got a puppy that we named Thor. We had many common interests, similar sporting childhoods, Mikki’s family are also a tight knit group. Roofing wasn’t quite the right fit for me but Mikki’s uncle ran a gardening company, I interviewed with the landscape manager and got a job in a totally new profession. I learnt so much, I worked on small garden upkeeps to the grounds of large estates. I got my tractor driving qualification (many childhood dreams fulfilled driving a tractor). For the first few years I mostly worked on a large estate in Oxfordshire where I regularly mowed lawns, shaped hedges and looked after the walled rose garden. The last few years working for this company I was either working by myself or with one or two others over-seeing the maintenance rounds. I always enjoyed working in the outdoors alongside a great team of colleagues and my boss. During these years my wife and I got married and adopted another lovely dog we called Kara.

My grandparents in law owned a home in Modbury that we would visit as much as we could, my wife learnt to surf when she was young at Bigbury on sea and Bantham, a few years ago we were walking through Totnes with our dogs and casually window shopping houses, we jokingly said we should move here, but then it became a real plan. We have always loved it here no matter the time of year or weather probably because of my wife’s love of water sports and my love of the outdoors we always have somewhere we want to be in the South Hams, most importantly our dogs love it too! So we saved for 2 years for our new home in the centre of the South Hams, every day we know we made the right choice. But obviously a 200 mile commute to work wasn’t a viable option, so with help from my family and friends I set up my own gardening company. I have always been interested in modern and ancient history, we chose our dog names to be from Norse mythology and that inspired me to name my garden company Valhalla Garden Care after the Norse version of heaven. As cheesy as it sounds, creating little pieces of heaven in your own garden.