There’s no shortage of conversation in landscaping about how difficult it is to find good people. 

Where are the good people? Why are there so few experienced candidates? Why does every Contracts Manager seem to have three companies chasing them?

The numbers back it up. BALI’s 2026 Lay of the Land report found that 27% of respondents rated staff recruitment as very challenging, making it one of the standout issues facing the sector.

But after spending time speaking to people at GroundsFest, I came away thinking we might be looking at the problem slightly backwards.

There is clearly a recruitment problem.

But there is also a massive retention problem.

A common theme from the panel discussions really resonated with me. Businesses often want somebody “ready made”. They want the experienced landscaper, supervisor or manager who can come in tomorrow and already knows everything they need them to know. The trouble is, every other landscaping business wants exactly the same person. You end up with companies competing over a small pool of experienced candidates.

And when you speak to candidates who are considering leaving their current employer, money is only part of the conversation - A surprising amount comes back to fairly basic things.

They have stopped learning. There is nowhere obvious for them to progress. They have asked for training and it hasn’t happened. They have taken on more responsibility without their salary or job title moving with it. Or they simply don’t feel valued by their current employer.

I recently spoke to a gardener who has been with the same landscaping business for ten years. He has put himself through horticultural training through his own time and money - asked about further development and tried to progress internally with no success.

After asking tens of times, the candidate has come to me to help them find a business that will.

Not because they hate the company or because another employer has waved a ridiculous salary in front of him.

They just don’t feel valued and there is no room for them to grow.

That is the bit businesses need to pay attention to.

Retention isn’t about keeping staff forever. People move, circumstances change and sometimes somebody simply needs a new challenge.

But losing good people because they cannot see what their next two or three years look like is much more avoidable.

And progression doesn’t always have to mean becoming a manager.

A skilled landscaper might want to become genuinely excellent technically. Somebody else might want responsibility for a site, another might want RHS Qualifications. Another person might want to move into estimating, project management or client management.

The important bit is that together you’ve identified a career path and trajectory for them and live up to your promises.

This is also why training matters.

BALI’s latest research shows 54% of respondents are exploring training opportunities, while 21% are considering new apprenticeships or equivalent routes. That feels significant.

There are plenty of businesses trying to do this properly.

But as an industry, there is still a temptation to wait for a ready made/ trained candidate.

We want five years’ experience, the tickets, the plant knowledge, the client skills and ideally experience doing exactly the same job for a competitor.

Then we wonder why that candidate is difficult to find.

There is obviously a place for external recruitment. I’d be talking myself out of a job if I said otherwise.

But recruitment works far better when it sits alongside development rather than replacing it. And me being able to sell to a candidate that there’s training, development and progression prospects for them increases the number of applicants and interested candidates tenfold.

If you need a Contracts Manager in three years’ time, there will likely be somebody in your business today who you could invest the time into to get there.

If you need more supervisors, who are the landscapers showing the attitude and ability to step up?

And if you have good people, when did you last ask them what they want their career to look like?

It’s a given that there’s a shortage of skilled workers in the industry, but what are you doing to keep, train and develop those with the right attitude and willingness to progress?