Grass Roots Website Produces Bumper Crop

News release
22 May 2006

Grass Roots Website Produces Bumper Crop

Landscape designers usually prefer to be outdoors, but the rapid growth of New Zealand’s first online landscape design directory has made even the sticklers put down their spades.

www.landscapedesign.co.nz is an online community of landscape professionals and suppliers, providing the public with an easy way to find everything landscape related.

Hawke’s Bay landscape designer Tim Durrant returned from overseas in 2002 and was frustrated at how hard it was to find unique plants and products for his clients. So he started his own products and suppliers list, which in a year grew to a profitable business with 4 staff, an administration team and a burgeoning software development crew.

The site’s stats since its launch late last year reflect how quickly the landscaping community’s caught on. With web pages viewed more than 130,000 times, nearly 20 percent of people visiting are regulars.

“The site was born out of necessity but has grown into a whole community. People bookmark us for our national landscaping directory but they also come for the free resources and advice from the pros,” Tim says.

Smaller businesses with limited marketing budgets have welcomed the opportunity to get an affordable and credible web presence they can easily update themselves.

“Advertisers are giving us great feedback. They like what we’ve set up and more importantly it’s working for them.”

Not one to muck around – although he will be appearing soon on the new series of Mucking In - Tim’s soon to launch www.findaplant.co.nz. This new site is an organic progression from www.landscapedesign.co.nz and will enable the public and professionals to search for unique or specific plants, or get bulk-buy prices from nurseries and wholesalers nationwide.

ENDS

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